Doctors, officials in US coronavirus hotspots say they get villainized - Business Insider

If North Dakota were a country, it would have the most coronavirus cases per capita in the world.Nearly 9 out of every 100 people in the state have been infected.Sherry Adams helps lead the state's coronavirus testing response, a role she's held since the pandemic started."We did our very first scenario for drive-thru testing on April 4, back in the good old days," she told Business Insider. Many of them have treated patients who refuse to acknowledge that the coronavirus poses a threat in the first place.Aaron Billin, an emergency physician and county health officer in Park County, Wyoming, said locals often try to tell him how to do his job."I've had one death threat," Billin said. Many doctors and nurses say their hospitals have either reached or are nearing capacity."Our poor healthcare workers, they're at their wits' end and feel like no one cares about them," Moch said. "It's just devastating that we're in this point where folks have gotten mixed messages, and a lot of people are getting sick because of it," Dr. Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease specialist who cares for coronavirus patients at the Iowa City VA Medical Center, said. President Donald Trump has frequently contradicted the statements and advice of top public-health experts: He held numerous campaign rallies where masks weren't required, erroneously blamed increased testing for the US's high case count, and repeatedly suggested earlier this year that the virus will "disappear" soon.Even after being hospitalized with the coronavirus himself in October, Trump continued to suggest it wasn't a big deal."Don't let it dominate you," he said in a video. "Like they're wearing their sports team." Babcock said some visitors to hospitals in rural Missouri refuse to wear masks, ignoring requirements put in place to keep the patients and staff safe. But doctors say there's never been a more important time to exercise caution and listen to health guidelines."With the advent of the holidays, and the increased indoor time, it means that we are going to be getting potentially older people sicker — people that had managed to avoid infection up until now," Megan Ranney, an emergency-medicine physician at Brown University, said, adding, "our entire healthcare system is going to be stretched at the same time."Recent positive findings about coronavirus vaccine candidates should be an indicator that hope is on the horizon — we just have to wait a little longer.