Ivey said in an interview that she put her feelings down in writing for the sake of her mental health. A rash of patients – younger and younger, she said – have flooded her hospital, virtually all unvaccinated.
She expressed little hope that her words would make a difference. People who are most adamantly against vaccines will only be convinced if they see their loved ones sick, she said.
“That just breaks my heart: that people need to go through this hurt to understand,” said Ivey, who began her career during the pandemic. “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if these people knew what COVID was, they would not risk it. But ignorance is a powerful thing.”
Despair drove Atherton, the Mississippi nurse, to speak out.
On Facebook this week, she described in harrowing detail an unvaccinated woman struggling to breathe and scared of leaving her children behind without a mother.
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