Coronavirus skeptics are harassing hospital staffers in an effort to "prove" their conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
Cases are skyrocketing all over the country, while more and more hospitals are overflowing and unable to care for all the sick patients struggling to breathe, but some Americans refuse to believe any of it, reported The Daily Beast.
“It’s conspiracy theorists that believe what they’re being told is not accurate,” said Kyle Hansen, a hospital administrator in Provo, Utah. “They’re determined to videotape and capture the proof of that by accessing our facilities. We’ve had some people get really creative in how they’ve lied about coming in for an appointment or other things.”
“We have an inordinate amount of phone calls that we’re receiving every day from the community wanting to know: ‘Is your ICU really full?’” Hansen added.
Hanson said none of the intruders had gotten into the ICU, which he said was indeed filled to capacity while staffers endure hardship and tragedy, but he said they're deluded by an empty parking lot -- which can be explained by restrictions on visitors and the fact that many patients are too sick to drive themselves there.
“They’re idiots,” said Bryan Grossman, whose wife worked at Provo's Utah Valley Hospital. “The hospital is filled with COVID people. COVID patients who don’t have cars … I just don’t understand people sometimes.”
“The big thing I think is so silly about all this is how could this possibly be fake?" he added. "The whole world would have to be faking it.”
Grossman understands all too well how the reality of the virus, because he had been infected and his wife Patrice died from it.
“My wife predicted she was going to die from this when it first popped up,” he said.
The Grossmans took precautions against the virus but agreed, against their better judgment, to host a COVID-denying family they knew from Arizona -- and everyone got sick.
“It was a great visit,” Grossman said. “Then they went back and about a week later we started getting sick ... Of the eight people living in our house, every single one of us got COVID. We called them and asked, ‘Hey, are any of you guys sick?” They said, ‘Oh yeah, one of us did have COVID by the way.’”
“They didn’t think to call us and say, ‘Oh by the way, one of us showed up positive for COVID,’” he added.
The Grossmans thought they had recovered after a month, but two weeks later Patrice began experiencing a sore throat, a runny nose and burning eyes, and he took her Oct. 29 to the hospital where she worked.
Hours later, she was dead and Grossman is furious at the conspiracy theorists trying to barge into the hospital to prove their delusions.
“They’re trying to protect the president,” he said. “They want to make this all fake. It’s not fake. Talk to your nearest nurse or doctor. They’ll tell you this is real.”
