'We Don't Want To Die': Nurses Take To Social Media To Plead For Americans To Wear Masks
As coronavirus cases surge in many states and divided Americans dig further into debates over face coverings, nurses are taking to social media to personally plead for the public to wear masks.
"We are asking for compassion, we are asking you to value human lives over your freedom," Kelly Loman Bedard, an ICU nurse in Phoenix, tearfully said in a video posted July 16 on Facebook.
"We want to go home to our families. We don't want to get sick. We don't want to die from Covid-19, "she continues. "And we definitely want to see you die or our families die."
More than 4 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19 and nearly 144,000 have died, according to the latest tally from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We're working really, really hard. I'm tired," said Nicole Porter, Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, said in a video posted on Facebook. "My ears hurt, my face hurts. I'm exhausted. I mean I'm so exhausted I could almost cry."
Porter, who is also an associate professor of nursing at San Joaquin Delta College, posted the video with the hashtag #WhyIWearAMask to encourage people to help stop the spread of the virus
"Please, please, please," she said. "It's very important for you to wear your mask in public."
After the Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner's Office announced it didn't have the resources to enforce Governor Gavin Newsom's June 18 mandate, Amy Arlund, a nurse at the COVID unit at the Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center, took to Facebook to urge local residents to wear a mask at all times.
"If I'm wrong, you wore a silly mask and you didn't like it. If I'm right and you don't wear a mask, you better pray that all the nurses aren't already out sick or dead because people chose not to wear a mask," she posted on June 23. "Please tell me my life is worth a LITTLE of your discomfort?"
In Bentonville, Arkansas, nurse Jayme Perry is also using Facebook as a forum to urge people to wear face masks and take other safety measures to stay well and keep people around them well.
"Just suck it up," she said in a Facebook live post ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. "It's just one Fourth of July. Do not let it be the last Fourth with someone because that someone gets sick."
