These are the trumpers, and are dragging this country down...
They don’t believe the ICU at Utah Valley Hospital is full of coronavirus patients. If only they were right.
Michael Daly Special Correspondent
Published Nov. 18, 2020 4:48AM ET
A big red heart fashioned with five dozen Post-its was in one of the windows of the intensive care unit at Utah Valley Hospital when the conspiracy theorists pulled into a parking lot that they found to be suspiciously empty.
The heart was placed there by nurses to mark the room where one of their own died on Oct. 30. Neonatal intensive care nurse Patrice Grossman, who was born at the same hospital where she worked, had predicted when COVID-19 first arrived in America that she would be among the fatalities. She and seven other family members, beginning with her baby grandson, contracted it at home from out-of-state house guests who believed the virus is no big deal.
That belief is shared by the conspiracy theorists who made repeated visits to the hospital in recent weeks. They decided that the small number of cars outside the Provo facility was evidence that the pandemic is a hoax. They entered the hospital with video cameras seeking to film what they believed would be an equally empty ICU.
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“They’re idiots,” Bryan Grossman told The Daily Beast on Tuesday, adding, “The hospital is filled with COVID people. COVID patients who don’t have cars… I just don’t understand people sometimes.”
He also said, “The big thing I think is so silly about all this is how could this possibly be fake? The whole world would have to be faking it.”
One explanation that comes to him is that the deniers are trying to protect the person who got the delusion going in the first place.
“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.”
Grossman recalled that his wife had immediately recognized COVID-19 as a deadly threat when it arrived in America at the start of the year.
“My wife predicted she was going to die from this when it first popped up,” he said.
The family took the recommended precautions. But among the deniers were people they know who live in Arizona and wanted to visit.
“They didn’t think COVID was such a big deal,” Bryan said.
The Grossmans had misgiving but agreed.
“It was kind of, ‘OK, I guess so,’” Bryan remembered.
The visitors stayed with them for only one day and for the rest of the time with a nearby relative.
“It was a great visit,” Bryan recalled. “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.’”
Bryan added, “They didn’t think to call us and say, ‘Oh by the way, one of us showed up positive for COVID.’”
The baby grandson, Leo, was the first to get ill. Patrice and Bryan and their five children followed. But they all managed to ride it out and emerged seemingly unscathed after a month of quarantine.
Byran remembered telling himself, “Oh my gosh, we totally ducked the bullet.”
Patrice figured she had disproved her prediction. Bryan remembered her saying, “Boy, it’s a good thing I got through this. I just wish people would listen. This is a real thing.”
Patrice went back to work at the NICU and continued caring for newborns in the hospital where she herself had been born.
But two weeks later, she began experiencing a sore throat and a runny nose. Her eyes burned.
“She said, ‘Oh man, I don’t feel good,’” Bryan remembered.
Patrice initially decided she did not need to go to a doctor, insisting she was fine. She then changed her mind, and Bryan drove her to the hospital. Neither of them were greatly concerned on the evening of Oct. 29 when she strode into the emergency room where visitors were not allowed. He would be left with a regret.
“I didn’t give her a hug,” he told The Daily Beast.
After a short while, she texted him.
“I don’t feel so good, but I think it’ll be OK.”
Her messages then suddenly turned urgent.
“Pray for me. Pray for me.”
He got a call from a social worker, who explained the doctor was busy with an influx of patients. The social worker reported that Patrice had gone into cardiac arrest.
But the medical team managed to stabilize her, and she was responding to antibiotics.
“Everything looks like it’s going to be OK,” Bryan recalled.
Bryan went to bed that night feeling he had reason to be optimistic. He was awakened by another call from the social worker. A doctor came on the line.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been working on your wife for half an hour…” the doctor began.
The doctor seemed about to say there was nothing more to be done when Brayn heard a shout in the background.
“Wait, we have a heartbeat!”
The doctor said he would call back. Bryan stood in a hallway at home with his family, waiting until the phone rang again.
“OK, we’ve stabilized her, but she’s in a coma,” the doctor reported.
Not long afterward, at 1:21 a.m., Patrice was pronounced dead. The virus that the deniers say is no worse than the flu had killed her just two days after she had last been on duty as a nurse.
“It struck her down that fast,” Bryan said.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/covid-truthers-try-to-invade-utah-valley-hospital-where-patrice-grossman-died?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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