Local media companies in Charlotte, North Carolina have peddled fear quotes from a few of the same nurses throughout December, allowing one woman’s difficult job to induce panic in people who should not fear the flu-like coronavirus.
Three local news stations last week strove to outdo each other in pushing COVID-19 hysteria through the quotes of Novant Health intensive-care unit nurse Diana Tejada.
WBTV reported a story about Tejada feeling “very excited” to receive the coronavirus vaccine, even though she is a young woman who faces slim odds of experiencing any symptoms, let alone fatal consequences, from the virus.
CBS-affiliated WBTV’s Dec. 16 article included a quote about the “awe” that people would feel if they saw the devastation of COVID-19 in the hospitals.
“If we could take you guys through what we go through on a daily basis in the ICU, the people who are not believers of what COVID can do, they would just be completely in awe at how sick and how quickly people get from this disease,” Tejada said.
“The surge we had in March is nowhere near the surge we’re having now,” she said.
The news stories do not offer a single competing perspective. Tejada’s opinions form the entire basis of the story.
WCNC Charlotte, an NBC affiliate, pushed similar panic porn, though the news organization included a few more sources to advance coronavirus hysteria.
“It’s still pretty surreal everyday walking in and seeing our COVID side filled up with COVIDs and our other side being filled up with regular patients. I think the whole hospital system has been overwhelmed,” Tejada said, according to WCNC.
There have not been any hospital systems in the United States, even in New York City, that have been overwhelmed by an influx of patients with COVID-19.
“I just want people to love their family members and appreciate their family members because today is not promised. And that’s what we’re finding,” Tejada said.
Another ICE nurse at Novant Health, Cassie Brault, added to the sensationalism.
“It’s devastating. I’ve never seen death like this and it’s so sad,” Brault said.
“The frustration, the exhaustion, mentally, physically is all still there. We’ve seen more death honestly these past three weeks than I’ve ever seen in my career as a nurse these past five years,” she said.
ABC-affiliated WSOC-TV on Dec. 16 also published a sensational story, which warns, without evidence, that coronavirus patients will overwhelm Charlotte’s hospitals.
“Our morale here in the ICU, we are overwhelmed with everything going on but we’re optimistic, and we want this to be over,” Tejada said, according to WSOC-TV. “It has been mentally, physically, absolutely draining. It’s hard to watch a patient get sick and then succumb to this.”
WSOC’s story promotes the same bogus narrative that hospitals could collapse and be unable to provide care for patients.
The sensational reporting of the ABC-, CBS-, and NBC-affiliated outlets has little to do with Tejada or Brault, whose quotes, as ICU nurses, undoubtedly reflect their day-to-day experience with suffering.
Yet their experience does not accurately reflect the negligible effects of the coronavirus on the vast majority of healthy Americans.
Novant Health added to the narrative by publishing Tejada’s diary on Sept. 15 with the title, “Diary of a COVID-19 nurse: Exhaustion, teamwork, struggle and celebration.”
“I have recently found myself thinking how sad it is in the ICU since this pandemic started. There have been a lot of deaths—but death in a totally different way than I have ever seen as a nurse. Patients die without a family member beside them,” Tejada wrote.
Novant Health has an incentive to keep promoting coronavirus hysteria because the company functions as much like a financial investment firm as a hospital.
The hospital has more than $3 billion in cash and investments.
Yet, Novant Health has received more than $141 million from 18 COVID-related stimulus grants, COVID Stimulus Watch reported.
Hospitals in North Carolina have reaped nearly $1.8 billion from COVID grants.
Novant Health spokesperson Caryn Klebba in June said the company expected to lose about $300 million in revenue during the first half of the year, the Charlotte Observer reported.
“We’ve only had a third of our losses covered, which is why we need—and thankfully had—those reserves,” she said.
Urban Institute senior fellow Dr. Robert Berenson said large hospitals with massive investments should not receive government bailouts while smaller hospitals without reserves get nothing.
He said the grant system operates in such a way that “the rich will get richer—and the poor will get poorer.”
“… If hospitals are doing so well that they were able to put this kind of money into surplus, why wouldn’t you expect that to be the first draw when a crisis came around?” Berenson asked.
