Denial's catastrophic cost

As a coronavirus tsunami fills hospitals, many Americans still believe COVID is a hoax

A hospital.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Bing Guan)

This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Jodi Doering, an emergency room nurse at a South Dakota hospital, is a daily witness to just how sick our country has become. People severely ill with COVID-19 are flooding her hospital, suffering also from an extreme case of cognitive dissonance: They'd been told the pandemic was a concoction of the fake news media. "They tell you there must be another reason they are sick," an exhausted Doering recounted on Twitter this week. Even while gasping for breath, she says, the patients insist "they don't have COVID because it's not real." The delusional talk only stops when these patients get intubated or die. "It's like a f---ing horror movie that never ends," Doering says.

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.