{"id":67523,"date":"2021-10-27T18:21:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T18:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/10\/27\/in-covid-hotspot-deployed-army-medical-team-fights-disease-and-disinformation\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:40:53","slug":"in-covid-hotspot-deployed-army-medical-team-fights-disease-and-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/coronavirus\/2021\/10\/27\/in-covid-hotspot-deployed-army-medical-team-fights-disease-and-disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"In COVID hotspot, deployed Army medical team fights disease and disinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

COEUR D\u2019ALENE, Idaho \u2013 When the 12-hour-plus workday is done, the 20 Army nurses and doctors deployed to this scenic town leave a civilian hospital overrun by COVID and carry the weight of the shift back to their hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Capt. Corrine Brown, an intensive care unit nurse, that burden involves the uncertainty that remains when treating the sick, 19 months after the pandemic changed everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCOVID doesn\u2019t act like any other disease that we\u2019ve previously treated,\u201d Brown told Military Times this month between sips of Gatorade during a break in her shift. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like dealer\u2019s choice if they\u2019re going to get better or get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown and her military colleagues are last-gasp reinforcements here, sent in via the Federal Emergency Management Agency a few months ago to help with a ceaseless conveyor belt of sickness that threatened to break Kootenai hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a once-unprecedented military mobilization that has steadily become the norm during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Army Capt. Corrine Brown, a critical care nurse, treats an intubated COVID patient at Kootenai Health Regional Medical Center in\u202fCoeur\u202fd\u2019Alene,\u202fIdaho,\u202fon Sept.\u202f29.\u202fBrown is one of 20 Army medical staff deployed to the hospital to help with a was of COVID cases that has overwhelmed the civilian hospital. (Sgt. Kaden D. Pitt\/Army)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The crush of cases here is born of a population as skeptical of COVID and masks as the nearby Lake Coeur d\u2019Alene is wide. And after hours, other Army nurses here linger on the bafflement of patients who didn\u2019t believe in the disease, got infected, couldn\u2019t breathe and ended up hospitalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause the number of unvaccinated patients that we see is so high, and they feel so misinformed when they get the infection\u2026it\u2019s this thing that they\u2019ve never thought about and now they are in a very critical state,\u201d Army Capt. Jason Webb, another ICU nurse, said earlier this month. \u201cPeople are still shocked when they get this infection and when they get so sick. And it kind of perplexes me that that\u2019s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as the cases keep coming and the state enacts crisis standards of care to deal with the flood, life outside continues as if no pandemic exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just 46 percent of Idaho residents are fully vaccinated, according to state data<\/a>, nearly 30 points below the national percentage of fully vaccinated adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the pandemic trudges on here, any talk of COVID mitigation\u2014such as requiring masks\u2014has been met with an increasingly aggressive edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A local school district axed plans for a mask mandate after hundreds of protesters swarmed a school board meeting last month and then descended on the district headquarters, prompting a lockdown, The Associated Press<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These attitudes have left hospital staff to deal with infection largely on their own, even as they face local ire themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have had people show up with video cameras to be greeted by security, to then cuss them out and call them sheep, then post the video to YouTube,\u201d Caiti Bobbitt, a hospital spokeswoman, said. \u201cFamily members yelling at staff for not giving alternative treatments. Family members yelling at staff for killing their loved ones because COVID isn\u2019t real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst this fevered swirl, the Army team and their civilian counterparts work away, trying to save lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would love to see this community not in crisis,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t