A St. Louis intensive care unit doctor shared a video that showed what Covid-19 patients see while intubating them to encourage people to take the virus seriously.
In the video, Kenneth Remy, a critical care physician at the University of Washington Medical Center, is staring at the camera while holding a larynx and endotracheal tube – devices used in the intubation process.
“I hope the last moments of your life don’t look that way, because you can see that at the end of your life if we don’t start wearing a mask when we’re in public. When we don’t practice social distance. When we don’t wash our hands often,” he says.
“Because I promise you, you will see this. I promise you that your mother, father or children will see this at the end of their lives when they suffer from Covid’s disease. This is serious.”
Remy said there are more than 1,000 Covid-19 patients and “too many are dying” of the disease. He said he wanted to post a video that he saw a spike in St. Louis coronavirus cases.
“Last week, when I was in the intensive care unit, we suffered a number of deaths,” NBC News said in a telephone interview. “I was forced to call 11 strangers. At night to let them know that their loved one had just died. So in that sense, if you want, unfortunately, it’s just a kind of feeling of defeat on my shoulders.”
His video has been viewed more than 71,000 times since it was posted on Twitter on Saturday.
The doctor said his hope is that it can help “change certain feelings of the disease,” especially as the holidays approach.
“I understand that wearing the mask everywhere when in public can make you feel uncomfortable, but what would feel most uncomfortable is being in the hospital, being in the intensive care unit, struggling to breathe,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I want my loved ones to live, as do your loved ones.”
On Saturday, the U.S. topped 12 million Covid-19 cases as more than 40 states and Washington DC reported a percentage increase in cases over the past 14 days.
