[ad_1]
As his team, which included a black nurse and a respiratory specialist of Asian descent, prepared the man to be intubated, Taylor Nichols said on Twitter that he saw the Nazi tattoos.
FILE: Nazi flag. Image: Fornax / Creative Commons.
LOS ANGELES, United States – A Jewish doctor who works with coronavirus patients in California shared his shock at the moment he saw neo-Nazi tattoos on the body of a seriously ill man he was treating.
As his team, which included a black nurse and a respiratory specialist of Asian descent, prepared the man to be intubated, Taylor Nichols said on Twitter that he saw the Nazi tattoos.
“The swastika stood out boldly on his chest. The SS tattoos and other insignia that were previously covered by his shirt were now obvious in the room,” he tweeted Monday.
“We all saw. The symbols of hatred on his body proudly announced his views. We all knew what he thought of us. How he valued our lives,” said Nichols, who was later interviewed about his experience by various media outlets.
Nichols spoke about the conflicting emotions he felt, after months of battling the disease and watching patients die, while living in isolation to avoid contaminating loved ones, in constant fear of getting sick.
“Unfortunately, society has proven unwilling to listen to science or our pleas. Begging people to take this seriously, to stay home, wear a mask, be it the break in the transmission chain,” he said .
Nichols said the man, whom he described as older and heavyset, with teeth missing from years of methamphetamine abuse, had begged him to save his life.
“Don’t let me die, doctor,” he said, according to Nichols.
The man was admitted to the hospital near Sacramento in mid-November, already “clearly working hard to breathe. He looked ill. Uncomfortable. Scared.”
“I assured him that we were all going to work hard to take care of him and keep him alive as best we could,” Nichols said, admitting that he had wondered how the man would have acted if the roles had been reversed.
“For the first time, I admit that I hesitated, ambivalent. The pandemic has worn me out,” he said. “And I realize that maybe I’m not well,” ended his thread of tweets.
Nichols later told the Chronicle of San Francisco that when he saw the symbols of hatred tattooed on the man’s body, “I felt no compassion for him at the time.”
Working in a hospital that cares for many homeless or drug addicts during a raging pandemic, he added, has had its effect.
Nichols said he did not know whether the patient with the Nazi tattoos had died or not, but said he had done everything possible to save his life before moving on to the next patient.
Download the EWN app on your iOS or Android device.
[ad_2]
