Covid misinformation harming the public

As a retired nurse of more than 45 years, I must take issue with the Sept. 16 letter written by my colleague Amy Regier, an RN and a Republican state representative. I find her opinions about masking in the face of Covid-19 to be misinformed, promoting further misinformation and confusion among our profession and the lay public.

I myself have taken great pains to spread accurate information to these groups. Locally and early on I gave public testimony about the science behind mandatory masking to promote evidence-based personal protective measures on five occasions to our Martin County, Florida commissioners, sometimes having to be escorted to my car by sheriff’s deputies for my protection from hysterical antimaskers who thought their Internet-directed opinions trumped evidence-based recommendations. The science behind masking is strong indeed, and researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University have one large, randomized controlled trial of 350,000 people.

Later I was dismayed to find that many RNs were not only not getting vaccinated but were telling their patients to avoid the shots themselves. Consequently, I was easily lured out of retirement to participate in a national effort to spread accurate information on social media to counter vaccine hesitancy in RNs.

Such efforts are working, and an American Nurses Association survey from August now reports about 90% RNs are vaccinated or intent to do so, likewise recommending this to patients.

Annual Gallup polls have designated nurses as America’s most trusted professionals for 19 straight years. The public trusts them to protect and care for them. While RNs are entitled to their opinions, the one thing they cannot ethically do is spread harmful misinformation and confusion to the lay public.

For whatever motives, that is exactly what my colleague, Ms Regier, is doing by promoting public debate among the lay public that just lacks the expertise or scientific education to evaluate public health measures such as masking. And in challenging one of her professional organizations, the Montana Nurses Association, she is further undermining public confidence in the professional organizations that do offer the expertise on these science subjects that the public so desperately needs.

I would hope that Ms. Regier would move on from writing junk op-ed pieces and stick to politics, an endeavor in which she obviously has more interest and leave the dissemination of science-based practices to other more informed nurses.

Robert Hess, PhD, RN, FAAN, is founder and CEO of Forum for Shared Governance. He lives in Florida.