When President Donald Trump was voted out of office in the 2020 election, one of the top reasons why millions of U.S. residents voted to replace him with former Vice President Joe Biden was his woefully inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic. Regardless, so-called “coronavirus truthers” on the far right continue to insist that the pandemic is merely a hoax that President-elect Biden and other Democrats used to harm Trump’s presidency. And at a Utah hospital that is being overrun with COVID-19 patients, the Daily Beast reports, health care workers are having to cope with extremists who don’t even believe that the patients are sick.

“Conspiracy theorists,” journalist Michael Daly reports in the Beast, have made “repeated visits” to Utah Valley Hospital in recent weeks. According to Daly, Utah’s coronavirus truthers “decided that the small number of cars outside the Provo facility was evidence that the pandemic is a hoax” and “entered the hospital with video cameras seeking to film what they believed would be an equally empty ICU.”

Kyle Hansen, an administrator at Utah Valley Hospital, told the Provo City Council, “It’s conspiracy theorists that believe what they’re being told is not accurate. They’re determined to videotape and capture the proof of that by accessing our facilities. We’ve had some people get really creative in how they’ve lied about coming in for an appointment or other things.”

Of course, the intensive care unit at Utah Valley Hospital — like many other ICUs around the United States — has been anything but empty at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is going from bad to worse. According to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide and over 248,700 in the United States. And some medical experts believe that the worst is yet to come this winter.

“None of the intruders seem to have gained entry to the ICU (at Utah Valley Hospital),” Daly explains. “But had they succeeded, they would have only been able to document it was, in fact, at full capacity, with a brave and dedicated staff under great physical and emotional strain. Had the intruders been less deluded, they might have understood that the small number (of) cars in the parking lot is explained by posted restrictions on visitors that are standard at hospitals during the pandemic. COVID-19 is not some minor illness where you might drive yourself to the hospital and leave your car outside for a few hours.”

Nonetheless, coronavirus truthers continue to harass Utah Valley Hospital employees. Hansen told the Provo City Council, “We have an inordinate amount of phone calls that we’re receiving every day from the community wanting to know: ‘Is your ICU really full?’”

Patricia Grossman, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Utah Valley Hospital, died from COVID-19 on October 30 — and her widower, Bryan Grossman is understandably fed up with coronavirus truthers. Bryan Grossman told the Daily Beast, “They’re idiots. The hospital is filled with COVID people — COVID patients who don’t have cars.… I just don’t understand people sometimes…. The big thing I think is so silly about all this is: how could this possibly be fake? The whole world would have to be faking it.”

The truthers, Bryan Grossman added, believe they are standing up for the outgoing President Trump.

“They’re trying to protect the president,” Grossman explained. “They want to make this all fake. It’s not fake. Talk to your nearest nurse or doctor. They’ll tell you this is real.”

Image: Shutterstock

President Donald Trump left Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to the White House — and his staffers are furious.

The president announced his COVID-19 infection early Friday and spent the weekend getting treated at the hospital, and aides and officials who work with him were alarmed by his dramatic return to the White House, reported Axios.

“It’s insane that he would return to the White House and jeopardize his staff’s health when we are still learning of new cases among senior staff,” one White House source told the website. “This place is a cesspool.”

Several others in the White House have tested positive for the coronavirus, and some staffers have expressed frustration about the lack of communication about the outbreak from chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“[Trump] was so concerned with preventing embarrassing stories that he exposed thousands of his own staff and supporters to a deadly virus,” the White House source said. “He has kept us in the dark, and now our spouses and kids have to pay the price. It’s just selfish.”

President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose job reportedly was on the chopping block last year but somehow managed to keep it, just announced his belief that the deadly and fast-spreading coronavirus will bring jobs back to the U.S.

The coronavirus has killed 170 people and there are 7711 verified cases. Death updates are coming sometimes several times a day and in the double digits.

But Secretary Ross found a way to put a positive spin on it.

“Every American’s heart has to go out to the victims of the coronavirus,” Wilbur told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, “So I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate and very malignant disease.”

“But the fact is it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chains,” he said, pivoting.

“So I think it will help accelerate the return of jobs to North America. Some to U.S., probably some to Mexico.”

Bartiromo was only too happy to support Ross: “Oh, that’s a good point.”

It’s actually not.

There is little movement of jobs returning to the U.S. from China because the U.S. cannot compete with the exceptionally low wages and poor working conditions in China.

Watch:

Secretary Wilbur Ross says coronavirus will be good for [checks notes] American jobs: "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America." pic.twitter.com/Y4SbDIcTi4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

Many were immediately outraged and disgusted.

Jobs like:

Coffin makers
Funeral Home Managers
Gravediggers
Outbreak suit designers
Mad Max era gas hoarders
Guy collecting books who sits on his glasses

— Jeremy Newberger (@jeremynewberger) January 30, 2020

Good God, these people are monsters. All of them. Every single one of these fuckers in the Trump admin. What soul-less despicable creatures. https://t.co/J7pb2TXmGs

— HawaiiDelilah™ (@HawaiiDelilah) January 30, 2020

They don’t even deny their greed. Profits over human life. Pathological.

— Democrats 2020 (@Scorpio_twelve) January 30, 2020

The conclusion that a deadly pandemic is actually good because it will destroy China is a perfect distillation of Trumpian logic https://t.co/EAJqCYuo3Y

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

Trickle-down viral economics https://t.co/4kmtWt6p0S

— Bill Shea (@Bill_Shea19) January 30, 2020

@realDonaldTrump administration view is people dying will help American jobs.

— Jim (@JimDixon266) January 30, 2020

Reminder how Trump fearmongered over Ebola in 2014. https://t.co/pV4Jz8DVDn

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 30, 2020

It will do no such thing.

Factories aren't built overnight. Supply chains aren't made overnight. no one is moving factories from China back to the US.

They're going to the lower cost countries elsewhere in Asia.

Coronavirus won't have any impact on long term repatriation.

— lawhawk (@lawhawk) January 30, 2020

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?" The answer is clearly no: Trump's Secty of Labor Wilbur Ross makes it clear that people getting sick and dying from the coronavirus will be good for Trump: "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America." https://t.co/GjRJVpbukE

— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) January 30, 2020

I can’t think of a more f**ked up thing for a govt official to say about a pandemic

— Dorit Murciano (@doritnyc) January 30, 2020

International pandemic, but its good economics. #evil

— Fred Kesselman (@fkess23) January 30, 2020