Masked nurses insulted and harassed as they stand up to anti-lockdown protesters in Arizona

'Whether you believe in the virus or not, we’re the people who are going to take care of you one way or the other'

Lauren Leander wasn't scheduled to work, but she dressed in her scrubs anyway.

The Banner Health nurse heard that anti-lockdown protesters were planning a rally at the Arizona Capitol building in downtown Phoenix. As she was a nurse in the city, she wasn't far from the building and decided she would attend the rally, dressed in her scrubs and a mask; a silent protest within a protest.

Ms Leander, 27, called a few colleagues and invited them to join her quiet act of defiance.

"That was the kind of action we could take against something like this," she told The Arizona Republic.

Nurses from across the country have stood up to the rallygoers. Ms Leander had seen the pictures of nurses being screamed at or surrounded by protesters who were demanding that business restrictions be lifted.

Read more

Ms Leander knew she was unlikely to receive a warm reception at the rally.

As she and fellow healthcare workers stood silently on the steps of the state Capitol, arms crossed and faces covered by masks, the group was bombarded by accusations and insults from the rally-goers.

Some people belittled her, others suggested she was a paid actor or was a healthcare professional who had no direct involvement with the treatment of Covid-19. Others accused her of being an abortion doctor.

"It was heated, people were very fired up about what they had to say," she told CNN. "A lot of the top comments we got were about us being fake nurses, there was a huge majority of them that still believe this virus is fake, that it's a hoax and not real at all. They were convinced that we're fake nurses and that's why we weren't talking."

Quite the opposite of a fake nurse, Ms Leander volunteered to work at her hospital's Covid-19 unit full time, and has been on the front line working with infected patients for the past month.

According to the outlet, most of the protesters were ignoring social distancing guidelines and were walking around without masks. Ms Leander stood her ground, refusing to engage directly with the protestors.

Though she'd seen the anger directed at other nurses, she was surprised by the intensity of the vitriol directed towards her.

A local caregiver counter protester, right, points to a protester to keep a safe social distance at a rally at the capitol to 're-open' Arizona against the governor's stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus Monday, April 20, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) (Associated Press)

She was a local nurse, and they were local people. If any of them became ill — for whatever reason — it could very well be that she would ultimately be caring for them.

"Whether you believe in the virus or not, we're the people who are going to take care of you one way or the other," she told The Arizona Republic. "It was disheartening to have those kinds of comments thrown in my face."

She later told CNN that, regardless of what the rally-goers' opinions of her, her colleagues or the virus are, "if these people show up in my ICU, we will take care of them, one way or another."

The protesters' suspicions that Ms Leander and her friends were simply actors meant to promote a government agenda was echoed by a former Arizona lawmaker.

Kelli Ward, a former state Senator who once launched a primary challenge against John McCain, posted a tweet attempting to delegitimise the nurses who attended the rally.

"EVEN IF these 'spontaneously' appearing ppl at protests against govt overreach (sporting the same outfits, postures & facial expressions) ARE involved in healthcare - when they appeared at rallies, they were actors playing parts #Propaganda #FakeOutrage," Ms Ward wrote.

Though Ms Ward is accusing the nurses of being tools of "fake outrage," recent investigations have shown that many of the websites and social media groups that have served as the central organising tools for the anti-lockdown protests are owned by a singular group of brothers.

The Dorr brothers are a group of real-life brothers who run anti-gun control social media pages and generate social unrest to drive pageviews to their sites.

Speaking to Cleveland.com last year, Iowa state Representative Matt Windschitl — a Republican who helped push through a 2017 bill creating a Stand Your Ground law in the state and allowed Iowans to sue the government for creating gun-free zones — called the Dorrs' ostensible activism a "scam."

"They are not motivated by a genuine appetite for advancement of Second Amendment virtues," Mr Windschitl said. "They are there to stir the pot and make as much animosity as they can, and then raise money off that animosity."

The animosity they're stirring — and that influential people, like Ms Ward, are signal boosting — have left front-line workers like Ms Leander frustrated.

"I wish [Ward] could be in my shoes for a day, I'd have her put on a pair of scrubs and walk with me," Ms Leander said.

The reality of the coronavirus and the toll it takes on those infected has all but dominated Ms Leander's life for the last month. She has not seen her family since joining the Covid-19 unit, and is daily confronted with the suffering of both the infected and their families.

She recalled one patient who grabbed her hand and asked her to "tell me I'm not going to die here."

"A human being having to pass away via FaceTime because their family is not allowed in the hospital during the crisis, it's the most heartbreaking thing you will ever see," she said.