Before Covid-19, infectious-disease nurse Erica Dykehouse worked an ordinary 40-hour week. Now she works 16 hours a day trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

This is her story https://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

Erica, located in Humboldt County, California, starts each day looking through three coronavirus testing databases.

Five months into the pandemic, two giant private testing companies were taking more than a week to send back results http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

“What am I going to do with this, because the result is eight to 10 days old?” Erica told Michael Lewis.

By the time she got ahold of people to inform them that they had Covid-19, they no longer had Covid-19. There was no point in isolating them http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

Still, she felt obliged to try to run to ground every single person the carrier might have infected over the previous two weeks.

Though no one was pleased to hear they had Covid-19, people respected her authority http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

And they did their best to comply — at least until mid-May, just after the state’s shelter-in-place order was lifted.

From that point on, people had less interest in what Erica had to say; they seemed to now think they knew everything they needed to know http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

“A lot of these people are getting their medical information off Facebook,” said Erica. People:

Stopped returning calls
Hung up
Lashed out

“It’s the first time in this job I’m experiencing people hanging up on me — except with STDs,” she said http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

One of the cases that stuck in Erica’s mind was the meth dealer.

The Public Health nurses had gotten to him soon after he’d been infected and, though he was dismissive of their advice, said he would isolate himself http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

He was still sneaking out at night, and he infected a buddy of his, who in turn infected his daughter-in-law.

The buddy’s daughter-in-law worked at a nursing home in Eureka. More than a dozen staff members and residents became infected. Four died http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

Now, Erica Dykehouse finds herself in a terrible situation:

Big companies are collecting huge sums of money for useless test results. People are breaking rules. Single infections are turning into networks of infections http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

Each new positive is taking longer than the last to trace.

Her efforts to prevent Covid-19 are now met with abuse. On top of it all, she’s spent. At one point, Erica went 20 days without a break, until she collapsed http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

“I’ve never had an interest in serving in the military. But this is the closest I’ve ever been. There’s nobody to replace us. If we don’t show up, there’s nobody to show up.” http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd 

“There will come a time when their minds will be changed,” she said.

“Once the reality hits them — when they see a friend of theirs die...I want them to know I’ll be here for you. I’ll take your call even though you treated me like dirt." http://trib.al/Lbo2vNd