Tearful plea for covid vaccines goes viral
Louisiana ICU nurse speaks up
SHREVEPORT, La. — A Shreveport nurse has garnered national attention for her tearful plea for others to get vaccinated.
Following a social media post, Felicia Croft has become one of the many public voices encouraging people to be vaccinated.
It all stems from a three-minute video diary entry that her administrators had asked their staff to do.
“They asked a few times for little videos, some statements, but I never do it; I never shared my feelings. I’m just not that kind of person,” Croft said.
But that particular Wednesday, after an emotionally hard day at work, she drove to a fast-food restaurant to grab a bite to eat. She felt that God was telling her now was the time to share.
It was an unplanned, unscripted declaration of raw emotions that accumulated from her continuous work during the pandemic.
“I can’t explain the feeling of defeat when you do everything, you pour everything into a patient and it’s not enough. And then to know that they could have been vaccinated and it could have made a difference,” Croft says at the end of the video.
Croft sees a difference in the delta variant compared to the first waves of the pandemic. The people who are coming in are younger.
“It seems like more and more of the people coming to the hospital are closer to my age,” said Croft, who is 34.When the parents of one of her daughters’ friends were both in the hospital, both very sick, Croft realized that their 14-year-old could be an orphan.
“I cannot even explain how that feels,” Croft said in the video when thinking about potentially having the conversation with her own daughter about not being able to save her friend’s parents.
At work she sees both vaccinated and unvaccinated people come in sick. However, there are far more unvaccinated.
“We have seen people that have been vaccinated, but they usually go home to
“I can’t explain the feeling of defeat when you do everything, you pour everything into a patient and it’s not enough. And then to know that they could have been vaccinated and it could have made a difference.”
— Felicia Croft, nurse, at end of video plea
raise their kids and to hug their husbands or wives,” Croft says in the video.
But Croft understands first-hand the reluctance over the vaccine: “I was one of the last people to get vaccinated in my group because I wanted to know more. I had questions … how do we know we can trust this?”
She did a lot of research and prayed about it. She firmly believes that God is never taken by surprise.
“My God has a helicopter view, the more I researched the more I felt God started laying the foundation for this vaccine in the 1980s because he knew this was coming,” Croft said.
For those still reluctant she suggests that people talk to their doctors, use scholarly resources when researching and pray about it.
Croft is overwhelmed by the response to her video which has accumulated millions of views across multiple platforms.
“Who in the world would’ve thought this little, small-town girl from Haughton, Louisiana, would be on an international platform,” she said.
For Croft, who said she wakes up every day and says, “This is going to be a great day,” the pandemic has been a challenge.
It has also reinforced what her grandfather once told her when she was a young adult. After seeing her take care of a dying relative he said, “If you don’t go into health care, you will miss your calling.”