Variations on this theme are pretty common here. I would say it's about half and half of the non-believers switching their thinking once they get in the hospital and are gasping for air like a fish.
After a week they are ready to go home and tell everybody trust me it's real.
Then there's the guy I took care of last week. He asked me if I was going to give him the the medicine the president got. He wanted to regeneron. He did get remesvidir because it was indicated. But I had to explain to him that regeneron was not available in our formulary nor did he meet the emergency criteria.
earlier in the year he asked me if I was going to give him hydroxychloroquine in clinic. he was taking a back that I would not give him his prophylactic dose.
He didn't think the virus was fake, he just thought it wasn't a big deal. He's in his '70s or '80s ( I won't say which) and occasionally I would mention that we have screwed this up pretty badly and then some fortunate that we don't have more testing to keep people like him safe.
Even on day number 15, he told me "well you know the president's really giving it everything he can and doing his best on this thing".
I don't usually mention politics in medicine. I try to keep it generic and if we're around election where my patients always want to talk politics, I just keep things to non-party subjects like "when all those guys up there are promising you the world, just ask them why you're still paying so much money to see me to get a test". The guy above is a good example of why I keep this position. I don't want to alienate any of my patients no matter their political leanings, but it's also pretty much fruitless.