If someone I know gets a bad case of the coronavirus, I hope that person finds an “actor” like Lauren Leander.

Leander not only acted the part of a healthcare worker at the Arizona state Capitol on Monday, turns out she also plays one in a major Valley hospital as well.

Specifically, as an ICU nurse there on the front lines battling COVID-19.

On Monday, Leander showed up at the Capitol, to serve as a counterweight to the hundreds of protesters demanding that Gov. Doug Ducey immediately reopen the economy.

To serve as a reminder that though jobs are at stake and that’s certainly important, so, too, are lives.

As The Republic’s Richard Ruelas described it, “She would spend the next few hours standing silent, her facial expressions partly hidden behind her medical mask. Her body standing rigid in surgical scrubs.”

For that, she was insulted, scorned and generally screamed at by flag-waving protesters, some of whom carried signs about an overblown crisis and a “pretend-demic”.

And, of course, by state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, whose go-to response to anything with which she disagrees is to cry “fake”.

Cue her Tuesday morning tweet, responding to nurses showing up to counter protests across the country:

“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

I’m guessing Leander, after a few 12-hour shifts working to save patients struck down by COVID-19, would tell you that her outrage at the prospect of reopening the state too soon is anything but fake.

The 27-year-old ICU nurse at Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix told Ruelas about her first COVID-19 patient, a young woman unable to breathe.

“I hadn’t been scared as a nurse before that day,” she said.

She says Banner’s overflow unit, set up to care for COVID-19 patients, has been running below capacity but that that could easily change. That’s why she was at the Capitol on Monday and why she texted another nurse who is a friend to join her.

“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 Ruelas on Tuesday. “It was disheartening to have those kinds of comments thrown in my face.”

Disheartening? How about disrespectful and downright disgusting?

But not particularly surprising when you consider the biggest crisis actor in the state right now is the Donald Trump groupie who leads the Arizona Republican Party -- a doctor, no less, who should know better.

But alas, shows us time and time again that she does not.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.