Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nurses are paid well, relative to the average American salary. I don't think they're paid particularly well relative to the job's lifestyle requirements and latent stress levels, especially during a pandemic. Looking at my area (NYC), I'd have to take over a 50% pay cut from my engineering job to be "paid well" as a nurse. And I suspect my job is a lot less stressful.
While I don't doubt that nurses have very high stress jobs, the reason why you'd take a pay cut to become an nurse is because their job is a lot less technically difficult. I have some friends from university who became nurses, one of which I was roommates with for two years during school. I helped them study for 'their most difficult math test' and it was a relatively straightforward test on changing units. They wou…
Tangentially: I'm not sure what the relevancy of "passing a first year calculus class" is. Just about every BA/BS passes one, and I (a program analysis researcher) have never even remotely needed by calculus knowledge in my day job. I don't think it's a good proxy for technical skill whatsoever, given that "technical skill" is a domain-specific qualifier.