To be annoyed Mental Health Nursing ‘isn’t real nursing’

[Happymedium31]

I work in an impatient Mental health unit for the NHS (PICU). Picked a prescription up from our local pharmacy and the conversation turned to Covid-19. The member of staff basically joked saying we couldn’t class ourselves as frontline workers as we were Mental Health and it’s not real nursing.
I had to bite my tongue while keeping confidentiality (1 confirmed case on our unit and 1 confirmed case on the Acute unit that’s on the same site) and told her we had exactly the same difficulties as a General hospital ie shortage of PPE, extremely vulnerable patients, staff shortages due to staff self isolating etc.
She basically brushed it off as if I was stupid.
Is this the opinion of the British public?
We are Nurses too, just in a different field, facing the exact same impossibilities and quite frankly broken.
Am I AIBU to be livid?

Of course you're a real Nurse, and pretty much all my RGN friends and colleagues have said they couldn't do the work of an RMN.

Thanks 2xboys I have been hearing about people being redeployed within hospitals to nurse corona virus patients. Obviously the RMN are not trained in that area but if they are moving people who aren't even nurses this seems a worry. Of course the RMN still have patients in the mental wards where they will still be needed I expect. It is still a risk for everyone who is working in the hospital though, as you are around a lot of people. Mum said there were a lot of patients coughing last week, then she had a cough herself and is now SI but she said there's no fever and she doesn't feel too bad so probably not corona.

YABVU. You shouldn’t have but your lip and instead adjusted her wonky reality! YOU are absolutely frontline. To suggest otherwise is absolute idiocy. Please don’t let someone undermine you and your profession like that again. Thank you for all you do.

I'm an RNLD, I'm a proper nurse!
Most of my qualified career I have worked in secure services with other RNLDs and RMNs, along with fantastic HCAs. Not everyone can do our job, we are a special breed!