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© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Co-Director of the Intensive Care Unit at CommonSpirit’s Dignity Health California Hospital Medical Center, Dr. Zafia Anklesaria, 35, seven months pregnant, cares for a COVID-19 patient, Los Angeles, May 18, 2020 Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
- Doctors say it is difficult to get some patients to listen to medical advice because they believe in the COVID-19 misinformation they read online, The New York Times reported.
- Some patients have asked their doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine, despite reliable evidence that the drug is not effective in treating COVID-19 and has potentially dangerous side effects.
- Others drank bleach because they believed it would be a cure.
- Some waited until it was almost too late to seek medical help because they didn’t believe the virus was a big deal.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
Doctors have said they are struggling to get patients to adhere to certain medical advice because they are convinced of the misinformation they read online, The New York Times reported.
“This is no longer just an anecdotal observation made by some doctors,” Daniel Allington, senior lecturer at King’s College London, told The Times. “This is a statistically significant pattern that we can observe in a large survey.”
Allington is also a co-author of a recent study which found that people who heard their news online were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and not follow public health guidelines than those who heard from them online. radio or television.
Some patients have demanded prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, a drug the Food and Drug Administration withdrew from emergency hospital use for COVID-19 in June after studies showed it was not effective against the virus and had potentially dangerous side effects.
Last month, excerpts from a Breitbart video touting disinformation about the coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine quickly went viral on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and were retweeted by President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr.
The Times reported that some people have gone to hospitals to ask for doctor’s notes so they don’t have to wear a face mask because they believe the online rumors that masked lower their oxygen levels.
Dr Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician from Kentucky, told The Times that a number of patients have waited until it is almost too late for treatment before going to hospital with symptoms of COVID- 19. Patients, according to Stanton, didn’t believe the coronavirus was a “big deal.”
“They thought it was just a ploy, a sham, a conspiracy,” Stanton told The Times. “It blew me away that I could put on those blinders and ignore the facts.”
Last week, a study from the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that at least 800 people have died in the first three months of 2020 due to false reports that drinking bleach could cure the coronavirus. Nearly 6,000 people have also been hospitalized because of the claim, Business Insider previously reported.
Parinda Warikarn, a doctor from New York, told The Times she saw a patient who ingested bleach because he believed it would prevent the virus.
“He clearly believed he was going to prevent Covid,” she said. “Fortunately, his wife and two young children did not take this solution.”
Dr Howard Mell, an Illinois emergency doctor told The Times that the wife of a patient who died from the novel coronavirus yelled at her for writing COVID-19 on the man’s death certificate and accused him of doing it for profit.
“She shouted, ‘We saw online how you make more money,” “Mell said.
Mell told The Times that he deals with several patients every week who firmly believe in the fake news they read online.
Video: ‘The fact that we can’t test people reliably is shameful,’ says doctor (TODAY)
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