Michigan Hospital Official Makes Powerful Remarks About Patients Who Will Not Receive COVID Vaccine

An official at a small Michigan hospital on Thursday made powerful and passionate remarks about the struggle to treat unvaccinated COVID patients knowing that these patients were not doing all they could to help themselves.

Nicole Linder, MD, chief hospitalist at OSF St. Francis Hospital & Medical Group, is one of many hospital officials who spoke at the briefing about the importance for Michiganders to receive the COVID vaccine. 19.

12 takeaways from the briefing: 4th wave of COVID, shortage of hospital staff, employee productivity

“I am tired and my heart broken and I am tired of seeing people suffer needlessly and die from a disease that could have been prevented with a simple, safe and effective vaccine,” Linder said. “I don’t want to see the families of my patients suffering from the grief of this, and also the guilt if they played a role in their loved one’s decision not to get the vaccine.

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“The issues we face in caring for these hospitalized COVID patients who were not present in previous waves, I think, create a new dimension of stress, sadness and fatigue for those of us in First line. You take care of dying people who didn’t need to die.

You can watch Linder’s full comments in the video above..

She said St. Francis is a small, 25-bed critical access hospital with a group of four doctors and one PA and no intensive care units. It was difficult for staff to stay afloat during the first outbreaks of COVID.

“At times we had difficulties with the bed capacity, and our facility was able to obtain an emergency clearance to increase the number of our available beds,” said Linder. “These beds were made bigger, but we didn’t have more staff. For this increase in volume, all of the hospital staff sort of got together and worked extra shifts and stayed late and did all we could to help each other and our patients. “

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They also lost many retired experienced nurses. Others have moved on to different areas of nursing.

Linder said that upon hearing about the COVID vaccine, she initially felt like they could finally see a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

“I was really relieved and really hopeful when a very effective vaccine was developed much faster than I could have dreamed of,” Linder said. “I think there was a feeling that we were getting to the finish line and we just had to hold on until the vaccine was available and then everyone would be vaccinated and it would all be over.

“Unfortunately, we now know this is not the case, and we are currently experiencing a significant wave of COVID in our hospital right now. We are seeing many of the same systemic issues again, we cannot transfer our patients to intensive care units. “

This wave of COVID cases has been very different at St. Francis Hospital. Employees know that the vast majority of COVID patients are there because they refused to be vaccinated.

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“The difference is that almost all of the patients we take care of have made a choice not to get the vaccine,” Linder said. “We have seen very few vaccinated patients in the hospital – less than I can count on one hand. (No vaccinated patients) were very seriously ill. None of them died of the disease during our stay with them.

She said unvaccinated patients and their family members are generally wary of medicine in general. There is also a “disbelief” when they are very sick that they could really be so sick from COVID, she said.

But at the same time, these patients want and expect the highest level of medical care.

“There seems to be this mistaken belief that all of these patients should be in a tertiary care facility and that if we give them just the right cocktail of substances, we can cure that,” Linder said. “Unfortunately, we all know that’s not the case.”

She believes people are overestimating the effectiveness of current treatments for COVID, especially compared to the vaccine.

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“The best treatment we have so far, to my knowledge, is dexamethasone, and it only reduces your risk of death by 20-30% if you have moderate to severe illness,” Linder said. “You can’t even give it with mild illness or it increases your risk of death.”

She said she was struck by patients who “don’t want to inject an untested or foreign substance” into their bodies. Anyone hospitalized with a severe case of COVID will be injected with foreign substances – much less proven than the COVID vaccine, according to Linder.

“That’s all to avoid a vaccine that has been shown to be safe and effective,” Linder said. “If you get the vaccine, you have a 0.001% chance of dying from a breakthrough infection. It’s an incredibly small number.