COVID Denial: Dr Carl Lambert of Rush University Medical Center, Other Doctors Say Some Coronavirus Patients Postpone Treatment To Completion

The COVID-19 patient’s health was deteriorating rapidly in a Michigan hospital, but he had no doctor’s diagnosis.

Despite dangerously low oxygen levels, the unvaccinated man didn’t think he was so sick and was so angry at a hospital policy forbidding his wife from being at his bedside that he threatened to leave the hospital. building.

Dr Matthew Trunsky says he didn’t hold back, telling the man, “You can go, but you’ll be dead before you get to your car. “

Such exchanges have become all too common for doctors faced with COVID denial and misinformation that has made the treatment of unvaccinated patients infuriating during the coronavirus outbreak caused by the highly contagious Delta variant.

The Associated Press asked Dr Carl Lambert, a family doctor at Rush University Medical Center, and five other doctors from across the country about the misinformation and denial about the COVID they face. Here are their stories:

DR. CARL LAMBERT, CHICAGO:

Nicki Minaj is wrong

Lambert hears a lot of savage misinformation from his patients. Some come from interpretations of the Bible, others from rapper Nicki Minaj.

Some are part of Internet conspiracy theories. People cite widespread lies on social media, according to Chicago doctor, who says patients told him microchips are built into vaccines as part of a ploy to steal people’s DNA .

“Scientifically impossible,” he told them.

He also hears from patients that the vaccine will weaken their immune systems. He replies, “Immunology 101: Vaccines help your immune system. “

Recently, he received a flurry of messages from patients worried about damage to their testicles – a rumor he attributed to a tweet from Minaj, who spread false information that the vaccine causes impotence.

“And I was like, ‘This is weird,'” says Lambert, who says he now has to do “a lot of advice that I didn’t expect to have to do.”

Some of the misinformation is being transmitted from above the pulpit, he says. People sent him sermons saying that the vaccine is “ungodly, or that it contains something that will mark you” – a reference to a verse in the book of Revelation about the “mark of the beast” that some Christians quote. as a reason for not getting vaccinated.

“There’s a mixture of almost scary,” Lambert says, “and saying, ‘Hey, if you’re doing that, you might not be as loyal as you should be as, say, a Christian ”. “

More often than not, however, it will have patients who just want to wait, worried about how quickly the vaccine has been developed and suggesting that the pandemic will end on its own.

He warns them: “Please don’t try to wait until the end of a pandemic. A pandemic will win. “

Lambert says his job is “a lot of it to dismantle what people have heard,” answering their questions and reassuring them that “vaccines work like this, like when we were kids.”

He changed his mind.

“I have had patients who, maybe four months ago, said to me, ‘You are wasting your time. Doctor Lambert, I don’t want to hear you talk about it. And they’ll come back and say, ‘Hey, you know what? I watched the news. I saw stuff. I think I’m ready now. “

DR. VINCENT SHAW, LOUISIANA:

“Stop looking at Facebook”

When patients tell Dr. Vincent Shaw that they don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine because they don’t know what’s in it, he displays a Twinkie’s ingredient list.

“Look at the back of the package,” Shaw, a family doctor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, tells them. “Tell me you can say everything on the back of this package.” I have a degree in chemistry. I still don’t know what it is.

Then there are the marginal explanations, like this one: “They put on a tracker, and it makes me magnetic.”

Dorthy Ray / AP

One explanation left Shaw speechless: “The patient couldn’t understand why he was given this for free because humanity, per se, is not nice, and ‘people are not nice, and no one would give. nothing. There is therefore no good nature inherent in man. ‘ And I haven’t had any feedback for that.

Some who have mild cases tell him that they now have natural immunity and cannot be re-infected. “No, you are not a Superman or a Superwoman,” he told them.

He says one of the biggest issues is social media. Many patients say something they saw on Facebook prompted them not to get the vaccine.

“I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. I shake my head, ‘No, no. It’s not fair, no, no. Stop STOP. Stop looking at Facebook. ‘ “

DR. STU COFFMAN, DALLAS:

Knows he can’t convince some people

Dr Stu Coffman, an emergency room doctor in the Dallas area, says patients tell him they are afraid of the side effects of vaccines. They don’t trust the regulatory approval process and raise refuted concerns that the vaccine will harm their fertility.

The most surprising thing someone told him was that there was “actually poison in the mRNA vaccine” – a baseless rumor that originated online.

He cannot understand repression.

“If you have a gunshot or stab wound, or if you have a heart attack, you want to see me in the emergency room,” Coffman says. “But as soon as we start talking about a vaccine, all of a sudden I lost all credibility.”

He considers that the key to overcoming hesitation is figuring out where it is coming from. When people come to him with concerns about fertility, he may point to research showing that the vaccine is safe and that their problems are unfounded.

But he says of those who think vaccines are poisonous, “I probably can’t show you anything that convinces you otherwise. “

PA

DR. RYAN STANTON, KENTUCKY:

Astonished by the conspiracy theories

Dr. Ryan Stanton recently had a patient who started his conversation by saying, “I’m not afraid of any Chinese viruses.

This warned him of what he might face as he faces patient politics and mistaken beliefs about the virus.

Stanton accuses conspiracy theorists of spreading some of the disinformation that has taken hold. Among them, the vaccine contains fetal cells. Another said that “it is a simple fact that the vaccine has killed millions of people”.

“Actually,” Stanton said, “it couldn’t be more from the truth.”

There was hope after the vaccines arrived. But then came the Delta variant and a slowdown in vaccinations.

“Really amazes me how many people have this huge fear, this vaccine conspiracy theory and who, honestly to God, will try anything, including a vet drug, to get better,” said Stanton.

DR. ELIZABETH MIDDLETON, SALT LAKE CITY:

“I should have been vaccinated”

Dr. Elizabeth Middleton, pulmonary intensive care physician at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City. says the COVID patients she treats often cite a fear of side effects as the reason why they weren’t vaccinated.

As they get sicker and sicker, Middleton says, “They kind of got that dark look on them, like, ‘Oh, my God. It happens to me. I should have been vaccinated. ”

She has heard some speculate that there must be a “secret agenda” behind the push to get the vaccine.

“’There must be something wrong if everyone is forcing us to do this or if everyone wants us to do it,” the patients tell her. “And my response to that is, ‘They are urging you to do it because we are in an emergency. It is a pandemic. It is a national and international crisis. This is why we are pushing it. “

Middleton says she tries not to push the vaccines too hard and may risk losing patients’ trust.

Often, people who have been on a ventilator do not need to be convinced.

“They’re, like, ‘Tell everyone they need to be vaccinated. I want to call my family. They must be vaccinated. “

DR. MATTHEW TRUNSKY, MICHIGAN:

A Facebook post unleashes his frustration

For Trunsky, the vaccine rollback became so intense that he posted on Facebook about eight encounters he had had in the previous two days at Beaumont Hospital in Troy, Mich., With COVID patients explaining their reasons fueled by misinformation not to get vaccinated or to demand unproven evidence. treatments.

Example # 5 was a patient who told him that he would rather die than be vaccinated. Response from Trunsky: “You can get your wish.”

Patients have told him that the vaccines are unproven and that they are only experimental, although in fact that is not true.

Others tell him that getting the vaccine is a “personal choice and the government shouldn’t tell me what to do.”

He also heard from patients say they were too sick and didn’t want to risk side effects.

A young mother told her that she was not vaccinated because she was breastfeeding, although her pediatrician and obstetrician explained to her that it was safe and urged her to get the vaccine. She ended up being hospitalized but was eventually vaccinated.

Some patients threaten to call lawyers if they don’t get a prescription for the veterinary medicine Ivermectin, which is commonly used by vets to kill worms and parasites. They get angry when told that this is not a safe treatment for coronaviruses, that it has harmful side effects, and that there is little evidence that it helps with COVID.

Trunsky estimates he has treated 100 deceased COVID patients – including the man who threatened to be discharged from the hospital.