[FRIAM] bad covid story

Mon Dec 27 12:16:19 EST 2021

< If you go out to confront a grieving family --- a mother who you had drive in, with their children, and who you then turned away at the door --- to tell them that their loved one just died while you were turning them away, then you should expect some severely negative reactions, up to, and including, the possibility of physical violence. I have no idea how to explain how obvious that is, other than just stating it. I can't imagine what was going through the physician's head if they went out there and then were surprised to get shoved, or hit, or even to have the patient chase them around the parking lot with their car. Especially if it is the exact physician who unreasonably denied all the requested treatments. Especially if you turned them away for a reason that you knew would happen when you begged them to drive all the way there. Completely unnecessary and completely daft. >

What would I do?   First, I would never insist that a doctor treat a patient contrary to best practices, the law, or against their best judgement.  That is why would take myself or a loved one to a hospital.   Because the doctors and nurses know what they are doing, and I don't. So, I would never be this species of a screaming lunatic.   If somehow, I had the inside scoop on an alternative treatment and I had thought about it, that implies I had some time to think about it.  I would take that time and plan to get those chemicals and not ask others to do it for me.  Because it is presumably going to get them in trouble and me in trouble if it were discovered.  (Suicide drugs would be like this in some states.)

It is not hard to imagine having, or being suspected of having, a contagious diseases like COVID-19 (esp. now with Omicron) and not being very sick myself, but having my immunocompromised wife or parent become very ill from it.  It is not hard to imagine ending up at a hospital, and then being put in a biosafety compartment, or the parking lot.  If this happened to me and the unthinkable happened, would my first instinct be to punch the doctor?  It wouldn't.  My first reaction would be to cry or collapse in grief.   If I found out later that they hadn't treated my loved one properly, I might eventually consider a malpractice suit.  But I would understand why I was kept away.   Her anger was not legitimate.   Even if she suffered from borderline personality disorder, it would make sense to create a buffer around her in this situation.

Marcus
________________________________
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2021 8:12 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] bad covid story

It's weird how many ways this can be dystopian all at the same time. Under the assumption, that it is obvious what Nick replied "Yuck!" at, let me add:

  *   It is pretty easy to explain to people that ICU's require masks regardless of Covid, that a cold could kill some other ICU patient who is immunocompromised in some other way, and that it was a rule pre-Covid. Don't fight with the family about special Covid rules, talk them through making the decision to see their loved on. Just tell them it's for the kid doing chemo one room over.
  *   Whatever the situation, if they won't wear masks in the hospital, there should be the option to bring the father to see them outside. If, given the choice, he would prefer to be removed from all machines and wheeled outside to see his kids one last time, that should for sure be a choice the patient and family can make. It is horrific to have him die alone with his family right there. Mind-bogglingly horrific.
  *   It really isn't necessary to say things like "we won't let you die" to patients who you are almost assuredly going to die under your care. It is, if anything, immensely cruel. The aside from the doctor "although I never said we might not have any choice in the matter" makes that interaction worse, not better. What's he going to tell the family "Oh, yeah, I said we won't let your husband die, totally. But, you see, technically speaking, I never said we wouldn't let the virus kill him, so, like, No Lies, am I right?"
  *   It is pretty easy to give someone vitamin C and D. You can buy them at any drug store for a few bucks. Let the family give him mega-doses of vitamins if they want. Why would you ever stop that?
  *   Hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin are also pretty easy to get, and not too expensive, and there's also no evidence that they increase risk. At the least the family should have had the option to pay for them, and have them administered. If there is someone the doctor has essentially given up on, and the family wants to bring in a shaman to perform rituals involving goat guts and sacred flowers - and the shaman is willing to wear a mask - then the idea of denying that is crazy. "I'd rather continue a course of treatment that will definitely result in death, instead of letting people try random stuff that's unlikely to work" is NOT a moral position. This is worse than denying a visit from the family minister.
  *   If you go out to confront a grieving family --- a mother who you had drive in, with their children, and who you then turned away at the door --- to tell them that their loved one just died while you were turning them away, then you should expect some severely negative reactions, up to, and including, the possibility of physical violence. I have no idea how to explain how obvious that is, other than just stating it. I can't imagine what was going through the physician's head if they went out there and then were surprised to get shoved, or hit, or even to have the patient chase them around the parking lot with their car. Especially if it is the exact physician who unreasonably denied all the requested treatments. Especially if you turned them away for a reason that you knew would happen when you begged them to drive all the way there. Completely unnecessary and completely daft.
  *   To emphasize that last part: You could have not had any of this happen, if you had just NOT had them drive in only to be turned away, and simply followed the normal procedures for informing someone over the phone when a death occurs. The physician went out of his way to arrange the situation that he is complaining about, every aspect of which happened in an unsurprising fashion.
  *   To try to hit that nail even harder: When the author says "Fortunately, they had not left", I could only think "Fuck you." That was before I read the next paragraph and learned what the wife's reaction was. This physician's thinking about the whole situation is so unbelievably screwed up in its self-righteous martyrdom.  "Fortunately, they had not left." Are you serious? "Fortunately" you have a chance to tell a frantic, legitimately angry, flustered, and frustrated mother, in front of her three children, that her husband died alone, only a hundred yards away, while his whole family was standing in our parking lot? Fuck you dude. Eight ways to Sunday. He has every right to be frustrated by having to deal with patients and families who made choices he disagrees with, but the continuous cruelty and better-than-thou posturing is really, really, really problematic, and if you didn't catch any of that in the story, that's a problem.

<mailto:echarles at american.edu>

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 2:19 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:

https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/rakxun/my_career_of_treating_patients_has_ended/

> After more than three decades as a physician, the Q maniacs have succeeded in driving me out of providing care to patients. I, like many of my colleagues, am moving into medically-adjacent work, where we can continue to apply our training and decades off knowledge without ever having to come in contact with sick people.
>
> I've been able to deal with the years of patients who attended Google Medical School, and the hours wasted explaining things such as why cinnamon cannot be used to treat diabetes, or that garlic and beetroot can't treat HIV. And Lord save me from essential oils.
>
> COVID and Q finally proved to be the one of amateur "experts" that was too much for me. The horrific deaths are beyond what you might imagine. They emerge almost unrecognizable to their families. Since June, I have never seen a horrible case of someone who was vaccinated. I have seen people struggling to breathe through lungs that have hardened to near uselessness, begging us in their ignorance to give them the vaccine now. We can tell, almost without fail, which ones will die when they come through the door of the ICU, but we do everything in our power to keep them alive - BIPAP, ECMO, ventilator - knowing we are stretching out the inevitable. We use paralytics with ECMO and ventilators, then ease them off to see if they can function. And as the drugs wane, the look of terror emerges, the tears. We try to calm them, to swallow our desire to scream at them: This is your fault! This didn't have to happen! Often, their spouse or their uncle or neighbor is nearby, dying along with them. And we work hard for those rare cases where we can pull them back from the edge.
>
> I could deal with all of that. What I can no longer handle is the screaming, not from the patients, but from the families. They are not screaming in anguish, or in recognition of how their foolishness has led them to this point. No, they are screaming at me. Because, you see, I am part of the global conspiracy to commit genocide. If only I would give 10,000 mg of Vitamin C - even though the body can only absorb a maximum of 100 mg a day, with the rest creating the world's most expensive urine - they would be saved. Or hydroxychloroquine. Or ivermectin. Those have never been studied, they assure me, and when I tell them they have been, they snap that I don't know what I'm talking about. I want, oh god I want, to tell them that if we are the ones responsible for killing their loved ones, then why the hell have they brought them to the hospital? Why throw them into our clutches? I know the answer: They know it is all lies. But their egos are so huge they cant bring themselves to admit it.
>
> My breaking point came three weeks ago. I dealt with a particularly horrible case. This was a husband and father, 38 years old. A wife, two daughters, one son. All of age to get vaccinated, none vaccinated. If you could have seen his face, and the ravages left by both COVID and the time he spent prone on his stomach. An enormous clot kept reforming in his leg, and we had been forced to amputate his foot in hopes of keeping him alive. When he was awake, the look of terror in his eyes, the crying, the pain. It was nothing new. But the begging, over and over, "Don't let me die." And "Give me the vaccine." All I could tell him is "We won't let you" - although I never said we might not have any choice in the matter. And I told him, repeatedly, it was too late for the vaccine.
>
> He begged me to bring in his family. A nurse called them, because they had never come to the hospital. They refused to wear masks, and so would not be admitted. The nurse told the wife that her husband was likely dying, and was begging to see them. All she cared about was masks. She would only come if she and her daughters didn't have to wear any.
>
> The nurse came to me and told me the wife wanted to speak to me. I got on the phone and she ordered me to cure him with ivermectin and vitamin C & D. I explained to her, those do not work, they have been extensively studied and the amount of ivermectin needed to treat even mild COVID would kill a human being. Once again, I was told I was ignorant. I asked her to come down to the hospital, to bring her children, to at least wait outside. Somehow, she agreed.
>
> The nurses were all busy, and I took over the role they usually perform, comforting the dying. I sat beside the man's bed. Through tears, he rasped out sounds I could vaguely understand as a question. I guessed at what he was asking, and assured him that yes, his family was coming. He was so frightened, and I could tell he knew death was unavoidable. I'm not religious, but I knew he was, and I talked about the comfort of Jesus as I held his hand. About a minute later, he coded. We tried to save him, but there was nothing to be done. He died.
>
> Twenty minutes later, I heard from a nurse that the family was here, that they had made a ruckus down in the lobby demanding to be let upstairs without masks, and had been thrown out of the hospital. I consulted with a few colleagues who agreed to cover me so that i could speak to them in the parking lot. I took the elevator down, and asked security to point out the family that refused to wear masks. Fortunately, they had not left.
>
> I stepped outside, went to the wife, and identified myself. I told her that I was sorry, that we had done everything we could, but her husband had passed a few minutes earlier. I did not manage to get the words of the sentence fully out of my mouth when I felt the fist strike my face and heard the screamed words "You murderer!" I fell backwards, tripped, and plopped onto the pavement, the back off my head striking asphalt. I vaguely heard the words being screamed about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and god knows what else. I heard "you could have saved him if you listened!" I tasted blood from the top of my lip. It took a moment to know it was seeping from my nose, which she had broken. My mask was getting wet, and thus useless. Security grabbed her. They were getting ready to call the police, but I knew if they did, I would become the next national target for the Q maniacs. I told them to just put her in her car. I wasn't going to press charges. I went back to the hospital.
>
> I started looking for a new job the next day. I will never treat a patient again.
>
> Thank God.

--
glen
Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.

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