15 ms·

My career of treating patients has ended

221 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

Taurenking 5y ago
fnord77 5y ago
I think the part about not pressing charges gives this away as being fictional. As someone mentioned in the comments, an assault is a mandated report, and the author claimed security witnessed it. If charges were filed, it would be easy to verify this story.
- zwkrt 5y ago
  This is naive. I have been in the doctors position of being assaulted by a patient. No one is going to force you to call the police and to talk to them and to tell them what happened and to press charges. In my case I declined because the person was having a crisis and losing everything and I didn’t feel like also making them the target of government intervention. I don’t know what I would have done in their situation but if it caused them to quit their job I wouldn’t put it past them not to uphold the duties of said job.
- lemmsjid 5y ago
  I’ve looked at a variety of articles on the subject. The belief that incidents are underreported is commonplace. Here is an example: https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/11/09/would-legislation-curb-violence-against-health-care-workers-lawmakers-are-skeptical https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/11/09/would-legislation-curb-v... I worked in a similar environment and most violent incidents were not reported unless it was people doing violence on one another rather than staff.
joeman1000 5y ago
This is straight-up fiction. Or a conglomerate of seperate incidents combined into one whining piece of hyper-emotional propaganda. Either way, it doesn’t make me feel sorry for anyone. All of the people in the story are dumb, including the ‘doctor’ that can’t deal with family members misplaced anger when faced with immense grief.
kxyvr 5y ago
I don't know whether or not this particular story is true, but it's within the realm of plausible given what I've heard from my wife who is an ICU physician with a residency in emergency medicine. The last two years have been difficult and these stories come up a lot, so I figure I might as well share some of our experiences. First, she absolutely has been physically assaulted by a patient as well as family. This is not new to COVID and was more common when she worked in the ER. It's not an every day sort of thing and the hospitals don't put up with patients or family acting violently. However, I believe it's normal for them to have security available for when a patient codes since the families will often act out. Sometimes they're violent. Sometimes they scream. Sometimes they roll on the floor. Sometimes they throw things. Sometimes they don't show up at all and let their family die alone. Second, patients and families will ask for all sorts of things that don't make sense normally. They will demand a COVID vaccine when they're about to die from COVID. They will demand invermectin. She had one patient that was noncompliant with his oxygen, proning (flipping on the belly), and other treatment who threw a fit, started screaming about how they were trying to kill him, recorded it on video, and posted it on Twitter. She had another patient on the brink of death, unconscious, intubated, pain controlled, that the girlfriend wanted to bring out of sedation, so they could get married because she was worried about their place in the afterlife (yes, there was in fact a theological consult.) She had another one where the family kept trying to feed an intubated patient soup. They will actively accuse you of trying to kill their loved one. This is particularly difficult emotionally because a lot of my wife's life is devoted to helping someone with difficult, long hours. No one likes to be accused of that. Third, due safety difficulties with patients coming to a COVID filled unit, the ICU physicians started calling the families directly to give them update. Prior to this, it was more common for the nurse to provide updates and then forward questions to the physicians. Generally, this is a good thing, but it's also not particularly easy. Nowadays, the patient families not only question, but try to micromanage all elements of the treatment. For example, there's this new trend where the families will ask to see the vent during a video meeting and then demand changes to the treatment protocol. This is not safe and they are not qualified to make these changes. Now, generally speaking, if the family has questions, my wife is more than willing to answer them. However, trying to walk a family through a treatment protocol which they do not have the necessary background to understand is not particularly easy. Further, she really does not have time to do so either. Any time spent with the family working through the foundation of pulmonary function is time not spent actively working on patients who are quite literally dying. It really is hurting other patients and I believe it to be selfish. And, look, we get that they're worried and they want to be involved, but I don't think people acknowledge the cost of these demands. Time is not free. As to how someone can better interact with their physician, I think everyone can achieve better results is they focus on what they want their goals and outcomes to be rather than the exact method to get there. For example, in end of life care, there are questions like: Do we do everything to keep them alive? Are we DNR? Are we DNI? These are hard questions, so it's easier to frame them as: What do we want life to look like after our hospital stay? If your goal is to be able to speak with family, hold your kids, and read books, then having the hospital do everything in their power to keep you alive while simultaneously ending up neurologically devastated in an LTAC (long term acute care) probably isn't a good outcome. I can assure you that the medical staff will work harder if you tell them, "Hey, I really appreciate what you're doing for my wife. She's really important to us and this has been really difficult to everyone. Our primary goal is to have her come home in a situation where we can have a conservation together. If that is not possible, we'd really like to be there with her and to have her pass in peace. Please keep us informed if there's anything that we can do to support her or if her status changes." Then, make sure to check in everyday, so that the hospital, nurses, and physician know that the family is involved. I will also mention to the "this-is-the-new-normal" COVID crowd, it literally can't be. To me, new normal means that we've achieved a new stable point of operating in our everyday lives. However, the hospitals have not reached that point. Physicians, nurses, and other medical staff really are leaving. The units are not fully staffed and they have not been for months. Attrition is high. This affects all of us whether or not you believe in COVID or vaccinations because I can assure you that regardless of ailment, the level of care now is not the same as it was prior to COVID and it is getting worse. Please be safe.
blindmute 5y ago
>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. Come on now
nynx 5y ago
Harrowing.
refurb 5y ago
All a part of being a physician. My extended family has a couple. Conversations about “you’re obese and your blood sugar will kill you in 5 years unless you take this drug every day”. And guess what? They say “that medicine is poison, I use tumeric”. Then in a few years they are dead, or blind or have both legs amputated. Humans make horrible health choices all the time. Maybe the difference is just the scale at this point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- informationally 5y ago
  The real question is why have we engineered our environment so unhealthy choices are so easy to make. There are systemic issues here that go beyond individual choices. Social media is also part of the equation and we are now seeing the kind of damage it is doing to the epistemic commons. Everyone believes whatever they want to, safely cocooned in their own media echo chambers. The longer this state of affairs persists the worse things will get. Inability to deal with a pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg. It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit? Why isn't this information available from trusted media sources? And for that matter, why aren't there any such trusted sources that everyone can agree is acting in their best interests and providing them with worthwhile and pertinent news? Democracies can not survive without functional news and media sources.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    > It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit? Because doctors are people, and they just wanted to get the experience off their chest without any personally identifying information being disclosed?
    - informationally 5y ago
      It's possible to send anonymous tips to reporters. It's not hard. All he's doing with this story is farming fake internet points on Reddit. Getting something off his chest is not changing the systemic causes that made the situation he's currently in. If anything, he's actually exasperating the issue by having chosen to take this to Reddit instead of some trusted media outlet.
epicureanideal 5y ago
- dado3212 5y ago
  If facts changed these people’s mind they wouldn’t be in this position.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - irq 5y ago
      > there's a bell curve distribution of risk tolerances and trust in government OK. With you on that. > and there can be reasonable people who find themselves on that distribution in a way that makes them more concerned about what they're not being told than the virus It is at this point they cease being reasonable people.
    - Bud 5y ago
      There is nothing to this. Please do not spread the mindless anecdote about Fauci. In the initial DAYS of the pandemic, it's true that he said that he didn't see there was a reason for normal citizens to be wearing PPE and masks, and that they should be reserved for medical professionals or those at higher risk. This was because: a) we didn't even know about aerosol spread at that point b) there was a massive run on mask-buying that was making it impossible for doctors and nurses to get masks, and it was more important for the doctors and nurses to have them c) we didn't have data on mask effectiveness for average folks then Then the facts changed. And the supply of masks improved. And so Fauci's advice changed, too. That's what a real scientist does. When the facts change, they change their conclusions. Please do not present this as an example of governments "lying" to people. That is not what happened here. The government has done a perfectly good job of "reaching out" to people. The problem here isn't the government. It's right-wing media.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
dado3212 5y ago
Their whole comment history is just terrifying.
Flankk 5y ago
[flagged]
- dado3212 5y ago
  Look through the person’s comment history, either they’re the most dedicated liar in history or Occam’s razor would like a word.
  - Flankk 5y ago
    I'm aware, they created the account at the start of the pandemic. I've never been on reddit but I doubt they're the most dedicated liar in history. Reddit is a breeding ground for sockpuppets and astroturfing. Don't believe everything you read.
    - chrsig 5y ago
      > I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me when I say they aren't the most dedicated liar in history. > Don't believe everything you read. You're not setting yourself up to be the most credible source here...
    - irq 5y ago
      > I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me What about your history here? Your most recent submission was flagged dead. Speaking of Occam’s Razor, if someone claims to be certain a person is lying yet provides simply “believe me” as evidence, the simplest explanation is that the accuser is lying.
      - t-writescode 5y ago
        ... where did they say 14 years? edit: the post above literally says they've never been on reddit, why am I getting downvotes for this?
        desdiv 5y ago
        Two different replies to the same post both quoted the phrase "I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me", so presumably that phrase had been in the original post, but has since been deleted via an edit.
hhw3h 5y ago
If someone is on downward trajectory towards death, why not give them cheap generics at human safe doses? Aren't physicians supposed to do risk benefit analyses? Sure they can feel the odds of benefit are slim to none but if the risk is slim to none as well, why not let them have what they ask for? Also the doctor made no mention of other therapeutics that do have more expert consensus of helping like monoclonal antibodies or fluvoxamine. I'm sorry to hear that they have decide to leave medicine and that they were assaulted. Violence is never called for. That said, it's unclear if all tools in the current tool belt were used in this patient's case. https://www.theepochtimes.com/dying-covid-19-patient-recovers-after-court-orders-hospital-to-administer-ivermectin_4130754.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/dying-covid-19-patient-recover... edited to reference another site: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-ivermectin-edward-hospital-lawsuit-covid-20211110-yjzbvdiltzfuzil4q5g2mfjglq-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-ivermectin-e... i totally get that it's anecdotal. my point is more about just allowing people the opportunity to try therapeutics especially ones that have been proven to help in many cases like monoclonal antibodies or have little to no risk of harm.
- gizmo385 5y ago
  I'd recommend citing a source that isn't the Epoch Times. And we shouldn't have our medical staff wasting their time on things that we know don't work just because folks who trust Facebook memes more than trained professionals think that some essential oil cures COVID-19.
  - masonic 5y ago
    You're suggesting that the linked judicial order[1] is faked, then? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/538389544/Action-Order-Man-Kwan-Ng-v-Edward-Elmhurst-Healthcare-11-5-21 https://www.scribd.com/document/538389544/Action-Order-Man-K...
    - gizmo385 5y ago
      No, merely that the epoch times is a rag not worthy of citing. If you want to cite the primary source, then just do that.
hirako2000 5y ago
It doesn't read like coming from a medical professional.
hourislate 5y ago
Holy Fuck people it's a shit posting on reddit. Do you think this story is real? Good Lord, I thought HN was smart enough to see through the reddit garbage.
- LanceH 5y ago
  All his posts are rants against qanon and he's suddenly lucky enough to be a victim and immediately quits. He doesn't press charges because he'll be a national level target. Never mind that an assault like this at the hospital would result in an arrest regardless of a desire to press charges. Nevermind the whole thing reads like fanfic: "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." The whole post is awful, and even entertaining it here is absurd. When people complain HN is becoming like Reddit, this is what they're talking about.
hnthrow137 5y ago
> I've been able to deal with the years of patients who attended Google Medical School Run as fast as you can away from doctors and other healthcare providers who think like this. Healthcare providers who have this particular arrogance can create very severe health issues for you and your family with their hubris. There are incredible doctors out there who also have humility when it comes to their own knowledge and will answer your questions and listen to you and take you seriously when you come to them with your own research. The human body is orders and orders and orders of magnitude more complex than the most elite and advanced human endeavors of engineering. It's almost not even comparable. You have to have extreme humility in the face of such complexity and in the age of Google and open access to medical journals there is just so much to know and so much that is available that any doctor or healthcare provider who would dismiss the value of patients and caretakers doing their own research is really someone who is very dangerous to you and your loved ones.
- djakaitis 5y ago
  If it is so complex why would a lay person googling things suddenly be the better way to diagnose?
  - rektide 5y ago
    > If it is so complex why would a lay person googling things suddenly be the better way to diagnose? It's not about "be the better way". It's about being able to to entertain & consider multiple theories, versus just being an asshole who won't even regard any convictions except your own. Google Medical School doesn't have to be right every time. It doesn't have to be the more consistent option to be not "the better way", but simply worth entertaining. It doesn't have to be right 10% of the time. Some suffering patients will find & learn & discover things that do seem to fit their own problems. Being an asshole doctor who disregards, who writes off alternate theories: that's the wrong fucking way, and fuck those doctors, run the fuck away, get them fired, get them blacklisted, & warn other people. That's the wrong way. There's no one more invested in a patients health than the patient. The resources of time & analysis they'll put in to trying to figure out what could be an issue is far far higher than what the medical system can provide for all but the very very richest of people. The resources out there to figure stuff out are real. Is it a better way? No. The patient doesn't have years and years of medical school. But that doesn't make their way wrong. That doesn't make them caring about themselves wrong, doesn't make their quest for truth & healing wrong. Any doctor that would turn their nose up at a patient, would refuse to hear a patient out, that refuses to acknowledge how wonderful & accessible medical information is in the world, and how helpful that can be: they are strictly worse. Worse diagnosticians, and worse people.
asdfk-12 5y ago
This reads like 3rd rate propoganda. No possibility of supplying monoclonal antibodies?
- anshumankmr 5y ago
  What are those?
  - indrora 5y ago
    Snake oil, basically.
- grioghar 5y ago
  He actually explains that in one of his other replies: after 10 days of infection, you’re not fighting the virus anymore, so monoclonal antibodies are useless. Covid, the virus, doesn’t typically kill you directly: the cytokine storm that some people seem to have afterwards is what kills them. That’s why people making statement about “my immune system is strong” are speaking from a position of ignorance. You don’t want an over-reaction of your immune system in response to viral load. This is what the vaccine helps with by giving your immune system a chance to develop an immune response without having to go nuclear trying to clear the infection. The storm is why people are ok at day 7-10, then suddenly crash on day 11-4, seemingly out of the blue. They have a hyperactive response that begins destroying healthy tissue, particularly the lungs and the heart, given the concentration of ACE-2 receptors, which is where the virus binds easiest to. Your immune system, still trying to develop an answer to this novel infection, goes scorched earth to attempt to clear any and all rogue RNA that is detected. That’s when you lungs start to hardened and fill and pneumonia kicks in; it’s all the dead tissue in your lungs from your now CoVid-induced autoimmune disorder. This is why steroids are given - they blunt the various inflammatory responses a cytokine storm brings on. Problem is, your immune system do go hard in the paint, and sends EVERYTHING it has. This is why using an anti-parasitic in this moment makes a whole lot of no sense. This is why HCQ makes no sense at this stage. The new oral anti-virals have the same issue: you have to get tested, diagnosed, and get these into you AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. The oral antivirals that are being tested stop the replication process of the virus, or that’s the goal. The less viral load, hopefully a more blunted immune response, the less or no organ destruction. Make sense?
anovikov 5y ago
dadjoker 5y ago
A sad story for sure, and I don't doubt that it is real. But I can't help but wonder, considering how many people have actually been infected with the virus and miraculously survived, are these stories the rule, or the exception?
- Dumblydorr 5y ago
  The issue now is doctors see the severely ill, the vast majority of whom are unvaccinated. And what other qualities go with lack of vaccination? Belief in ivermectin, love of far right conspiracies, paranoia about microchips or God knows what else. So, while I doubt doctors noses get broken frequently, I'm sure they see a ton of brainwashed Q whackos as severely ill patients.
- lliamander 5y ago
  These are undoubtedly the exception. Now, i can understand that the exception can feel like the rule when your job is to deal with the exception, but most people who get COVID don't die or go to the hospital. That doesn't mean that COVID isn't bad, or that people shouldn't consider getting the vaccine (especially if they are old, obese, or have diabetes). It just means that his experience is not representative of what COVID is like for most people.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  You're seeing the reverse of survivorship bias - those who aren't getting sick don't need to present to the hospital, but from those that do, they are most likely at risk of dying.
- etchalon 5y ago
  The world wide survival rate is around 2%. So for every 50 people who are infected, only 1 will die. So the stories are the exception. However, they're also very common. If 1 out of every 50 people who ate at a McDonald's in America died, 50,000 people would die every day [https://financesonline.com/number-of-mcdonalds-in-north-america/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-mcdonalds-in-north-amer...].
  - 5y ago
roenxi 5y ago
I actually struggle to see this guy's perspective. If a family are that desperate for their relative to be given ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine/god knows what else it isn't obvious why he wouldn't hand them out. The role of a doctor, when someone is sick, is to offer good advice and stop them doing anything that will be really damaging to themselves. I'd see this as more similar to a dying man getting access to a priest than anything else. Maybe this woman would have been screaming at him anyway, but I can see why she would be angry. He is obviously being a bit arrogant. The dude was dying, let the family believe what they want at that point.
- Dumblydorr 5y ago
  Doctors take a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. They must follow an ethical code. Ivermectin is pointless for that treatment, and would have terribly harming side effects. If you think otherwise, it's clear why you don't understand the MD's rationale.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    Unless we're talking about controlled substances, tell the patient it won't help and is a bad idea. If they insist, give them a release to sign. Once you inform the patient, you're past the point of doing harm.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    This patient died, the doctor claims he can tell who is going to die (which seems pretty reasonable). It doesn't get much worse than dying of respiratory failure as horrible side effects go. The risks from ivermectin are very low and it is a routinely proscribed drug. He'd have made life easier for himself and the family by saying "this won't work, but if you can foot the bill and will feel better about it then OK".
    - dendriti 5y ago
      If "hey it probably won't kill them" is your standard for medical treatments, you shouldn't be commenting about medical treatments. Ivermectin is prescribed (not proscribed) mostly for treating parasitic infection. Using it at therapeutic doses for Covid is dangerous.
marderfarker2 5y ago
Those behavior boils down to human nature of shifting blame and responsibilities. I’m glad my parents droned into me that nobody can take care of my health except myself.
worker767424 5y ago
[flagged]
mikeyouse 5y ago
Who knows if this specific story is true or not, and I'm just a random anonymous user so $0.02 more on the pile, but I have a family member who's been a hospitalist for 40 years... Their experience basically mirrors this up until the assault. According to them, they've never had so many patients and family members fight them for every single decision they make -- they're bringing in all these ridiculous printouts about "give me these vitamins and steroids on this schedule" and of course they want HCQ and IVM still. None of them will accept responsibility for not being vaccinated, they blame the medical staff when they don't get better like they think they should, they all see intubation as the step that kills their loved ones instead of a last chance to save them.. it's enough that my family member is retiring rather than deal with it any more. My family member works at a small hospital in the Midwest and more than one patient has accused them of "working with Dr. Fauci" to prolong the pandemic. Just complete nutball bullshit. All of the quacks promoting these horrible "cures" while convincing millions of people to not get vaccinated should lose their licenses. I doubt there will ever be any consequences for the non-credentialed talking heads doing the same but man have they inflicted a massive amount of suffering on their viewers. I hope the culture war was worth the weight on their consciences.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Honestly, what has been exceedingly scary to me in the past couple years is how tribalism in the US has gotten to such extremes that people are now willing to actually die instead of admit they were wrong. I mean, sure, the ease with which people have decided they can argue against easily demonstrable facts over the past 5-10 years has been unsettling, but I thought when push came to shove, and their lives and their loved ones' lives were on the lines, people would come around. But a sizable portion of the country is now in a full-on death cult. And to be clear, I can understand there are plenty of things about the pandemic and the pandemic response that can be debated, but a huge portion of the country is miles off the deep end into full on crazyville. Even Trump was loudly booed recently when he said he got a booster.
  - avidiax 5y ago
    I think the headstrong tribalism has been around forever. The difference is that now it's being headstrong about matters that are both life & death and unavoidable in daily life. Somebody the vehemently believes that the rapture is coming and the Earth is 3,000 years old rarely gets a reason to punch anyone over such beliefs. Trump publicly announcing that he got a booster made me respect him more. He could have (and politically should have) kept silent.
jareklupinski 5y ago
I don't think this is real. remember the first rule of reddit: "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  That account's post history is pretty consistent. I would highly doubt that's made up but it could be? :shrug:
- maxbond 5y ago
  It jumped out to me as fake immediately, as well. It's impossible to say for certain, of course, but it rhymes with other Reddit fakery. Specifically in being a one-note account that seems entirely focused on providing testimony to the awfulness of a particular group, that being QAnon. Here's a pretty interesting video essay about online fakery, with a heavy focus on Reddit fakery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiU7aGZ-o68 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiU7aGZ-o68
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    It is the writing style that makes me tend to not believe him. Sounds like an essay of an inexperienced author more than a recapitulation by a medical professional. Doesn't mean the story itself isn't true, but I would expect the author writing about someone else and not himself.
- ugh123 5y ago
  Read their comment history. Doubt they'd put that much effort in just to fake posts about being a doctor in the trenches...
  - maxbond 5y ago
    You may be interested in digging into some internet cultural history. I don't pretend to know if this person is lying or not, but people making a strange hobby out of lying on the internet is nothing new. I can't imagine doing that, I'm guessing you can't either, but there's some other perspectives out there that find this appealing. I don't pretend to understand, but it's just how it is. Some examples from the top of my head: A woman named MsScribe spent years fabricating harassment against herself so that she could gain influence in her community and join the moderation team of a fan fiction website. She would create sock puppets to attack herself, so that the community would rally around her, over and over again. A reddit user spent years creating "fake fake stories". They made obviously fake stories, which they put a lot of effort into, such as writing poetry and drawing comics. They would post these stories to places like r/thathappened, as if someone had genuinely tried to pass these off as real stories. Their goal seemed to be to present the communities these fictional authors belonged to as ridiculous, they were building straw men. I don't remember the name of this user, but this is presented in the video I linked in a sibling comment. (Both of these people eventually admitted to this behavior when confronted.)
barbazoo 5y ago
The moment they described how the patient was asking whether his family was coming I felt such a profound feeling of sadness. Imagine being alone in that moment of your life, the very last moment. I felt like I knew what death would be like and it was heartbreaking. Whether this was 100% real I don't care. This kicked me right in the feelings.
- jb3689 5y ago
  Imagine being alone in that moment of your life because someone couldn't bother to wear a mask around you or someone you love and you are immunocompromised. No sympathy for the devil
bee_rider 5y ago
I wonder if there could be a market for a service to link up cooperative patients and doctors who are tired of dealing with uncooperative patients, in a non-emergency setting.
- octokatt 5y ago
  Dear ye gods, this would be awesome. Pairing up patients with difficult conditions, but who take fantastic data and are compliant to care guidelines with doctors who genuinely want to help patients over a long period of time.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  It exists! Plug for a friend: https://trustedoctor.com/ https://trustedoctor.com/
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
The poster explicitly calls out Facebook and the risk of getting pulled into a life-ruining web of conspiracy theorists as a reason for not pressing charges: > A recognition that doing so would be putting a target on me, my family, my colleagues and my hospital for all of the violent Q-Anon people. The arrest would be local and possibly national news. It would subject these children to deep pain. Worse, though, it would hit Facebook, and within no time, my name, my kids' names, and my wife's name would be all over their sites. All of us would be threatened. These people are unpredictable, but seem to crave violence. I don't want to be responsible for one of my colleagues being shot in the parking lot because I became a national symbol of Q-Anon hospital violence.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  I smell a hoax. Looking at the poster's history there are a bunch of posts that are practically copy pastes of each other. He makes a couple of blatantly dubious medical claims. For example he claims that Ivermectin doesn't work (probably true) with a followup claim that it does work but you have to give so much you'd OD from it. In other posts he claims "every ICU patient is covid" which is a repeated hoax we've seen. At the very least it doesn't differentiate people in ICU who have covid vs people in ICU because of covid, and how many of the people caught their covid while in the hospital/ICU, etc. ICUs aren't full. If this is actually a doctor and they are actually in an ICU that's temporarily full, it definitely is not always full. Statistically ICU beds in hospitals are at pre-pandemic vacancy levels. Lastly, and this isn't really fact based, but it's too "on the nose". The whole narrative they've created is like it was written by a third rate script writer to sell the narrative. It's "too perfect" for his side. The truth is bad enough, people really are dying and suffering. There really are a lot of conspiracy people. But it's just to clean for his side.
  - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    It sets off every alarm bell I have and it's being spread far and wide by people who consider themselves too savvy to fall for something as obviously fake as QAnon. The irony is thick sometimes.
  - 5y ago
twofornone 5y ago
>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. I really have trouble believing that this isn't just a propaganda meme. What proportion of the population actually believes that a vaccine will cure them post infection? More importantly, how are all of these people uttering vaccine requests when their lungs are failing? Isn't it a little hard to talk when you're in the end stage of a severe lung infection? Linking these unvaccinated deaths to qanon conspiracists in the second sentence further makes me doubt that this is an actual doctor reporting on their experience. This is reddit, after all, a heavily astroturfed (and opaquely controlled) propaganda machine.
- indrora 5y ago
  Have several friends in healthcare. Multiple have relayed similar stories. However, to your question: how many of these people are begging for the vaccine, and how? It's a surprising number. These patients don't understand how vaccines work outside of movies and TV, and as such think it's either bullshit or at the last minute feel like it's a miracle. Because at the end of the road, you realize that you've been told lies by those you trusted. There's a clarity in the end moments. Situations like these where you have no choice but to think about what you've been told and the ramifications of your actions. And so these people fall back on the last thing that wasn't at least blatantly false, which is a social understanding of medicine. Vaccines cure diseases, or so we're told in our school days. So much of the American medical psyche is built around medicine being a solution for the current ailment, not a prophylactic for the likely future. A huge part of the antivax rhetoric is "but I'm healthy now". They don't see it as preventing illness in the future. To them a vaccine is an antidote, a fix for a problem. And so they beg for the antidote when it is obvious that they are at the end of the line. They don't understand that it's not a fix for now, it's prevention for later. As for how they can: function degrades, yes, but its biggest impact is on duty cycle. You go from being able to talk constantly to mustering enough energy to speak a few minutes at a time to making it 30 seconds, to 4...5 seconds, to losing it entirely. You get bursts of energy, but each burst comes with a toll. Maybe a few more moments here but a long delay as you recover from it.
- lemmsjid 5y ago
SergeAx 5y ago
This is not smells good for me. The entire text sounds overly emotional and inaccurate for a medical professional. One example: > the body can only absorb a maximum of 100 mg a day, with the rest creating the world's most expensive urine An adult can absorb up to 500 mg of vitamin C: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12134712/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12134712/ And vitamin C is one of the cheapest supplements, at least in that part of globe I currently in. The entire line about "expensive urine" is taken from a handbook of party conversations.
- zhengyi13 5y ago
  Further down thread, there's multiple folk calling out similar disbelief, and stating they've looked at OP's comment history, and saying they believe it's a genuine post by an MD.
  - SergeAx 5y ago
    I haven't check thoroughly, but quick skimming shows nothing beyond informed common sense to me.
- kirillzubovsky 5y ago
  Thank you! There is no way to prove it definitively, but I'd bet this is a writer's account with an agenda. The whole things reads like an airport novel, adjusted for a specific subject. It's what people who believe about a certain world view expect to see in that world. A tear-jerker for sure, but in practice, for example, I have a lot of anti-vaxxer friends, and even though I don't agree with their choice (but I agree with their choice to have a choice), none of them behave like the people in the story. They are not insane, they just strongly adhere to a certain set of believes. People would point out to the writer's history, but in fact, their account is only 9 month old, with an average of a few posts per months. It's completely not unreasonable to believe that someone spends this effort to create an illusion of credibility. Heck, I know people with two dozen "active" hacker news accounts, doing the same thing, but in their case so they could promote key tech articles, instead of vaccines. Internet is a lovely place, isn't it.
- 5y ago
certifiedtrue 5y ago
TeeMassive 5y ago
I can't help but suspect that this is a larping account https://old.reddit.com/user/thanosrain https://old.reddit.com/user/thanosrain This is a two years old account but with only 9 months of activity. (> 1 year old can be sold, see https://www.soar.sh/sell-your-reddit-account/ https://www.soar.sh/sell-your-reddit-account/) No activity in other health related subreddits All posts are obviously militant and politically linked to topics related to QAnon and anti-vaxxers. All the posts are generic advice and none of the writings reflect a profound expertise in science nor medicine. Most of the information posted by the author can be found on public government websites and news articles. Having listened to a lot of practicing physicians interviews during the last two years (and having family working in the field) the contrast in deep technical understanding and jargon is clear as day and night. At best he works in a hospital, maybe as a low-tier nurse. I get it that nurses would quit and find other jobs, but a doctor with "14 years of medical school"? He says that he worked "many decades" plus 14 years of school. Assuming he went med school at 20 and "many decades" is 3 decades, he would be at least 64 years old. That's very unlikely given Reddit's users demographics (https://www.oberlo.com/blog/reddit-statistics https://www.oberlo.com/blog/reddit-statistics) where users of 65 only constitutes 1% of the user base. Being a militant progressive makes it even more unlikely for the same demographic reasons. If it is two decades or less, than this is not "many decades".
- Smoosh 5y ago
  We did it HN!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
raxxorrax 5y ago
99% sure this is a made up story.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

221 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

I think the part about not pressing charges gives this away as being fictional. As someone mentioned in the comments, an assault is a mandated report, and the author claimed security witnessed it. If charges were filed, it would be easy to verify this story.

zwkrt 5y ago
This is naive. I have been in the doctors position of being assaulted by a patient. No one is going to force you to call the police and to talk to them and to tell them what happened and to press charges. In my case I declined because the person was having a crisis and losing everything and I didn’t feel like also making them the target of government intervention. I don’t know what I would have done in their situation but if it caused them to quit their job I wouldn’t put it past them not to uphold the duties of said job.
lemmsjid 5y ago
I’ve looked at a variety of articles on the subject. The belief that incidents are underreported is commonplace. Here is an example: https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/11/09/would-legislation-curb-violence-against-health-care-workers-lawmakers-are-skeptical https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/11/09/would-legislation-curb-v... I worked in a similar environment and most violent incidents were not reported unless it was people doing violence on one another rather than staff.

joeman1000 5y ago

This is straight-up fiction. Or a conglomerate of seperate incidents combined into one whining piece of hyper-emotional propaganda. Either way, it doesn’t make me feel sorry for anyone. All of the people in the story are dumb, including the ‘doctor’ that can’t deal with family members misplaced anger when faced with immense grief.

kxyvr 5y ago

I don't know whether or not this particular story is true, but it's within the realm of plausible given what I've heard from my wife who is an ICU physician with a residency in emergency medicine. The last two years have been difficult and these stories come up a lot, so I figure I might as well share some of our experiences. First, she absolutely has been physically assaulted by a patient as well as family. This is not new to COVID and was more common when she worked in the ER. It's not an every day sort of thing and the hospitals don't put up with patients or family acting violently. However, I believe it's normal for them to have security available for when a patient codes since the families will often act out. Sometimes they're violent. Sometimes they scream. Sometimes they roll on the floor. Sometimes they throw things. Sometimes they don't show up at all and let their family die alone. Second, patients and families will ask for all sorts of things that don't make sense normally. They will demand a COVID vaccine when they're about to die from COVID. They will demand invermectin. She had one patient that was noncompliant with his oxygen, proning (flipping on the belly), and other treatment who threw a fit, started screaming about how they were trying to kill him, recorded it on video, and posted it on Twitter. She had another patient on the brink of death, unconscious, intubated, pain controlled, that the girlfriend wanted to bring out of sedation, so they could get married because she was worried about their place in the afterlife (yes, there was in fact a theological consult.) She had another one where the family kept trying to feed an intubated patient soup. They will actively accuse you of trying to kill their loved one. This is particularly difficult emotionally because a lot of my wife's life is devoted to helping someone with difficult, long hours. No one likes to be accused of that. Third, due safety difficulties with patients coming to a COVID filled unit, the ICU physicians started calling the families directly to give them update. Prior to this, it was more common for the nurse to provide updates and then forward questions to the physicians. Generally, this is a good thing, but it's also not particularly easy. Nowadays, the patient families not only question, but try to micromanage all elements of the treatment. For example, there's this new trend where the families will ask to see the vent during a video meeting and then demand changes to the treatment protocol. This is not safe and they are not qualified to make these changes. Now, generally speaking, if the family has questions, my wife is more than willing to answer them. However, trying to walk a family through a treatment protocol which they do not have the necessary background to understand is not particularly easy. Further, she really does not have time to do so either. Any time spent with the family working through the foundation of pulmonary function is time not spent actively working on patients who are quite literally dying. It really is hurting other patients and I believe it to be selfish. And, look, we get that they're worried and they want to be involved, but I don't think people acknowledge the cost of these demands. Time is not free. As to how someone can better interact with their physician, I think everyone can achieve better results is they focus on what they want their goals and outcomes to be rather than the exact method to get there. For example, in end of life care, there are questions like: Do we do everything to keep them alive? Are we DNR? Are we DNI? These are hard questions, so it's easier to frame them as: What do we want life to look like after our hospital stay? If your goal is to be able to speak with family, hold your kids, and read books, then having the hospital do everything in their power to keep you alive while simultaneously ending up neurologically devastated in an LTAC (long term acute care) probably isn't a good outcome. I can assure you that the medical staff will work harder if you tell them, "Hey, I really appreciate what you're doing for my wife. She's really important to us and this has been really difficult to everyone. Our primary goal is to have her come home in a situation where we can have a conservation together. If that is not possible, we'd really like to be there with her and to have her pass in peace. Please keep us informed if there's anything that we can do to support her or if her status changes." Then, make sure to check in everyday, so that the hospital, nurses, and physician know that the family is involved. I will also mention to the "this-is-the-new-normal" COVID crowd, it literally can't be. To me, new normal means that we've achieved a new stable point of operating in our everyday lives. However, the hospitals have not reached that point. Physicians, nurses, and other medical staff really are leaving. The units are not fully staffed and they have not been for months. Attrition is high. This affects all of us whether or not you believe in COVID or vaccinations because I can assure you that regardless of ailment, the level of care now is not the same as it was prior to COVID and it is getting worse. Please be safe.

blindmute 5y ago

>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. Come on now

nynx 5y ago

Harrowing.

refurb 5y ago

All a part of being a physician. My extended family has a couple. Conversations about “you’re obese and your blood sugar will kill you in 5 years unless you take this drug every day”. And guess what? They say “that medicine is poison, I use tumeric”. Then in a few years they are dead, or blind or have both legs amputated. Humans make horrible health choices all the time. Maybe the difference is just the scale at this point.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
informationally 5y ago
The real question is why have we engineered our environment so unhealthy choices are so easy to make. There are systemic issues here that go beyond individual choices. Social media is also part of the equation and we are now seeing the kind of damage it is doing to the epistemic commons. Everyone believes whatever they want to, safely cocooned in their own media echo chambers. The longer this state of affairs persists the worse things will get. Inability to deal with a pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg. It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit? Why isn't this information available from trusted media sources? And for that matter, why aren't there any such trusted sources that everyone can agree is acting in their best interests and providing them with worthwhile and pertinent news? Democracies can not survive without functional news and media sources.
- chrsig 5y ago
  > It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit? Because doctors are people, and they just wanted to get the experience off their chest without any personally identifying information being disclosed?
  - informationally 5y ago
    It's possible to send anonymous tips to reporters. It's not hard. All he's doing with this story is farming fake internet points on Reddit. Getting something off his chest is not changing the systemic causes that made the situation he's currently in. If anything, he's actually exasperating the issue by having chosen to take this to Reddit instead of some trusted media outlet.

epicureanideal 5y ago

dado3212 5y ago
If facts changed these people’s mind they wouldn’t be in this position.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - irq 5y ago
    > there's a bell curve distribution of risk tolerances and trust in government OK. With you on that. > and there can be reasonable people who find themselves on that distribution in a way that makes them more concerned about what they're not being told than the virus It is at this point they cease being reasonable people.
  - Bud 5y ago
    There is nothing to this. Please do not spread the mindless anecdote about Fauci. In the initial DAYS of the pandemic, it's true that he said that he didn't see there was a reason for normal citizens to be wearing PPE and masks, and that they should be reserved for medical professionals or those at higher risk. This was because: a) we didn't even know about aerosol spread at that point b) there was a massive run on mask-buying that was making it impossible for doctors and nurses to get masks, and it was more important for the doctors and nurses to have them c) we didn't have data on mask effectiveness for average folks then Then the facts changed. And the supply of masks improved. And so Fauci's advice changed, too. That's what a real scientist does. When the facts change, they change their conclusions. Please do not present this as an example of governments "lying" to people. That is not what happened here. The government has done a perfectly good job of "reaching out" to people. The problem here isn't the government. It's right-wing media.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago

dado3212 5y ago

Their whole comment history is just terrifying.

Flankk 5y ago

[flagged]

dado3212 5y ago
Look through the person’s comment history, either they’re the most dedicated liar in history or Occam’s razor would like a word.
- Flankk 5y ago
  I'm aware, they created the account at the start of the pandemic. I've never been on reddit but I doubt they're the most dedicated liar in history. Reddit is a breeding ground for sockpuppets and astroturfing. Don't believe everything you read.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    > I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me when I say they aren't the most dedicated liar in history. > Don't believe everything you read. You're not setting yourself up to be the most credible source here...
  - irq 5y ago
    > I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me What about your history here? Your most recent submission was flagged dead. Speaking of Occam’s Razor, if someone claims to be certain a person is lying yet provides simply “believe me” as evidence, the simplest explanation is that the accuser is lying.
    - t-writescode 5y ago
      ... where did they say 14 years? edit: the post above literally says they've never been on reddit, why am I getting downvotes for this?
      - desdiv 5y ago
        Two different replies to the same post both quoted the phrase "I've been on reddit for 14 years, trust me", so presumably that phrase had been in the original post, but has since been deleted via an edit.

hhw3h 5y ago

If someone is on downward trajectory towards death, why not give them cheap generics at human safe doses? Aren't physicians supposed to do risk benefit analyses? Sure they can feel the odds of benefit are slim to none but if the risk is slim to none as well, why not let them have what they ask for? Also the doctor made no mention of other therapeutics that do have more expert consensus of helping like monoclonal antibodies or fluvoxamine. I'm sorry to hear that they have decide to leave medicine and that they were assaulted. Violence is never called for. That said, it's unclear if all tools in the current tool belt were used in this patient's case. https://www.theepochtimes.com/dying-covid-19-patient-recovers-after-court-orders-hospital-to-administer-ivermectin_4130754.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/dying-covid-19-patient-recover... edited to reference another site: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-ivermectin-edward-hospital-lawsuit-covid-20211110-yjzbvdiltzfuzil4q5g2mfjglq-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-ivermectin-e... i totally get that it's anecdotal. my point is more about just allowing people the opportunity to try therapeutics especially ones that have been proven to help in many cases like monoclonal antibodies or have little to no risk of harm.

gizmo385 5y ago
I'd recommend citing a source that isn't the Epoch Times. And we shouldn't have our medical staff wasting their time on things that we know don't work just because folks who trust Facebook memes more than trained professionals think that some essential oil cures COVID-19.
- masonic 5y ago
  You're suggesting that the linked judicial order[1] is faked, then? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/538389544/Action-Order-Man-Kwan-Ng-v-Edward-Elmhurst-Healthcare-11-5-21 https://www.scribd.com/document/538389544/Action-Order-Man-K...
  - gizmo385 5y ago
    No, merely that the epoch times is a rag not worthy of citing. If you want to cite the primary source, then just do that.

hirako2000 5y ago

It doesn't read like coming from a medical professional.

hourislate 5y ago

Holy Fuck people it's a shit posting on reddit. Do you think this story is real? Good Lord, I thought HN was smart enough to see through the reddit garbage.

LanceH 5y ago
All his posts are rants against qanon and he's suddenly lucky enough to be a victim and immediately quits. He doesn't press charges because he'll be a national level target. Never mind that an assault like this at the hospital would result in an arrest regardless of a desire to press charges. Nevermind the whole thing reads like fanfic: "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." The whole post is awful, and even entertaining it here is absurd. When people complain HN is becoming like Reddit, this is what they're talking about.

hnthrow137 5y ago

> I've been able to deal with the years of patients who attended Google Medical School Run as fast as you can away from doctors and other healthcare providers who think like this. Healthcare providers who have this particular arrogance can create very severe health issues for you and your family with their hubris. There are incredible doctors out there who also have humility when it comes to their own knowledge and will answer your questions and listen to you and take you seriously when you come to them with your own research. The human body is orders and orders and orders of magnitude more complex than the most elite and advanced human endeavors of engineering. It's almost not even comparable. You have to have extreme humility in the face of such complexity and in the age of Google and open access to medical journals there is just so much to know and so much that is available that any doctor or healthcare provider who would dismiss the value of patients and caretakers doing their own research is really someone who is very dangerous to you and your loved ones.

djakaitis 5y ago
If it is so complex why would a lay person googling things suddenly be the better way to diagnose?
- rektide 5y ago
  > If it is so complex why would a lay person googling things suddenly be the better way to diagnose? It's not about "be the better way". It's about being able to to entertain & consider multiple theories, versus just being an asshole who won't even regard any convictions except your own. Google Medical School doesn't have to be right every time. It doesn't have to be the more consistent option to be not "the better way", but simply worth entertaining. It doesn't have to be right 10% of the time. Some suffering patients will find & learn & discover things that do seem to fit their own problems. Being an asshole doctor who disregards, who writes off alternate theories: that's the wrong fucking way, and fuck those doctors, run the fuck away, get them fired, get them blacklisted, & warn other people. That's the wrong way. There's no one more invested in a patients health than the patient. The resources of time & analysis they'll put in to trying to figure out what could be an issue is far far higher than what the medical system can provide for all but the very very richest of people. The resources out there to figure stuff out are real. Is it a better way? No. The patient doesn't have years and years of medical school. But that doesn't make their way wrong. That doesn't make them caring about themselves wrong, doesn't make their quest for truth & healing wrong. Any doctor that would turn their nose up at a patient, would refuse to hear a patient out, that refuses to acknowledge how wonderful & accessible medical information is in the world, and how helpful that can be: they are strictly worse. Worse diagnosticians, and worse people.

asdfk-12 5y ago

This reads like 3rd rate propoganda. No possibility of supplying monoclonal antibodies?

anshumankmr 5y ago
What are those?
- indrora 5y ago
  Snake oil, basically.
grioghar 5y ago
He actually explains that in one of his other replies: after 10 days of infection, you’re not fighting the virus anymore, so monoclonal antibodies are useless. Covid, the virus, doesn’t typically kill you directly: the cytokine storm that some people seem to have afterwards is what kills them. That’s why people making statement about “my immune system is strong” are speaking from a position of ignorance. You don’t want an over-reaction of your immune system in response to viral load. This is what the vaccine helps with by giving your immune system a chance to develop an immune response without having to go nuclear trying to clear the infection. The storm is why people are ok at day 7-10, then suddenly crash on day 11-4, seemingly out of the blue. They have a hyperactive response that begins destroying healthy tissue, particularly the lungs and the heart, given the concentration of ACE-2 receptors, which is where the virus binds easiest to. Your immune system, still trying to develop an answer to this novel infection, goes scorched earth to attempt to clear any and all rogue RNA that is detected. That’s when you lungs start to hardened and fill and pneumonia kicks in; it’s all the dead tissue in your lungs from your now CoVid-induced autoimmune disorder. This is why steroids are given - they blunt the various inflammatory responses a cytokine storm brings on. Problem is, your immune system do go hard in the paint, and sends EVERYTHING it has. This is why using an anti-parasitic in this moment makes a whole lot of no sense. This is why HCQ makes no sense at this stage. The new oral anti-virals have the same issue: you have to get tested, diagnosed, and get these into you AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. The oral antivirals that are being tested stop the replication process of the virus, or that’s the goal. The less viral load, hopefully a more blunted immune response, the less or no organ destruction. Make sense?

anovikov 5y ago

dadjoker 5y ago

A sad story for sure, and I don't doubt that it is real. But I can't help but wonder, considering how many people have actually been infected with the virus and miraculously survived, are these stories the rule, or the exception?

Dumblydorr 5y ago
The issue now is doctors see the severely ill, the vast majority of whom are unvaccinated. And what other qualities go with lack of vaccination? Belief in ivermectin, love of far right conspiracies, paranoia about microchips or God knows what else. So, while I doubt doctors noses get broken frequently, I'm sure they see a ton of brainwashed Q whackos as severely ill patients.
lliamander 5y ago
These are undoubtedly the exception. Now, i can understand that the exception can feel like the rule when your job is to deal with the exception, but most people who get COVID don't die or go to the hospital. That doesn't mean that COVID isn't bad, or that people shouldn't consider getting the vaccine (especially if they are old, obese, or have diabetes). It just means that his experience is not representative of what COVID is like for most people.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
You're seeing the reverse of survivorship bias - those who aren't getting sick don't need to present to the hospital, but from those that do, they are most likely at risk of dying.
etchalon 5y ago
The world wide survival rate is around 2%. So for every 50 people who are infected, only 1 will die. So the stories are the exception. However, they're also very common. If 1 out of every 50 people who ate at a McDonald's in America died, 50,000 people would die every day [https://financesonline.com/number-of-mcdonalds-in-north-america/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-mcdonalds-in-north-amer...].
- 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

I actually struggle to see this guy's perspective. If a family are that desperate for their relative to be given ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine/god knows what else it isn't obvious why he wouldn't hand them out. The role of a doctor, when someone is sick, is to offer good advice and stop them doing anything that will be really damaging to themselves. I'd see this as more similar to a dying man getting access to a priest than anything else. Maybe this woman would have been screaming at him anyway, but I can see why she would be angry. He is obviously being a bit arrogant. The dude was dying, let the family believe what they want at that point.

Dumblydorr 5y ago
Doctors take a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. They must follow an ethical code. Ivermectin is pointless for that treatment, and would have terribly harming side effects. If you think otherwise, it's clear why you don't understand the MD's rationale.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Unless we're talking about controlled substances, tell the patient it won't help and is a bad idea. If they insist, give them a release to sign. Once you inform the patient, you're past the point of doing harm.
- roenxi 5y ago
  This patient died, the doctor claims he can tell who is going to die (which seems pretty reasonable). It doesn't get much worse than dying of respiratory failure as horrible side effects go. The risks from ivermectin are very low and it is a routinely proscribed drug. He'd have made life easier for himself and the family by saying "this won't work, but if you can foot the bill and will feel better about it then OK".
  - dendriti 5y ago
    If "hey it probably won't kill them" is your standard for medical treatments, you shouldn't be commenting about medical treatments. Ivermectin is prescribed (not proscribed) mostly for treating parasitic infection. Using it at therapeutic doses for Covid is dangerous.

marderfarker2 5y ago

Those behavior boils down to human nature of shifting blame and responsibilities. I’m glad my parents droned into me that nobody can take care of my health except myself.

worker767424 5y ago

[flagged]

mikeyouse 5y ago

Who knows if this specific story is true or not, and I'm just a random anonymous user so $0.02 more on the pile, but I have a family member who's been a hospitalist for 40 years... Their experience basically mirrors this up until the assault. According to them, they've never had so many patients and family members fight them for every single decision they make -- they're bringing in all these ridiculous printouts about "give me these vitamins and steroids on this schedule" and of course they want HCQ and IVM still. None of them will accept responsibility for not being vaccinated, they blame the medical staff when they don't get better like they think they should, they all see intubation as the step that kills their loved ones instead of a last chance to save them.. it's enough that my family member is retiring rather than deal with it any more. My family member works at a small hospital in the Midwest and more than one patient has accused them of "working with Dr. Fauci" to prolong the pandemic. Just complete nutball bullshit. All of the quacks promoting these horrible "cures" while convincing millions of people to not get vaccinated should lose their licenses. I doubt there will ever be any consequences for the non-credentialed talking heads doing the same but man have they inflicted a massive amount of suffering on their viewers. I hope the culture war was worth the weight on their consciences.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Honestly, what has been exceedingly scary to me in the past couple years is how tribalism in the US has gotten to such extremes that people are now willing to actually die instead of admit they were wrong. I mean, sure, the ease with which people have decided they can argue against easily demonstrable facts over the past 5-10 years has been unsettling, but I thought when push came to shove, and their lives and their loved ones' lives were on the lines, people would come around. But a sizable portion of the country is now in a full-on death cult. And to be clear, I can understand there are plenty of things about the pandemic and the pandemic response that can be debated, but a huge portion of the country is miles off the deep end into full on crazyville. Even Trump was loudly booed recently when he said he got a booster.
- avidiax 5y ago
  I think the headstrong tribalism has been around forever. The difference is that now it's being headstrong about matters that are both life & death and unavoidable in daily life. Somebody the vehemently believes that the rapture is coming and the Earth is 3,000 years old rarely gets a reason to punch anyone over such beliefs. Trump publicly announcing that he got a booster made me respect him more. He could have (and politically should have) kept silent.

jareklupinski 5y ago

I don't think this is real. remember the first rule of reddit: "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."

jethro_tell 5y ago
That account's post history is pretty consistent. I would highly doubt that's made up but it could be? :shrug:
maxbond 5y ago
It jumped out to me as fake immediately, as well. It's impossible to say for certain, of course, but it rhymes with other Reddit fakery. Specifically in being a one-note account that seems entirely focused on providing testimony to the awfulness of a particular group, that being QAnon. Here's a pretty interesting video essay about online fakery, with a heavy focus on Reddit fakery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiU7aGZ-o68 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiU7aGZ-o68
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It is the writing style that makes me tend to not believe him. Sounds like an essay of an inexperienced author more than a recapitulation by a medical professional. Doesn't mean the story itself isn't true, but I would expect the author writing about someone else and not himself.
ugh123 5y ago
Read their comment history. Doubt they'd put that much effort in just to fake posts about being a doctor in the trenches...
- maxbond 5y ago
  You may be interested in digging into some internet cultural history. I don't pretend to know if this person is lying or not, but people making a strange hobby out of lying on the internet is nothing new. I can't imagine doing that, I'm guessing you can't either, but there's some other perspectives out there that find this appealing. I don't pretend to understand, but it's just how it is. Some examples from the top of my head: A woman named MsScribe spent years fabricating harassment against herself so that she could gain influence in her community and join the moderation team of a fan fiction website. She would create sock puppets to attack herself, so that the community would rally around her, over and over again. A reddit user spent years creating "fake fake stories". They made obviously fake stories, which they put a lot of effort into, such as writing poetry and drawing comics. They would post these stories to places like r/thathappened, as if someone had genuinely tried to pass these off as real stories. Their goal seemed to be to present the communities these fictional authors belonged to as ridiculous, they were building straw men. I don't remember the name of this user, but this is presented in the video I linked in a sibling comment. (Both of these people eventually admitted to this behavior when confronted.)

barbazoo 5y ago

The moment they described how the patient was asking whether his family was coming I felt such a profound feeling of sadness. Imagine being alone in that moment of your life, the very last moment. I felt like I knew what death would be like and it was heartbreaking. Whether this was 100% real I don't care. This kicked me right in the feelings.

jb3689 5y ago
Imagine being alone in that moment of your life because someone couldn't bother to wear a mask around you or someone you love and you are immunocompromised. No sympathy for the devil

bee_rider 5y ago

I wonder if there could be a market for a service to link up cooperative patients and doctors who are tired of dealing with uncooperative patients, in a non-emergency setting.

octokatt 5y ago
Dear ye gods, this would be awesome. Pairing up patients with difficult conditions, but who take fantastic data and are compliant to care guidelines with doctors who genuinely want to help patients over a long period of time.
rich_sasha 5y ago
It exists! Plug for a friend: https://trustedoctor.com/ https://trustedoctor.com/

femiagbabiaka 5y ago

The poster explicitly calls out Facebook and the risk of getting pulled into a life-ruining web of conspiracy theorists as a reason for not pressing charges: > A recognition that doing so would be putting a target on me, my family, my colleagues and my hospital for all of the violent Q-Anon people. The arrest would be local and possibly national news. It would subject these children to deep pain. Worse, though, it would hit Facebook, and within no time, my name, my kids' names, and my wife's name would be all over their sites. All of us would be threatened. These people are unpredictable, but seem to crave violence. I don't want to be responsible for one of my colleagues being shot in the parking lot because I became a national symbol of Q-Anon hospital violence.

Consultant32452 5y ago
I smell a hoax. Looking at the poster's history there are a bunch of posts that are practically copy pastes of each other. He makes a couple of blatantly dubious medical claims. For example he claims that Ivermectin doesn't work (probably true) with a followup claim that it does work but you have to give so much you'd OD from it. In other posts he claims "every ICU patient is covid" which is a repeated hoax we've seen. At the very least it doesn't differentiate people in ICU who have covid vs people in ICU because of covid, and how many of the people caught their covid while in the hospital/ICU, etc. ICUs aren't full. If this is actually a doctor and they are actually in an ICU that's temporarily full, it definitely is not always full. Statistically ICU beds in hospitals are at pre-pandemic vacancy levels. Lastly, and this isn't really fact based, but it's too "on the nose". The whole narrative they've created is like it was written by a third rate script writer to sell the narrative. It's "too perfect" for his side. The truth is bad enough, people really are dying and suffering. There really are a lot of conspiracy people. But it's just to clean for his side.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  It sets off every alarm bell I have and it's being spread far and wide by people who consider themselves too savvy to fall for something as obviously fake as QAnon. The irony is thick sometimes.
- 5y ago

twofornone 5y ago

>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. I really have trouble believing that this isn't just a propaganda meme. What proportion of the population actually believes that a vaccine will cure them post infection? More importantly, how are all of these people uttering vaccine requests when their lungs are failing? Isn't it a little hard to talk when you're in the end stage of a severe lung infection? Linking these unvaccinated deaths to qanon conspiracists in the second sentence further makes me doubt that this is an actual doctor reporting on their experience. This is reddit, after all, a heavily astroturfed (and opaquely controlled) propaganda machine.

indrora 5y ago
Have several friends in healthcare. Multiple have relayed similar stories. However, to your question: how many of these people are begging for the vaccine, and how? It's a surprising number. These patients don't understand how vaccines work outside of movies and TV, and as such think it's either bullshit or at the last minute feel like it's a miracle. Because at the end of the road, you realize that you've been told lies by those you trusted. There's a clarity in the end moments. Situations like these where you have no choice but to think about what you've been told and the ramifications of your actions. And so these people fall back on the last thing that wasn't at least blatantly false, which is a social understanding of medicine. Vaccines cure diseases, or so we're told in our school days. So much of the American medical psyche is built around medicine being a solution for the current ailment, not a prophylactic for the likely future. A huge part of the antivax rhetoric is "but I'm healthy now". They don't see it as preventing illness in the future. To them a vaccine is an antidote, a fix for a problem. And so they beg for the antidote when it is obvious that they are at the end of the line. They don't understand that it's not a fix for now, it's prevention for later. As for how they can: function degrades, yes, but its biggest impact is on duty cycle. You go from being able to talk constantly to mustering enough energy to speak a few minutes at a time to making it 30 seconds, to 4...5 seconds, to losing it entirely. You get bursts of energy, but each burst comes with a toll. Maybe a few more moments here but a long delay as you recover from it.
lemmsjid 5y ago

SergeAx 5y ago

This is not smells good for me. The entire text sounds overly emotional and inaccurate for a medical professional. One example: > the body can only absorb a maximum of 100 mg a day, with the rest creating the world's most expensive urine An adult can absorb up to 500 mg of vitamin C: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12134712/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12134712/ And vitamin C is one of the cheapest supplements, at least in that part of globe I currently in. The entire line about "expensive urine" is taken from a handbook of party conversations.

zhengyi13 5y ago
Further down thread, there's multiple folk calling out similar disbelief, and stating they've looked at OP's comment history, and saying they believe it's a genuine post by an MD.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  I haven't check thoroughly, but quick skimming shows nothing beyond informed common sense to me.
kirillzubovsky 5y ago
Thank you! There is no way to prove it definitively, but I'd bet this is a writer's account with an agenda. The whole things reads like an airport novel, adjusted for a specific subject. It's what people who believe about a certain world view expect to see in that world. A tear-jerker for sure, but in practice, for example, I have a lot of anti-vaxxer friends, and even though I don't agree with their choice (but I agree with their choice to have a choice), none of them behave like the people in the story. They are not insane, they just strongly adhere to a certain set of believes. People would point out to the writer's history, but in fact, their account is only 9 month old, with an average of a few posts per months. It's completely not unreasonable to believe that someone spends this effort to create an illusion of credibility. Heck, I know people with two dozen "active" hacker news accounts, doing the same thing, but in their case so they could promote key tech articles, instead of vaccines. Internet is a lovely place, isn't it.
5y ago

certifiedtrue 5y ago

TeeMassive 5y ago

I can't help but suspect that this is a larping account https://old.reddit.com/user/thanosrain https://old.reddit.com/user/thanosrain This is a two years old account but with only 9 months of activity. (> 1 year old can be sold, see https://www.soar.sh/sell-your-reddit-account/ https://www.soar.sh/sell-your-reddit-account/) No activity in other health related subreddits All posts are obviously militant and politically linked to topics related to QAnon and anti-vaxxers. All the posts are generic advice and none of the writings reflect a profound expertise in science nor medicine. Most of the information posted by the author can be found on public government websites and news articles. Having listened to a lot of practicing physicians interviews during the last two years (and having family working in the field) the contrast in deep technical understanding and jargon is clear as day and night. At best he works in a hospital, maybe as a low-tier nurse. I get it that nurses would quit and find other jobs, but a doctor with "14 years of medical school"? He says that he worked "many decades" plus 14 years of school. Assuming he went med school at 20 and "many decades" is 3 decades, he would be at least 64 years old. That's very unlikely given Reddit's users demographics (https://www.oberlo.com/blog/reddit-statistics https://www.oberlo.com/blog/reddit-statistics) where users of 65 only constitutes 1% of the user base. Being a militant progressive makes it even more unlikely for the same demographic reasons. If it is two decades or less, than this is not "many decades".

Smoosh 5y ago
We did it HN!
deleted 5y ago
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raxxorrax 5y ago

99% sure this is a made up story.

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