My childhood friend is a doctor - black male who has traveled the country and practiced in every region except the states of Hawaii and Alaska. He’s out on the west coast working now.
During the summer, he got word that a daughter of his friends back home in the south tested positive for Covid. The young lady is in her early 20s. When he talked to her to see what treatment she got at the doctor when she started showing symptoms, she told my friend she was sent home by a white male doctor who told her “there was nothing he could do for her” and that she needed “to get her house in order” right away. He legitimately had told the young lady to expect to die...a young black female with no pre-existing conditions.
This shocked and pissed off my friend, and he decided he would take over her treatment. She was in Texas so all of this was done remotely. Him looking at her labs, prescribing an aggressive regime of meds and rest and monitoring her - he did all of this from where he was working at towards the Pacific Northwest at the time. I asked about her constantly and, eventually, she did get better. It took some time though. Interestingly enough, she contracted it from some people at her gym (when venues started reopening) who knew they were positive but didn’t disclose it to her.
Subsequently, her two other sisters contracted it as well, though none of them lived together, so these were completely independent infections. Still, he did the same for them as well, and they have all recovered as well.
He constantly tells me about much of the foolishness that goes in his profession. Based on the stuff he says, my logical hypothesis is that there have to be a lot of doctors who are either depressed or drug addicts...because there is a lot to cope with and it doesn’t seem ethics is as valued in the medical profession as it is preached.
Ironically, he is recovering himself now. Earlier this week, I was on the phone with him while he was getting a Covid quick test, as the guinea pig for his facility. He had me on speaker when they told him he was, indeed, positive. Even with all his experience in having to help others beat it, I could clearly tell he was nervous with his diagnosis - likely because he was certain it was just another cold he had. Plus, he was trying to figure out how and where he’d contracted it.
When the news came out about the vaccine, I asked his opinion, as he is the medical professional and has the expertise in this...well, at least way more expertise than I do. He told me he would be taking it soon but that even he was nervous about the potential long-term effects of it.
He broke down the prescribed timeline for vaccine development and then broke down the timeline it took to develop this one. I asked him, logically, what variables went into this process that lent to the timeline being shortened so significantly. He said with this one, there were likely specialists working around the clock to get this done; additionally, a lot of “ethics” or ethically practices were left out or ignored during its development. He stressed to me there is always an ethical component in the development of treatments/medicines/etc. but our conversation got cut short before I could get more insight into what he meant.
During this entire year, what has continuously made me nervous has never been contracting the virus itself. I have always feared the treatment my family or I could potentially receive from the doctor if we had to get help, straight up. They are young, but I have explained this to my children as well - that we must look after our health and not be careless without reason because we want to avoid any chances we would ever end up under the care of a doctor like the ones treating this black female doctor and others like her. I watched iatrogenics played a huge part in the death of my paternal grandmother so I take it seriously.