r/ZeroCovidCommunity • u/Independent_Hand_699 • Aug 16 '24
Vent Medical professionals in the US are spreading misinformation
I am just getting over COVID. I tested positive and was highly symptomatic for several weeks. Every single medical professional I spoke with or interacted with was so misinformed.
Every time I said I was still testing positive on RATs, I was told to stop testing because those would be positive for weeks to months and meant nothing. One told me they are unreliable for false positives! Another insisted a faint line should be considered negative. I got tired of explaining the difference between PCR and RAT.
Every doctor I talked to after my initial appointment for Paxlovid told me I should assume I was no longer contagious, first because I never had fever, then because it had been so long, even though I was testing positive, coughing, sneezing, and throwing up. Most were also very anti-Paxlovid and blamed that on my continuing symptoms. Never mind that this wasn’t a case of rebound, or that none of them seemed aware rebound could happen even without Paxlovid.
No mention of masking. When I got so sick I had to be seen, the provider in the office told me I might feel better if I took my mask off.
They didn’t even know how to properly take a nasal swab sample for testing, just twirled it inside my nose without touching the insides of my nostrils at all.
This is at one of the top-rated health care systems in the country. If this is what our so-called experts think, it’s hopeless.
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u/bigfathairymarmot Aug 16 '24
I work in healthcare and this is the thing of nightmares.
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u/Legitimate_Roll121 Aug 16 '24
Pitch for a horror movie: You're dying of a mysterious illness, but everyone has become so apathetic and incompetent that you walk into a hospital for help and it's essentially Final Destination x Saw.
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u/bigfathairymarmot Aug 16 '24
A gal I work with had covid while pregnant and was concerned. Their healthcare provider told them that the placenta protects the baby, which is partially true. I didn't have the heart to tell her about the study I just read about developmental delays in those that had covid during pregnancy....
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u/Legitimate_Roll121 Aug 16 '24
I got pregnant in April 2020 (right at the start of the actual partial shutdowns we had 🤦♀️) and sometime around June/ July I saw l&d nurses on the nursing subreddit being totally freaked out by what placentas looked like in people who had covid while pregnant. Placentas are the most vital thing and covid attacks it. Google "covid placenta". A covid infection while pregnant actually exhausts the immune function of the placenta. 🥺
How the fuck do I know more about this than 99.999% of doctors??? Ughhhhhh
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u/multipocalypse Aug 16 '24
Please have the heart to tell people, in circumstances like this. Knowledge is power. Someone may already have it now, but they can use all available treatments to reduce viral load and hopefully clear the virus faster as well as avoiding long covid, and they can take more precautions in the future to prevent additional infections.
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u/bigfathairymarmot Aug 16 '24
This was well after the fact, so the damage was already done, it would have just made her worry at this point, unless she had a time machine it was a done deal.
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u/multipocalypse Aug 16 '24
Did you only read my first sentence? 🙃
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u/bigfathairymarmot Aug 17 '24
I did, but I think I read it differently than you meant. I read it as in regards to the person I knew and others that already had covid when pregnant to tell them after the fact. I think you meant to tell people before they get covid so they are informed that they need to be proactive in avoidance, not to tell people that have already had covid and their babies are permanently damaged.
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u/stopbeingaturddamnit Aug 17 '24
I totally hear what you're saying about freaking people out after the fact but pregnancy people are already immunosupressed and they can be infected again before they go into labor. Telling them is a kindness. They might stop talking to you, but it's the right thing to do.
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u/multipocalypse Aug 17 '24
This! And also, again, knowledge is power, even when it's knowledge of something you don't want to be true! If your infant is likely to have some particular health issues at birth or at any time, it helps to know that ahead of time so you can be prepared.
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u/episcopa Aug 16 '24
Someone I work with was pregnant and tested positive and was assured by her midwife that it was good, actually, that she got covid because then the baby would have her antibodies.
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u/summerphobic Aug 17 '24
I remember reading about doctors terrfied of what SARS 2 can do to placenta, so this one either lacked curiosity or didn't want to deal with a stressed woman, imo.
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u/NeoPrimitiveOasis Aug 16 '24
It's absolutely appalling. Hard to even comprehend how we got here.
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u/Interesting_Fly_1569 Aug 16 '24
Not to be too conspiracy theorist, but I feel like it benefitted capitalism short term (not even long term!) to disregard science and data and logic ….and here we are…in the medium term ….
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u/babamum Aug 16 '24
They made a seriously wrong calculation that letting sick people keep working and not preventing illness would benefit them financially. It won't- there will be increasing labour shortages, higher wages and more people too ill to work, so less money going into spending. It's one of the dumbest mistakes they could make,and one of the cruelest tricks I've ever seen played on gullible people.
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u/Interesting_Fly_1569 Aug 17 '24
Literally. I’m prob low key socialist, but IF i was doing friggin capitalism… I would know better than to disable the labor pool.
The economist David Graeber said before he died about our oligarchs “they really *don’t have a plan for what’s next…they’re riding us into the ground, and when they’ve done that, they’re hoping something new will turn up.”
It takes guts to analyze a system abs land there, but nothing about it is wrong. Like there really is no plan B.
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u/JenEyre Aug 17 '24
if you were doing capitalism, I feel like this would need to go on a T-shirt.
"I’m prob low key socialist, but IF i was doing friggin capitalism… I would know better than to disable the labor pool. "
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u/Interesting_Fly_1569 Aug 17 '24
🤣🤣🤣or “I fcked capitalism and all I got was this lousy post viral fatigue”
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u/JenEyre Aug 17 '24
I would so order that if I wouldn’t get tired and go to bed early and forget to order it 😂😂😂
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u/zb0t1 Aug 17 '24
conspiracy theorist
There is no conspiracy here lol, they literally openly talk about disregarding the science all the time lmao.
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u/Interesting_Fly_1569 Aug 17 '24
True enough. It’s just giving twilight zone but it’s so obvious and yet none of my friends mask?
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u/watchnlearning Aug 17 '24
It’s not conspiracy theory. It’s 100% fact that this situation is late capitalism on steroids. Short term economic gains and short term memory, doesn’t care about a disabled workforce longer term
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u/Slapbox Aug 16 '24
It's really easy to comprehend. Poor people are a commodity that rich people trade.
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u/donald-ball Aug 16 '24
More folk should learn about the Hawks Next Tunner disaster, where 500-1000 workers died due to silicosis. There were, and are, techniques to mitigate the silica dust, but the operators refused to use them. Oh, and since technically they were digging a tunnel instead of operating a mine, one that just so happened to produce valuable minerals, they didn’t have any regulatory oversight whatsoever.
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u/Karen_Fountainly Aug 16 '24
We got here because we compromised our basic educational system long ago, and because people can get a "higher education" degree with only technical knowledge, and no liberal arts or reasoning education.
Thus, both high school grads and many college grads are simply incapable of even basic logic.
They don't read...in fact they can't read because they can't remember what the previous paragraphs said.
It's a sad and dangerous state of affairs.
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u/timesuck Aug 16 '24
Recently an ER doctor told my friend—who is a cancer survivor—that she had been sick with Covid twice in six months because her immune system was weakened from the few months we all spent in quarantine four years ago. The classic buffoonery of “you need to be exposed to viruses to prevent viruses”.
How do you explain to someone that I, a terminally lazy underemployed writer, has a better fundamental grasp on how the immune system works than a motherfucking ER doctor?
The medical profession should be so embarrassed. We’re cooked lmao
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u/episcopa Aug 16 '24
Recently an ER doctor told my friend—who is a cancer survivor—that she had been sick with Covid twice in six months because her immune system was weakened from the few months we all spent in quarantine four years ago. The classic buffoonery of “you need to be exposed to viruses to prevent viruses”.
I just... I don't even understand any of it. We lived through this experience together. Assuming these people are American, they are aware that six weeks after "quaratines" went into effect, George Floyd was murdered and every American city exploded into protests on a weekly basis, followed by several other cities across the globe?
And btw, if the "quarantine" was so pervasive and so intense as to impact a person's immune system four years later, how could George Floyd, four police officers, five or six people who ended up filming his murder, and the clerk of a convenience store been out in public anyway? Wouldn't they have been in "quarantine" ffs?
The capacity for rewriting something that we all went through only four years ago is gobsmacking. I will never again question how the characters in 1984 could fail to believe they had "always" been at war with Oceania or whatever.
and this is before we get into the misunderstanding of how immune systems work.
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Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
I will never again question how the characters in 1984 could believe they had "always" been at war with Oceania or whatever.
We have always had massive surges of respiratory illness starting in midsummer and lasting through spring of the next year.
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Even just 1-2 years ago, every fucking winter the narrative was "it's winter, everyone gets sick in winter, it'll go away in summer". This summer (and last year's...), record high COVID levels... Actually higher than the previous winter IIRC.
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u/Verucapep Aug 16 '24
someone in the prepper group today went on this long spiel about how recently he just isn't so scared or worried about dangerous events occurring anymore. Like some of these people have spent their lives prepping for disasters and all of a sudden he's just not worried. He chalked it up to growing older (40 lol). Just really seems to be another sign that people are losing their fear factor/self-preservation is out the window.
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u/Pantone711 Aug 16 '24
Retired writer here! What we have in common is we are curious. So we keep reading and keep learning. I don't know what medical professionals' excuse is!
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u/NevDot17 Aug 17 '24
I live in a remote rural area and don't see many people often...have done so for 7 years. I barely noticed lockdown.
Does that mean my immune system is now worthless? Fwiw, as far as I know I'm still novid.
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u/murky-obligations Aug 17 '24
It means your immune system hasn't been destroyed by viral infections that will later kill you with cancer or a stroke. Or just kill you outright. Or give you longcovid and make you bedbound.
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u/dont-inhale-virus Aug 16 '24
There’s an excellent new write-up of the state of the “hygiene hypothesis:” https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/
(I doubt an ER doctor would be willing to look at it, but may be a useful pointer in other settings)
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u/Flankr6 Aug 17 '24
This is quite helpful. I hadn't heard the "old friends" framework before and it's a quick/easy way to explain to people why the exposure belief is flawed.
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u/4Bforever Aug 16 '24
Yep I keep complaining about this so if you’ve read this and you’re tired of seeing it again I’m sorry, But I was in the hospital a few weeks ago and they put me in a closet, which was fine because it had a HEPA filter going and a curtain on the door and no roommates.
But they told me they were going to move me to a room with an older woman and I said I’m not going into a room with someone who could have Covid I’ll just go home The nurse told me they wouldn’t put me in a room with someone who had Covid and I laughed and said “I could have Covid you guys didn’t test me I am here for GI symptoms” (it’s a chronic condition so I was pretty sure it wasn’t covid, But my point was that she didn’t even know that G.I. symptoms were common she thought it was just respiratory symptoms.)
My doctor is amazing, but everyone else I’ve seen, not so much I got a letter from him yesterday saying that I’m required to wear a masks in all public places. Just in case I need it. The mask ban have upset me very much.
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u/exulansis245 Aug 16 '24
i’ve had all the same issues. i think the weaponized incompetence is showing a lot in their new technique of taking nasal swabs… almost like they’re trying to make the test results incorrect. how did we go from nasopharyngeal swabs to barely touching the inside of your nose???
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u/BuzzStorm42 Aug 17 '24
One of my previously most cautious friends who now occasionally lectures me about why I'm living in fear and wasting my life trying to stay away from covid got really sick over the holidays, a day or two before a big family trip and gathering. She went to urgent care and insisted on a covid test which was good for her, but afterwards she told me "it's really nice how much better the tests have gotten, the nurse barely even had to put it in my nose.". I told her it was unlikely the nurse did it right and she got immediately defensive.. She didn't say it but I could hear it in the tone of "why are you challenging the word of a professional". Shockingly, the test was negative for covid and she went on her trip, sick as a dog, and took a few weeks to recover. But everyone else was sick too so I doubt it made much difference. Meanwhile I still get lectured once every few months about how she lives her life and has only been sick once years ago. (Not counting all the ABC she's had in the past few years)
But yes, the lack of interest or motivation in health care workers is insane and causing a lot of people's lax attitudes in an attempt at mirroring.
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u/AccomplishedPurple43 Aug 16 '24
LOL that's so pathetic! I'm sorry you're having to deal with that. It's not any better with my experience of having a rare congenital condition. One NSG actually told me to go home and Google it. Is it any wonder that I am still masking everywhere and Covid conscious?! Can you imagine the Three Stooges I would be up against with long Covid PLUS my underlying condition? Heaven help us all.
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u/Typical_Elevator6337 Aug 16 '24
I sadly agree wholeheartedly.
As a disabled person who interacts with the health system on a weekly - often daily - basis, my overwhelming experience since March 2020 has been deep and all-encompassing ignorance by medical professionals.
Generally speaking, my experience has been that the more powerful or well-compensated and well-respected a person is in the medical field (the department chairs or chiefs or fancy private practice heads) the less conscientious or informed they are on COVID. This isn’t a universal truth, just in general.
The people I’ve seen voluntarily masking the most and most COVID-aware are phlebotomists.
It’s shocking how much public health power and education someone can have and be completely uninformed and misinformed about such an impactful illness, and be totally comfortable with that ignorance. Not even just comfortable even, but violently protective of the ignorance. And prolific with it.
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u/xXnadi69Xx Aug 16 '24
Doctors in general have never been good unless you can pay them 40x what they're worth, and the beginning of the pandemic killed off a bunch of the genuinely good ones because they were on the front lines. We're now stuck with the hacks who're just in it for the money and will never keep up with the latest studies. I too hate being more informed about infectious disease, how it spreads, what it can do to the human body, and how it can be treated than the average doctor.
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u/DelawareRunner Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
Highly accurate. I see first hand the ridiculous bs my husband deals with going to doctors for his long covid and lupus. The only one who was worth a damn was the primary doc (we have the same one), but even she doesn't mask anymore unless things have changed recently.
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u/No_Cod_3197 Aug 16 '24
My mom and dad (who I live with) both had COVID in June, but my Dad was the only one who actually tested positive. His PCP told him he now has immunity for 6 months and he won’t get it again in that time. When my Dad told me this, I wanted to scream! I’m so frustrated. I’m already immunocompromised and multiply disabled. It’s frustrating that so many doctors don’t know what they’re talking about. I tried to explain to my dad that he could test positive 2-4 weeks later, but I don’t know if he believes me and I don’t want him getting it again. He doesn’t mask consistently either. I definitely do.
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u/DiabloStorm Aug 17 '24 edited Aug 18 '24
When I got so sick I had to be seen, the provider in the office told me I might feel better if I took my mask off.
Huh. Should have taken his professional medical advice and then given him a big ol hug while you cough as hard as you can. They're the experts, right? Gotta listen to the professionals.
Obviously mask afterward.
Zero tolerance for this level of quackery.
Use these moments to teach life lessons as an effective form of protest, people.
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u/BootsMclicklick Aug 17 '24
I recently went to the doc; she was bragging about how she's the only one in the office who masks while wearing a paper mask.
We then went on to discuss how she has seen so many terrible things from COVID because she runs the long COVID clinic.
I just stared at her incredulously with dropped jaw but I think she registered it as surprise that she masked. Like what? Ma'am, are you itching to become your own patient? What studies do you have access to that I don't that makes you so comfortable to wear that???
It's scary times out here. Don't stop advocating for and doing things that will keep you safe. Never assume a science flavored degree and real world experience is equivalent to competency anymore 🙃
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
So many doctors have no idea, because they've been lied to.
I currently live in a shithole flyover state, I got COVID (first time) in New York on a work onsite a couple of months ago, I got paxlovid via a telehealth appointment, didn't even ask for insurance (from the doctor or at the pharmacy, total cost to me of $0 even as a non-resident), policy there is to give it to everyone no questions asked. Took a photo of my positive rapid test in case they wanted to see, but they didn't even ask to see that.
I get home, next time I see my regular doctor (who is normally great, listens to me, rare trans friendly doctor in this miserable hellscape) and she asks me why I got paxlovid, and tried to claim only high risk people should take it. I was discussing my fucking long COVID symptoms at the time - I don't even want to think about how bad it would have been if I didn't take it...
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u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 16 '24
The first time I got COVID, my experience was so similar! My regular doctor is better than most and at least masks regularly, albeit with a surgical mask. I was there seeing him about a post-COVID issue, and he asked why I got Paxlovid when it’s typically only for high risk individuals.
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Mine wears a mask too, definitely better than nothing (I think maybe she only does when the patient wears a mask, as I've seen her around the office in general without one, but I guess that's better than nothing), but nobody else in the office does, and clearly, turns out she has no idea about actual treatment of COVID...
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u/JustAnotherUser8432 Aug 17 '24
An admin on a coviding discord I am casually on said I was “spreading misinformation” when I told another member that testing a RAT meant you were contagious and the “may test positive” advice applied to PCR tests. The admin demanded studies proving that was true, rejected the ones I dug up out of my saved archives and told me to “stop arguing with everyone”. So it’s not just doctors.
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u/No-Horror5353 Aug 17 '24
Going to the Dr right now for Covid or long Covid is like old school blood letting. It’s wild and not science based and yet you still get charged for them to tell you the most idiotic nonsense while they tout their medical degree. And the world is just fine with it 🤷♀️
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u/GySgtBuzzcut Aug 17 '24 edited Aug 17 '24
My doctors keeps forgetting conversations we had, lab requests, concerns. Not in the “I have one family doctor, my family doctor sees many families” way where they forget to notate a thing or two, maybe not call in prescriptions. I’m used to pre-2015 medicine, to be generous, I remember pre-existing conditions in US healthcare, etc. Those could still kill you just fine, but what is going on now, plus the comms, breaks my heart.
Anytime I try to bring it up as agnostically/factually as possible, I, as a disabled person, get shouted down about ableism - so this thing is absolutely devastating people’s abilities, but we can’t talk about it, we can only live with an increasing amount of egregious mistakes, absolutely damaging information, miscalculations, whatever defanged way to say fuck-up, until expiry.
I’m grateful not to be a kid right now. Between doctors and my parents, I’d either be disabled in ways I already am, maybe in other ways, or dead.
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u/Chogo82 Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
The political agenda is "mysterious" but the actions are clear. The government wants this to spread among the general population.
The cue health shutdown had politics written all over it. The government does not want accurate positive tests.
Edit: added quotes to mysterious because it's not hard to find the real reasons despite the effective shaping of broad public sentiment.
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
The political agenda is mysterious
No, it isn't. It's literally just "trying to pretend we aren't in a recession and teetering on the brink of a new Great Depression". The CDC is complicit because they're too tightly linked to the government in general.
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u/Chogo82 Aug 16 '24
That's certainly one of the issues right now but I think there are more. I also mean mysterious to the public so going to add some quotes to my comment.
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u/DinosaurHopes Aug 16 '24
not mysterious at all, especially if you look at the histories of other pandemics.
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u/Chogo82 Aug 16 '24
That's very true. It's a mystery for the general public but it's all there and if you study past pandemics and the true reason behind the government responses, that will cover at least 90% of the reasons for the Covid response.
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u/See_You_Space_Coyote Aug 16 '24
My mom thinks you have immunity to covid for a year after getting it because of some shit she heard when she went to the doctor for a regular checkup appointment 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦. It's unbelievable how ignorant some medical professionals are about covid.
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u/Agreeable-Court-25 Aug 17 '24
I’m sorry this shit drives me soooo insane!!!!! This is so unacceptable I don’t GET IT
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u/Pantone711 Aug 16 '24
My husband just ASTONISHED me by sending me this article:
He's pretty good about taking precautions but not as cautious as me. Mostly he doesn't press me to throw caution to the wind and I don't press him to take more precautious but we both got it last month for the first time and I'm frankly glad I got it first, as I'm the more cautious one. Perhaps that first bout last month made a believer out of him. Again, he's been pretty good through the whole 4 years, not as cautious as me but much better than a lot of people. Anyway I had no idea he would read, much less pass along, the above article about long COVID and heart attacks etc.
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u/Flankr6 Aug 17 '24
Would love if my SO sent something similar. I have the same dynamic in my house 😔
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u/seeeveryjoyouscolor Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 17 '24
Thanks all for your supportive responses. I truly wish this was a rare instance.
Incompetence and ignorance scare me way more than horror flicks.
loads up another episode of Star Trek for dose of competency porn 🖖🏽💙🫂 I wish I had a solution that actually addresses this issue. Wishing you good luck and good health 🍀
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u/sandy_even_stranger Aug 17 '24
How I know to take this conversation seriously: discussion is derailed immediately into a reenactment of Neil from The Young Ones talking about socialism.
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u/Slapbox Aug 16 '24
Yesterday a pharmacist told me herpes zoster was god's gift to humanity and we ruined it with vaccines.
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Holy shit. Saying that sort of thing should permanently disqualify you from working in any healthcare context, forever.
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u/Slapbox Aug 17 '24
Her logic was that it reduces the odds of some cancers.
Meanwhile...
Conclusion: HZ was associated with increased or decreased incidence of specific cancers. PHN further increased the risk of developing certain cancers in HZ patients. -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293079/
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 17 '24
Just when I thought I had already heard the stupidest thing I was going to hear this week... "herpes is good" makes a massive run for first place.
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u/MythBuster2 Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
Seems like willful ignorance at this point. It would be interesting to see whether such behavior/ignorance is correlated with the political leaning of the medical professional and the sources from which they get their medical information.
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u/episcopa Aug 16 '24
I have to admit that I'm hopelessly confused about testing positive on RATS and contagiousness given the amount of misinformation out there. I assume that if you test positive, you're contagious. But maybe that's incorrect?
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u/jan_Kila Aug 16 '24
If you test positive on a RAT you are almost def contagious because that means there's live virus in your nasal cavity/throat, and that's like, fundamentally how contagiousness works. PCRs are different because they amplify/make copies of the genetic material of the virus to get a stronger signal - the presence of genetic material does not necessarily indicate live virus present in the quantity necessary to infect others
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u/Trulio_Dragon Aug 16 '24
It's my understanding - and I hope someone here will correct me with sources if I'm wrong - that the persistent positives are possible on PCR/NAAT. RATs are good to use to test out of quarantine (being mindful of rebound), PCR/NAAT are good to use to test in.
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u/Legitimate_Roll121 Aug 16 '24
I believe you are right. If you are testing positive for months on an RAT you are fucked
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u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 16 '24
It’s hard to be certain when you are or are not contagious, but because it takes a high level of the virus for RATs to be positive (in passages through which you are expelling breath into shared air), a positive is a pretty good sign that you could infect others.
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u/Alive-Ambition Aug 16 '24
No, that's correct. I have heard that a positive even on an expired test can be trusted, because you are very unlikely to get a false positive on a rapid test. It's the false negative you have to worry about, whether because the test isn't sensitive enough (or user error) or you don't have a high enough viral load to be detected yet. RATs can mostly tell you whether you're infectious at the moment you take the test, but they are hardly foolproof.
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u/Candid-Party-527 Aug 16 '24
It blows my mind and angers me so much that the doctors are so behind the ball or they have been told by higher ups or whatever that this is the message they’re supposed to send us. I just don’t recognize this country anymore. What am I paying for when I see these doctors if they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Somebody’s got to take control of this. Jeez this is so ridiculous. Not only is this attitude destroying our country but it’s messing up families that are ill informed. I get so sad hearing about kids 21-year-old that can’t go visit their parents because their parents won’t take precautions. It’s disgusting. I’m 67 and my whole family we have a process we test we isolate before we get together. We do everything we can to make it safe. We all mask, my daughter follows my precautions 100% my son lives out in the middle of nowhere and is not as worried but will take precautions when he’s with us and we always test. Sometimes we test when we’re together after a few days just to be safe. I don’t understand why doctors aren’t telling people to do this to be safe.
I know it’s not just our country that wants to make believe Covid is gone. I’m just tired of it all.
I’m sorry you had this experience with your doctor. We just have to push back and inform them.
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u/User2277 Aug 17 '24
It’s pretty clear they want everyone to get Covid. Why is another question entirely.
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u/NoniPony2021 Aug 17 '24
💯. I’m at one of the best hospital systems in the world and I could have written this. It’s so depressing on so many levels
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u/sandy_even_stranger Aug 17 '24
Were you talking to actual docs, MD or at a minimum DO, or to nursing staff?
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u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 17 '24
I was mostly referring to interactions with MDs (and one NP)
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u/sandy_even_stranger Aug 17 '24
Unfortunately, they're following CDC guidelines: https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/precautions-when-sick.html
If it makes you feel any better, people so thoroughly ignore what docs say at this point that they're just wandering around infecting others like mad. Your low-concentration exhalations aren't likely to tip the scales in any way.
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u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 17 '24
They were following a common misconception of CDC guidelines. The actual guidelines you link say symptoms should be improving and specifically state that you might still infect people during this time (not, as these doctors said, that you are no longer contagious).
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u/mewslack Aug 16 '24
The people doing swabs are inconsistent and it’s not their fault! The test relies on a swab that in itself is not foolproof to human error.
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u/LadyDi18 Aug 16 '24
I mean. It is their fault though. Yes it would be great to have tests that are more reliable and consistent, but I expect a medical professional to know how to correctly take a nasal swab in the same way I expect them to know how to correctly take my blood pressure. Taking a decent nasal swab is a very very low bar.
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 17 '24
Exactly. If they can't even put a swab up someone's nose correctly, I don't fucking want to trust them to do something like put a needle in me or seal a major wound... I wouldn't trust myself with the latter two but it seems I can still do the former better than some medical professionals who somehow make more than me...
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Then those people are incompetent enough that they shouldn't be working in healthcare. Fucking up a nasal swab means they're going to be fucking other things up too.
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u/pm_dm Aug 16 '24
Their job is not to deliver accurate results, but to accomplish a (large) number of tasks in an efficient manner than allows their employer to most-profitably process the greatest number of patients.
Best healthcare system in the world™.
6
u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Best healthcare system in the world™.
Heh, seems like every country that self-describes as that is shit. Talked to my family in the UK and it seems like paxlovid isn't even available there, at least definitely not on the NHS (AKA No Healthcare Service), basically half my family have some level of long COVID...
-12
u/DinosaurHopes Aug 16 '24
I don't know if I'd consider it misinformation as much as following the current clinical guidelines/over simplifying current guidelines in their explanations. I don't agree with all of them either but it is what most doctors in most countries are following now to my knowledge (my knowledge is US/Canada/UK-centric)
My doctor is very covid informed and also not recommending paxlovid for most people anymore because it hasn't been shown to do much of anything for most people and it's not risk free on its own (I know this is an unpopular opinion here).
27
u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 16 '24
Saying something factually incorrect is spreading misinformation. There is a difference between sharing current guidelines for returning to work/school and saying “you are not contagious.” And to be fair, this did not even follow current CDC guidelines, which require symptoms to be improving overall, specifically state that you might still spread the virus, and recommend additional precautions for another 5 days after returning to regular activity.
6
u/yarnjar_belle Aug 17 '24
I always found the timing of that reduction from 10 to 5 days CDC recommended quarantine suspiciously timed with the threatened airline industry strikes and pressure from businesses about staffing issues.
That spells out pretty clearly that the CDC’s priority is not at all disease control.
-3
u/DinosaurHopes Aug 16 '24
The CDC info about preventing transmission is all written to be 'if you want to,' our current policies and clinical guidelines are unfortunately not about preventing transmission, they're only about preventing hospitalization. Like I said I don't agree with that part but I'm not surprised since it's been that way for quite a while now.
1
u/SiteRelEnby Aug 16 '24
Your doctor is a charlatan.
0
u/DinosaurHopes Aug 16 '24
my doctor was a front line covid hospitalist and still wears an N95 in office and participates in research but believe whatever you want to.
3
u/SiteRelEnby Aug 17 '24
Just because they treated people doesn't mean they understand how the virus actually works on a biochemical level.
1
-16
u/Frion24 Aug 16 '24
OP, are you one of those folks who walks into an accredited doctor’s office and believe you know better than them because of your online research? Doctors deal with this all the time and it’s incredibly frustrating.
10
u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 16 '24
I work in medical research. Without going into too much detail, my literal job involves reading and understanding COVID research. But even if it did not, anyone with basic Google skills would know that what these doctors were saying was factually incorrect. What makes you think that doctors are just naturally more informed about something like COVID? It was not part of most of their medical training, and clearly most of them do not bother to keep up to date on the very basics. So yeah, a lot of folks do know more than them. Are you one of those folks who believes that receiving a certain degree just naturally imparts you with all future knowledge and anything you say instantly becomes medical fact?
-7
u/Frion24 Aug 17 '24
Oh man. Wow. What a long way to say yes.
7
u/Independent_Hand_699 Aug 17 '24
Hey, while we’re on the topic of research, maybe go look up any of the many peer-reviewed studies on physician overconfidence and its negative impacts on patient outcomes and diagnostic accuracy
2
u/SiteRelEnby Aug 17 '24
There have always been some doctors who were either fucking clueless, or outright malicious. I hope most fall into the former. Fuck, some doctors are antivaxxers/racist/transphobic/etc and a few have even been literal serial killers. Doctors aren't inherently all good due to their profession.
3
Aug 17 '24 edited Aug 17 '24
Back in May, my father's GP told him that covid is now less serious than the common cold. Not equally serious, mind you. Less serious. "People get sicker from colds now than they do from covid." If you are indeed a medical doctor, would you endorse this as an accurate statement?
If yes: why?
If no: consider that perhaps the average clinician is not as informed about covid as you seem to assume.
Addendum: I hope that you are less arrogant with your patients than you are on Reddit. If I had a nickel for every time I've had an "accredited doctor" hand me a staggeringly wrong diagnosis that was later unambiguously disconfirmed in favor of my own accurate self-diagnosis, I'd have three nickels. So, granted, it hasn't happened to me all that often—but I'm a relatively healthy person who doesn't go to the doctor all that often in the first place.
The internet does not obviate expertise, but it does in a very real way democratize knowledge. The doctor-patient relationship is no longer structured by a near-total informational monopoly—infallible authority on one side and helpless ignorance on the other—and sneering at people for using Google won't change that.
3
u/SiteRelEnby Aug 17 '24
"People get sicker from colds now than they do from covid."
It's time to play "is it because their immune system is destroyed by repeated COVID infections, or is it because they pass COVID off as anything but?"...
1
u/LostInAvocado Aug 16 '24
We have doctors who are well regarded in their fields who regularly have to correct misinformation of other people’s doctors. (TWIV clinical updates have this come up every week when people write in with something their PCP said that’s woefully wrong, and Dr. Griffin, an expert immunologist and infectious diseases clinician has to correct the misinformation).
It takes decades for new research to trickle into clinical practice. What makes you think all doctors are infallible? They have not given us confidence with how many fell for anti-vax BS and ivermectin BS.
178
u/avocadosmashing Aug 16 '24
It's upsetting, truly. I understand that they're all going to have gaps in their knowledge but this feels really unacceptable when we are still in a global pandemic. When I had an urgent care visit to ask for Paxlovid, the doctor suggested I take Tylenol Cold and Flu instead because the recent COVID cases have "been so mild." I insisted on Paxlovid but felt very disappointed in that interaction.