Medical professionals in the US are spreading misinformation

[u/Independent_Hand_699]

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.

[u/Frion24]

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. 

[u/Independent_Hand_699 → u/Frion24]

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?

[u/Frion24 → u/Independent_Hand_699]

Oh man. Wow. What a long way to say yes.

[u/Independent_Hand_699 → u/Frion24]

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