A Florida ICU medical director kicked off Sunday as he described to CNN’s Pamela Brown how difficult it was for medical staff to see the devastating effects Covid-19 was having on its friends, colleagues and unvaccinated patients.
“We’re frustrated because we’re fed up with seeing people die and suffer because they didn’t get a vaccine,” Dr. Ahmed Elhaddad dit. “The vaccine has been available since December 14. And it is readily available. More than 350 million doses have been administered in the United States. And we are fed up with telling families that their loved ones will not succeed. “
“I recently had a patient who was 37, has two children and was not vaccinated,” he added. “And he had to do FaceTime to his kids for the last time before he had, you know, a tragic ending.”
Brown replied, “It could have been me if I hadn’t been vaccinated.”
“I mean, that’s what’s scary,” he continued. “And I think that’s the important point that at this point in the pandemic, if you’re not vaccinated, you could be the person you just described.”
Elhaddad then emphasized the amount of toll that the most contagious Delta variant has entailed.
“Well, this variant eats your lungs,” he said. “It is causing the lung to collapse. It causes air to escape and surround the heart and compress the heart. And we see that patients die faster with this variant.
“The only thing we see is to avoid death is a vaccine,” he added.
Cases have increased exponentially in Florida in recent months and Palm Beach County, where Jupiter is located, is no exception. According to the New York News, the county reported 8,608 new cases for the week, up from 3,981 in the week of July 23 and 100 cases in the week of June 3.
Brown asked if he has sympathy for people not sick with Covid-19 vaccines, Elhaddad said yes, but getting the vaccine was “a simple thing they could have done.”
“We don’t have any patients in the ICU who have been vaccinated and we haven’t had any patients who have had the vaccine dead,” he said.
Elhaddad later tore himself up while discussing the emotional toll of having to explain to so many families that his loved one would not arrive, noting that he himself has lost several friends to the virus.
“It’s even harder when they’re your friends,” he said. “I now have a patient who is the father of one of my son’s classmates. And he is not expected to succeed. He was not vaccinated. And I also have a ICU nurse who just gave birth to a baby and didn’t get the vaccine because she didn’t know if it was safe or not. “
“And it’s not his fault, it’s nobody’s fault,” he continued. “We just urge people to get the vaccine because we don’t want to lose anyone else.”
Watch above, via CNN.
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