The Michigan hospital official makes powerful remarks about patients who do not receive the COVID vaccine

An official at a small Michigan hospital on Thursday made some powerful and passionate comments about the struggle to treat unvaccinated COVID patients, knowing that those patients were not doing everything they could to help themselves.

Nicole Linder, MD, chief hospitalist at OSF St. Francis Hospital & Medical Group, is one of many hospital officials who spoke during the briefing about the importance of Michiganders receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

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“I’m tired, I’m heart sick, and I’m sick of seeing people suffer unnecessarily and die from a disease that could have been prevented by a simple, safe, and effective vaccine,” Linder said. “I don’t want to see the families of my patients suffer with the pain of this, nor the guilt if they played any role in their family member’s decision not to get vaccinated.

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“The problems we treat to care for these hospitalized COVID patients who were not present during the previous waves, I think, create a new dimension of stress, sadness and fatigue for those of us who are on the front lines. You take care of people who die and didn’t need to die. “

You can see Linder’s full comments in the video above.

He said that St. Francis is a small 25-bed hospital with critical access with four doctors and an AP group and no ICU. It was difficult for staff to stay in the fleet during the first rises of COVID.

“Sometimes we struggled with the capacity of the bed, and our facilities were able to get emergency permission to increase the number of beds available,” Linder said. “These beds were expanded, but we didn’t expand the staff. For this increase in volume, all the hospital staff came together and worked in additional shifts, stayed up late and did everything possible to help. – to each other and to our patients “.

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They also lost many experienced nurses due to retirement. Others moved to different areas of nursing.

Linder said that when he heard about the COVID vaccine, it initially looked like they might finally see a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

“I felt really relieved and I was very excited when a very effective vaccine was developed much faster than I could have dreamed of,” Linder said. “I think there was a feeling that we were getting to the finish line and that we just had to hold out until the vaccine was available and then everyone was vaccinated and all that was over.

“Unfortunately, we now know that is not the case and currently, in our hospital, we are experiencing a major wave of COVID at the moment. We’re seeing a lot of the same systemic problems again and we can’t get our patients to move into critical care services. ”

This wave of COVID cases has been very different at St. John’s Hospital. Francis. Employees know that the vast majority of COVID patients are there because they refused to get vaccinated.

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“The difference is that almost every patient we care for chose not to get vaccinated,” Linder said. “We have seen very few vaccinated patients in the hospital, less than I can count on one hand. (No vaccinated patients) have been very critical. None of them died of the disease during our stay with them.

He said unvaccinated patients and their relatives tend to be wary of medicine in general. There is also a “disbelief” when they are so bad that they could really be so sick of COVID, he said.

But at the same time, these patients want and expect the highest level of medical care.

“There seems to be this misconception that all of these patients should be in a tertiary care facility and that if we just give them the right cocktail of substances, we can cure it,” Linder said. “Unfortunately, we all know that’s not the case.”

He believes that people overestimate the effectiveness of current COVID treatments, especially compared to the vaccine.

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“The best treatment we have so far that I am aware of is dexamethasone and it only decreases the risk of death by 20-30% if you have a moderate to severe illness,” Linder said. “You can’t even suffer from mild illnesses or you can increase your risk of death.”

He said he has been beaten by patients who “don’t want to inject any untested or strange substance” into his body. Anyone hospitalized with a severe case of COVID will be injected with foreign substances, much less proven than the COVID vaccine, according to Linder.

“That’s all about avoiding a vaccine that has been shown to be safe and effective,” Linder said. “If you are given the vaccine, you have a 0.001% chance of dying from an advanced infection. It’s a surprisingly small number.”