- Doctors say it is difficult to get some patients to seek medical advice because they are convinced of incorrect information about COVID-19 that they read online, reports The New York Times.
- Some patients asked their doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine, despite reputable evidence that the drug is ineffective in treating COVID-19 and has potentially dangerous side effects.
- Others got drunk because they believed it would be a cure.
- Some waited until it was almost too late to seek medical help because they did not believe the virus was a big deal.
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Doctors have said they are struggling to get patients to seek some medical advice because they are convinced of incorrect information they read online, The New York Times reported.
“This is no longer just an anecdotal observation made by some individual doctors,” Daniel Allington, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, told the Times. “This is a statistically significant pattern that we can observe in a large survey.”
Allington is also a coauthor of a recent study that found that people who received their news online were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and not follow public health guidelines compared to those who received their news from radio or television.
Some patients have required prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, a medication that the Food and Drug Administration withdrew from hospital use for COVID-19 in June after studies found it was ineffective against the virus and had potentially dangerous side effects.
Last month, clips from a Breitbart video to misrepresent coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine, quickly went viral on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, were retweeted by President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr.
The Times reported that some people have gone to hospitals to demand notes from doctors so they do not have to wear a face mask because online rumors believe that masks lower their oxygen levels.
Dr. Ryan Stanton, a physician for emergency care in Kentucky, told The Times that a number of patients waited until it was almost too late to take advantage of treatment before going to the hospital with COVID-19 symptoms. The patients, according to Stanton, did not believe that the coronavirus was a ‘big deal’.
“They thought it was just a ploy, a shame, a conspiracy,” Stanton told The Times. “It just blew my mind that you can put these blinders on and ignore the facts.”
Last week, a study by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that at least 800 people died in the first three months of 2020 due to false information claiming that drinking pale bleached coronavirus. Nearly 6,000 people were also hospitalized because of that claim, Business Insider reported earlier.
Parinda Warikarn, a doctor in New York, told The Times that she saw a patient who was taking pale because he thought it would prevent the virus.
“He clearly really believed he would avoid Covid,” she said. “Fortunately, his wife and two young children did not take this solution.”
Dr. Howard Mell, an emergency room doctor in Illinois told The Times that the wife of a patient who died from the novel coronavirus shouted at him for writing COVID-19 on the man’s death certificate and accused him that he had done for profit.
“She screamed, ‘We’ve seen online how to get more money,'” Mell said.
Mell told The Times that he treats multiple patients each week who strongly believe in false information they read online.
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