An internal note sent to doctors by Our Lady of Lourdes medical director has been shared over and over again on Acadiana’s Facebook pages.
It is addressed to doctors and requests their help.
“We all went to medicine for a sense of the common good, to heal the sick and alleviate suffering. Currently our community is ill, the disease is ignorance and disinformation and you, my colleagues, are the cure. The patient requires your attention. “Law,” he wrote.
Today, the hospital released the note to confirm that it was, in fact, written by Dr. Henry Kaufman.
“While not intended to be a message to the public, it is an accurate and current description of what our team is facing and the pressure our healthcare system is exerting in Lafayette. We involve the community to follow the recommended precautions to help us stop the spread of COVID-19, “says the post.
In his memo, Kaufman shares dire data about the impact of the virus on Acadiana’s ability to provide medical care and begs citizens not to give up on science.
“Every day I face people from our community who believe that the pandemic is a hoax, that it is politically motivated, that things are not as bad as the media portray. If anyone doubts it, I invite them to accompany me personally in a tour of our intensive care unit (ICU) and COVID units where you can see for yourself patients in their second, third and fourth decades of life with minimal or no comorbid conditions struggling to breathe in the ICU together with those we expect to be more severely affected by the disease. This disease is NOT affecting only those with significant medical comorbidities, “he wrote.
Other countries have followed science, and they are much better, he wrote.
“The media noise surrounding the pandemic has been accompanied by the abandonment of the scientific principles and precepts on which its practice, modern medicine and public health were founded. Where other places have allowed science and reason to guide their actions , the curve has flattened and the disease has been suppressed to the point where routine personal and commercial activities have resumed. Here in our community, there has been much resistance to common sense measures and we are reaping the rewards of our stubbornness, “he wrote.
Here is the post:
