Dr. Michael Bolding, an Arkansas doctor who works at the Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, recently described the “regret and remorse” on the faces of COVID-19 patients who didn’t get their COVID-19 vaccines.
Bolding said in a recent video that he wished people could understand the regret on these people’s faces since it would motivate people to get vaccinated, according to Business Insider.
- “The regret, and remorse, on their face — and fear — I can’t show you, I can’t describe,” he said.
- “But that look on a patient’s face, I promise you, would be more motivating than anything to go ahead and get your vaccine if you have not already,” he said.
Bolding said the people infected with COVID-19 have been across all age groups, including people in their 20s and 30s. Sometimes the patients don’t have any additional medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19.
- “I have had to call multiple fathers and mothers of preschoolers — in their 20s and 30s — and tell them that their spouse may very well not survive this hospitalization,” he said, according to Business Insider.
Bolding’s comments come after Dr. Brytney Cobia, a physician at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote in a recent Facebook post that patients have begged her for the vaccine at the end of their lives.
“I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she said.
She added, “They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu.’ But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t.”
But that post has received some skepticism on social media, according to Fox News, with some saying the doctor’s story should be verified before being shared “uncritically,” as Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy put it.
“People are sharing that Alabama doctor story uncritically ... seems like the sort of thing that should be scrutinized by journalists before taking it as Gospel,” Dunleavy tweeted.