Dear Texas Patients and Physicians: Here’s one thing we can do to stop the pandemic.
Posted on June 24, 2020
Dear Texas Physicians, especially primary care, urgent care and nursing home doctors,
When the COVID 19 pandemic hit the U.S.A., we stopped in our tracks, shut down our O.R.s, closed our clinics, and even gated our hospitals to all but urgent or emergency patients in response to Governor Abbott’s Executive Order GA-09. At that point in time, we had very few COVID cases, hospitalizations, or deaths in Texas. We took these drastic steps to “flatten the curve.†...
So here we are now, 3 months later, riding the Texas surge of the COVID wave, which has been purportedly “flattened†by varying orders from each of the fifty states’ Governors. We are all familiar with the intervening crises and consequences of our actions of the past 3 months. What have we learned? Will we repeat mistakes of the past, or will we use experience to save Texas lives? ...
Many physicians acquiesce to unquestioningly following bureaucratic algorithms, accepting guidelines as mandates, and not innovating solutions for fear of retaliation by medical boards, threat of loss of licensure, and even threat of jail time and fines. This top down fear and intimidation leaves patients without their best advocates, their physicians- ironically, amidst a pandemic, when one would think it is our nation’s physicians we need the most. ...
Please, fellow Texas physicians, consider treating your high risk COVID-19 patients using Dr. Zelenko’s protocol or a thoughtful individualized variation thereof. Do your homework on this. Consider treating symptomatic COVID patients early, within five days of the onset of their first symptoms, with safe, low dose hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and either azithromycin or doxycycline- before the viral load is huge, before the lungs are suffering the ravages of cytokine storm including microemboli, and before the patient deteriorates to a condition requiring hospitalization. At least offer your patients this option. ...
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