Written by Steve Karp, M.D. |
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
All things COVID will eventually pass.  Few things last forever. But at some point, physicians may pay a price for their poor judgment in suspending critical thinking.  The question is, who will judge them?

In “normal” times, the practice of medicine has many challenges, some from within and some from outside the profession.  If you let it, much of your daily practice follows specialty guidelines, insurance company criteria, hospital formularies, and other annoyances.  None of those entities have any liability when it comes to our patients.  For the most part, liability lies with the treating physician.
Each specialty plays a particular role in a patient’s care and specialists often view issues from different angles while wearing their tunnel-vision glasses.  For instance, some physicians view elevated cholesterol as an indicator to assess other potential underlying medical issues, while a cardiologist will just write a prescription for a statin drug, just as a cat reflexively chases a mouse.
What changed overnight and across the board, was an anti-science attitude across all specialties to everything related to COVID.  A viral infection is not something requiring government management, rather, its encounter is part of a physician’s daily medical practice.  The government has seemingly accomplished what medical insurers, medical boards, and hospitals tried, but had not yet succeeded at: complete mind control of physicians.  And with that, the last vestige of respect I had for my profession died.
I’m often in attendance at medical meetings where the fine points of immunotherapy and monoclonal antibodies are discussed as part of the treatment for cancer patients.  For physicians, it is their version of science in regard to a drug’s indications, mechanisms of action, dosing, management of side effects, and the studies justifying one drug or combination over another, the latter often supported by questionable statistical analysis.
After the science-lite discussion ends, the personal chitchat begins regarding COVID and vaccines, and the point is reached where any remaining rationality becomes akin to that heard among nursery school attendees.
The tone becomes one of acceptance of the government line, all medical knowledge and cognitive abilities having vaporized.  There is no talk about the fine points of the various PCR tests, the science of personal isolation or masking, the appropriate use of indoor ventilation systems and their management, the changing of standard and long-extant medical definitions, the introduction of gene therapy used as vaccines.
Expecting any discussion regarding electron microscopy’s effect on clinical medicine, techniques of viral isolation and culturing, or the number of Nobel Prize-winning ideas now scientifically abused is not within anyone’s ken. Instead, the conversation becomes who got their booster, when they are next due, how they interact, or not, with those around them so as to stay safe, how they worry about their child being exposed, and much other utterly time and life-sucking conversational trivia.
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