A doctor tending coronavirus patients said that many who become critically ill have asked for the vaccine – and that she has had to tell them it is ‘too late’. Dr Brytney Cobia said all of her patients except one did not get the jab, and that the vaccinated person was expected to fully recover while some of the others were dying.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Cobia, who works at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote that young, healthy people were being admitted with ‘very serious Covid infections’.
‘One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine,’ she wrote. ‘I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.’
Cobia shared what she does a few days later, when she calls time of death.
‘I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same,’ she wrote.
‘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.”‘
Cobia noted that the family members were wrong in thinking that and ‘they wish they could go back’.
‘But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine,’ Cobia wrote. ‘And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.’
Cobia works in Alabama, which has the US’s lowest coronavirus vaccination rate at 33.7% of the entire population. Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising as the more contagious Delta variant spreads. The new wave of Delta variant patients reminds Cobia of October and November, when Alabama’s infections and deaths peaked.
‘I was signing 10 death certificates a day,’ Cobia told AL.com. ‘Now, it’s certainly not like that, but it’s very reminiscent of probably October, November of 2020, where we know there’s a lot of big things coming up.’
Cobia recommends that people who are hesitant about getting vaccinated speak to their primary care doctors about their concerns.
‘I try to be very non-judgmental when I’m getting a new Covid patient that’s unvaccinated, but I really just started asking them, “Why haven’t you gotten the vaccine?”’ she said.
“And most of them, they’re very honest, they give me answers. “I talked to this person, I saw this thing on Facebook, I got this email, I saw this on the news,” you know, these are all the reasons that I didn’t get vaccinated.
Cobia added that it has been ‘really hard’ on physicians and medical staff like herself to see people dying who are not vaccinated.
‘We’ve been doing this for a long time and all of us are very, at this point, tired and emotionally drained and cynical,’ she said.
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