Wisconsin senator’s roundtable spotlights COVID patients’ battles over medical care

The useful part

(The Center Square) – While many members of Congress are home campaigning for the midterms, Wisconsin U.S. Ron Johnson held a roundtable Monday featuring doctors, patients and family members who recounted illness, loss and other harms they attributed to hospitals' "rigid adherence" to COVID-19 treatment protocols. Johnson has held multiple such events since the pandemic to amplify these stories and ensure that Americans have a voice in their medical care going forward.

How it works

• The FDA later reviewed kidney-specific clinical data in 2023 and determined remdesivir could be used even in patients with severe renal impairment without dosage adjustment.
• The fact that these attitudes were widespread is indisputable," Johnson said.
• Because I had refused the COVID vaccine, they wouldn't treat me," said one woman in a video testimony compiled by the Children's Health Defense.
• Another woman said medical staff treated her loved one like she was "dead on arrival" because she was unvaccinated against the disease, a story echoed in an in-person testimony given Monday.

Details worth keeping

"In selecting the small subset of witnesses who are testifying today, we attempted to find a cross section that accurately reflects what so many others experienced." Multiple former patients or family members of patients told stories of being treated harshly for not having gotten the COVID vaccine — or not being treated at all. Many who shared their stories also said hospital staff overrode or ignored their requests to avoid remdesivir, an antiviral widely used to treat COVID-19 that the Food and Drug Administration investigated in 2020 over concerns about potential kidney toxicity. The agency was not able to establish a clear causal link.