While many members of Congress are home campaigning for the midterms, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. 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.
“To date, we [have] received 583 testimonies from 46 states. The fact that these attitudes were widespread is indisputable,” Johnson said. “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.
“We had gone to three different ERs. 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.
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. 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.
“We said no remdesivir, none, none,” another woman said, recalling the treatment of a loved one. “And I found a progress note that they had given her remdesivir.”
That loved one died in the hospital’s care.
Another woman demanded that her son be taken off of remdesivir, and said that the doctor promised her that he had done so – only to receive a worrying call later.
“He said that his kidneys were closing down. And I said, ‘I thought you took him off,’ and he said he was on the full dose,” she said.
Another woman recalled being told that hospital staff had told her husband they would be placing him on a ventilator, “with or without his consent.”
Gail Seiler of Plano, Texas, told her story in person Monday, describing what she characterized as an abusive hospital stay after coming down with COVID-19 in December 2021.
“What I experienced there changed my life forever and exposed me to a system that abandoned individual patient care in favor of rigid protocols, coercion, isolation and fear,” Seiler said.
“When the hospitalist in the ICU learned that I was unvaccinated, he looked directly at me and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Seiler, but you’re going to die.’ From that moment forward, I was treated as if my death was expected and inevitable,” she said.
In addition to being pressured to take remdesivir and accept a ventilator as part of her treatment, the hospital also denied Seiler medicines she requested, like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, budesonide, Vitamin C and Zinc, as were many others who spoke.
A Catholic, Seiler was also denied access to her priest on the condition that she receive remdesivir. She consented to one round so that she could receive extreme unction. Seiler said she was also denied water for seven days and food for 12 days, amidst other traumatic experiences.
Her husband’s attempt to discharge her after growing uncomfortable with her care resulted in a six-hour standoff with police at the hospital. After they let them leave, her husband and daughter worked with another physician and administered some alternative treatments like Seiler had requested at the hospital, and she fully recovered.
“Doctors insisted that my lungs were permanently damaged and I would not survive outside their care. They were wrong,” Seiler said.
Former trauma surgeon and intensive care unit provider James Miller and registered nurse Donna Lowery spoke of how they were both terminated from their respective hospitals for advocating for or using alternative treatments like ivermectin.
“When I advocated for patient care rather than harmful protocols and spoke against the fraud, I was targeted for removal through baseless disciplinary actions with the stated goal of taking away my medical license and ability to ever practice medicine again,” Miller recounted.
“I endured countless unfounded disciplinary hearings, show trials and sham review procedures, which included the threat of me being arrested, and this was all in retaliation for me speaking out,” he added.
Lowery recommended ivermectin for the treatment of a patient at her hospital and was fired shortly thereafter.
Buffalo attorney Ralph Lorigo represented several local families who sued hospitals for refusing to administer ivermectin to their loved ones, winning court orders requiring the drug in several cases. His name spread after he agreed to discuss the cases on a podcast.
Lorigo ultimately represented 212 families across 40 states. Lorigo won 72 of those cases, forcing hospitals to administer ivermectin. Three of those patients died and the rest lived.
Of the 140 cases where Lorigo “couldn’t get to court quick enough” or lost, every patient died.
“I believe that our healthcare system needs great modification. We need a national right to try act that includes off-purpose drugs,” Lorigo said. “This is no longer about COVID or ivermectin. This is about medical freedom and the right to try. This is about governmental suppression and how big giants like Big Pharma control our destiny.”
