KABC: Doctor Says Many Hospitalized COVID Patients Express Remorse

KABC, KCBS and dozens of other outlets recently featured Oren Friedman, MD, a pulmonary critical care specialist at Cedars-Sinai, discussing the recent COVID-19 spike, the loss of life it is causing and its effects on frontline healthcare providers like himself.

"We are so upset and so frustrated because I think this feels like it shouldn't have to be this way," Friedman told KABC reporter Denise Dador. He said that nearly all of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients he's treating are unvaccinated, and that some have expressed regret.

"I had one patient who looked at me right before we had to place the breathing tube down," Friedman told KCBS reporter Kristine Lazar, "and he got very tearful and he shook his head and he said, 'Oh my God, I think I’ve made a really, really terrible mistake.'" 

Friedman said that choosing not to be vaccinated against the virus is as reckless as drunk driving, not to mention incredibly selfish. "[The virus is] going to go through you, and then it's going to infect somebody else," he told Dador.

Friedman emphasized that people who choose not to get vaccinated and later become sick are increasing the burden on healthcare workers, who are still reeling from the winter surge of COVID-19.

"It nearly broke us," Friedman told Dador. "People wanted to quit their job. People were exhausted. People were away from their families. People were seeing death and destruction every day. And here we see the cases going up again—it's like PTSD for us."

Click here to view the complete segment from KABC and click here for the complete segment from KCBS