Real Stories, Real People

On September 28, I held a four-hour roundtable discussion titled “COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People” with patients, families, doctors, and nurses. The 21 panelists shared firsthand accounts of mistreatment and other experiences they witnessed at hospitals across the country. In their remarks, panelists detailed how treatments such as remdesivir and ventilation were often forced on patients as the only viable options. Patients were denied alternative treatments and drugs, even when rigid hospital protocols were failing.

Rigid adherence to hospital protocols – rarely questioned – became the norm, which many doctors saw as violating the Hippocratic Oath’s core duty: patients first, not protocols. Far too often, the stories of COVID-19 hospitalizations were horrific. Patients lost their freedom. Family members could not visit and comfort their dying loved ones. In many of the testimonies received for this event, the callous comments by doctors and nurses to unvaccinated patients and their families are almost unbelievable. 

Watch Sen. Johnson’s opening remarks on X. 

Watch the 17-minute roundtable highlight video on Rumble. 

This roundtable was held because nearly 600 Americans wrote to my office to describe what happened to a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a child – inside a hospital – during the pandemic. Their accounts came from 46 states. They deserve to be heard on the public record, and the American people deserve to hear them. 

These accounts show how widespread these experiences were. I provided a platform for these stories to be told so that this kind of cruelty will not be repeated.

This video release has links to the 21 individual testimonies and the entire four-hour discussion. 

Speakers included: 

• Donna Lowery is a registered nurse with 39 years of clinical experience, including 31 years at a hospital in Florida. After advocating for a COVID patient to receive a physician-ordered ivermectin prescription, she was terminated and faced a complaint filed against her nursing license with the Florida Board of Nursing.
• Dr. John Littell is a family physician who cared for thousands of COVID patients in offices, homes, hospitals, and nursing homes. As chairman of family medicine at a Florida hospital, he witnessed patients and families denied treatment options, visitation, and access to dying loved ones. He remarked how there is no healing from these tragic experiences without hope.

• Dr. James P. Miller (above) is a licensed physician and surgeon from Everett, Washington. He spoke on hospital misconduct, patient mistreatment, retaliation, and deliberate targeting of doctors who challenged COVID-era treatment practices. 
  
  He told the story of treating a young trauma patient just after remdesivir was released. The patient appeared the perfect candidate for the drug based on federal guidelines for hospitals. The infectious disease doctor on call told Dr. Miller privately not to give her remdesivir because “she seemed like a nice girl.”

• Ralph Lorigo (above) is a Buffalo-area attorney with more than 50 years of legal experience. During the pandemic, he represented 212 families across 40 states who were denied access to alternative treatments and drugs like ivermectin. Of the 72 cases he won, only three people died. Of the 140 cases he lost, every single patient died on the hospital protocol.

The roundtable offered only a glimpse of the reality across America during the pandemic. We cannot move on until there is a COVID reckoning. Accountability starts with exposing the truth.

Those 21 stories shared at the roundtable just scratched the surface. We created a page on my website where you can search and read hundreds of testimonies we received from 46 states.

My office will continue to receive stories about hospital protocols until December 31. If you would like to share your story, please complete the COVID Hospital Protocols survey.

• I appeared on The Benny Show for an in-depth discussion about the roundtable. The one-hour interview reviews all about my push for a COVID reckoning. 
• I also recommend this long but excellent substack from A Midwestern Doctor that describes our miserably failed response to COVID — what, why, and how. Well worth reading in its entirety.