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VOICES: The limits of personal freedom during COVID

Tiana Korley is a health care regulatory attorney at an academic medical center. She provides legal advice on fraud and abuse compliance matters. Prior to her current role, Tiana worked in several other capacities in the health care arena, including as a health care consultant, congressional staffer, and as a senior staffer for the United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (CONTRIBUTED)

Tiana Korley is a health care regulatory attorney at an academic medical center. She provides legal advice on fraud and abuse compliance matters. Prior to her current role, Tiana worked in several other capacities in the health care arena, including as a health care consultant, congressional staffer, and as a senior staffer for the United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (CONTRIBUTED)
Ideas & Voices
By Tiana Korley
Dec 22, 2021
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I’m a health care attorney. Identifying novel approaches to improving the quality of health care that people receive is my passion. In a world plagued with a pandemic that has killed millions, I believe that every human being should have access to high quality health care.

I’m married to a physician. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested my fondness for the health care industry at times. My husband shares that there are patients who do not believe that COVID-19 exists. If you are a physician describing mitigation techniques and the patient doesn’t believe the disease exists, you’ve already lost. That patient who presented to the hospital emergency department and later was diagnosed with COVID-19, let’s call him Sam, will leave the hospital. In the name of personal freedom, Sam will visit the grocery store. He will potentially spread COVID-19. Sam resides with his wife and three children. He has children who go to school with your children. Sam’s children (and his wife, let’s call her Jen) may contract COVID-19 and spread it to your loved ones. There is nothing that you can do about it. In the name of Sam’s personal freedom, you cannot fully protect yourself and your children from the decision that Sam has made to remain unvaccinated.

Your children may develop COVID-19 contracted from Sam’s children. Sam’s argument is that COVID-19 doesn’t affect children. You have a child who has mild asthma and ends up getting very sick. Your child develops “long COVID” and must live with much more frequent use of an inhaler. While Sam enjoys his personal freedom, Sam believes your child will ultimately get better and is simply an unfortunate casualty in his story.

It is difficult to sympathize with those invoking personal freedom to avoid being vaccinated. This group is exposing my family members to a deadly disease in the name of personal freedom. My heart goes out to health care professionals who have even younger children than mine who are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine and are asked to put their children at risk. All in the name of others’ personal freedom. I imagine these dedicated health care professionals are tired. They are willing to do their jobs and have endured so much for nearly two years and we owe them a lot. They are being asked to sacrifice themselves in the name of personal freedom that is not their own.

I do not know how to reach Sam. I have conflicting feelings towards him. I am angry at Sam. Sam takes up a hospital bed in his community and diverts valuable resources from those who must delay “elective” care for a cancerous lesion that may spread in a couple of months because hospitals are filled with COVID-19 patients like him. I’m sympathetic towards Sam because he truly does not understand the complicated science behind COVID-19.

Ultimately, anger can’t be the answer. Sam doesn’t care if I am angry. After all, I live in a community where nearly 80% of those 16 years and older are vaccinated. I was recently heartened when my 10-year-old shared that her classmates gleefully discussed first dose vaccine administration dates to see who would be fully vaccinated the earliest. People in Sam’s community will die from COVID-19 at a faster rate than people in my community. This makes me sad.

Sam’s friends and family members who are vaccinated represent a potential channel to successfully reach him. Perhaps some in Sam’s community who have received the vaccine can help Sam understand that the vaccine did not alter their DNA or otherwise adversely impact their health.

The passage of time will also bring some holdouts like Sam along. However, with hospitals filling up again, health care professionals at risk each day, the emergence of a new variant and the threat of future variants, waiting it out doesn’t seem like the best answer.

I started by saying that I don’t know the answer as to how to reach Sam. But I wanted to share his story to highlight the increasing urgency of this question – how do we reach Sam who neither believes in the existence of COVID-19 nor the vaccine?

Tiana Korley is a health care regulatory attorney at an academic medical center.

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About the Author

Tiana Korley