Emergency room doctor: Hospitalized patients repeat VAERS conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson has pushed

Dr. Rob Davidson tells CNN: “I feel for the individuals being duped by a network, duped by, you know, politicians who are trying to sow doubt about vaccines”

Video file

Citation From the July 29, 2021, edition of CNN Newsroom with Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell

ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-ANCHOR): Joining me now, Dr. Rob Davidson, an ER doctor in West Michigan and the executive director of the Committee to Protect Healthcare. I see you shaking your head. This is what -- listen, misinformation like that works to get good ratings for a TV show, but what is the real-world impact of that misinformation that you deal with every day? 

DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Well, the real world is my patients are listening to that instead of listening to me, instead of listening to my family doctor wife who has been doing her job for 20 years like I have, whose patients trust us on any number of things. People come in having heart attacks, they trust me to give them drugs that thin their blood, that could cause complications, but when they come in with symptoms of COVID or tests that suggest COVID, I had a patient this week yell at me in the ER, didn't want the test because she swore that we were getting paid $100,000 for every positive test and we were giving people COVID-19 with the vaccine to increase the profits. It is just maddening. To hear Tucker talk about people not getting their lives back, you know, these vaccines are protecting lives. They're allowing people not to die, unlike the unvaccinated that we are seeing across the country. 

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They just come to you with the information from VAERS that Tucker Carlson talks about all the time, the self-reporting of complications that the CDC investigates and has found no significant complications beyond those few blood clots associated with J&J that they've issued guidance on. And it is just impossible to do the job that I want to do, is — protect my community. 

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But I feel for the individuals who are being duped by a network, duped by, you know, politicians who are trying to sow doubt about vaccines, about masks, about the CDC, and everything else that we have been telling people for a year and a half. And, you know, it's coming home to roost in the states without high vaccinated numbers.