It was more a matter of how misinformation malignantly spreads I believe.
I had to see the only available PCP to see anyone else. This automatically prompted medical releases that, even if unethical, would have still made everything technically legal. If it was an emergency room trip, there were always the same two or three physicians there, so they all became aware of me from the first couple of episodes and could warn any specialist they referred me to see.
Same deal with laboratories and radiological facilities. When you've got only one or two options in town, they have your consent to release PHI by default if you ever want the results interpreted, and their interpreting physician can just accompany the report with a courtesy call to the receiving provider about a suspected diagnosis.
Fellow hypochondriac here. I was at the point where doctors, hospital staff, and lab techs would immediately warn new practitioners about me so they wouldn't waste finite medical resources in a small town, and I just completely discontinued normal activities out of terror as a result.
When I finally blacked out and fractured my spine, first responders detected a lifelong cardiac arrhythmia in the back of an ambulance. Only with that knowledge have I been able to receive treatment and begin to heal emotionally from the gaslighting and medical abuse I experienced while in the care of licensed professionals.
AI-assisted medicine will prevent so many of these mistakes in the future. It can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure out how to stop it from happening again. This has nothing to do with the PRC or anyone or anywhere else, it could have happened at any biological facility in the world and will eventually happen again somewhere unless scientific honesty and cooler heads prevail.
I had to see the only available PCP to see anyone else. This automatically prompted medical releases that, even if unethical, would have still made everything technically legal. If it was an emergency room trip, there were always the same two or three physicians there, so they all became aware of me from the first couple of episodes and could warn any specialist they referred me to see.
Same deal with laboratories and radiological facilities. When you've got only one or two options in town, they have your consent to release PHI by default if you ever want the results interpreted, and their interpreting physician can just accompany the report with a courtesy call to the receiving provider about a suspected diagnosis.