Avoiding Care During the Pandemic Could Mean Life or Death

These days, Los Angeles acting teacher Deryn Warren balances her pain with her fear. She’s a bladder cancer patient who broke her wrist in November. She still needs physical therapy for her wrist, and she’s months late for a cancer follow-up.

But Warren won’t go near a hospital, even though she says her wrist hurts every day.

“If I go back to the hospital, I’ll get COVID. Hospitals are full of COVID people,” says Warren, a former film director and author of the book “How to Make Your Audience Fall in Love With You.”

“Doctors say, ‘Come back for therapy,’ and my answer is, ‘No, thank you.’”

Many, many patients like Warren are shunning hospitals and clinics. The coronavirus has so diminished trust in the U.S. medical system that even people with obstructed bowels, chest pain and stroke symptoms are ignoring danger signs and staying out of the emergency room, with potentially mortal consequences.

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