IN-DEPTH: Patient Advocates, Physicians Say ‘Don’t Give in to Fear’ About New COVID Variant

A sign requesting that people wear masks hangs on a doorway in Tustin, Calif., on March 10, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The headlines have returned: a new COVID variant may lead to the renaissance of enthusiasm for mask mandates.

Though some may be thinking, “Not again,” there are many who never stopped living as they did in those two years when fear—symbolized by the face covering worn alone while driving vehicles and even when exercising—became a religion heralded by media and public health officials.

However, Priscilla Romans, a former nurse and now a patient advocate, told The Epoch Times that there’s a better way.

“People need to be empowered to take their health care back into their own hands so that they can make informed decisions,” Ms. Romans said.

Most importantly, she said, don’t give in to fear.

“When people ask me, ‘Is this really going to start happening all over again,’ my comment to them is, ‘I don’t know if this is real or not, but I do know that fear makes people sick,’” Ms. Romans said. “So, when we empower people, we infuse them with hope so that they don’t have to be afraid.”

Hope, Ms. Romans said, is a medicine not to be underestimated.

She’s witnessed hope’s benefits firsthand in her patient-advocacy business, Graith Care, which provides patients with alternatives to being solely dependent on the “white coats” of the “medical industrial complex” to determine the right course of treatment.

“People not only get sick from fear but also can make bad decisions and listen to people they can’t trust, which is why I’m very passionate about them getting proactive and having a patient advocate to show them alternatives instead of relying on pharmaceuticals with potential adverse reactions,” Ms. Romans said.

‘They Are Scared of Going Back’

Graith Care began when many patients and medical professionals were seeing how broken the system really was long before COVID-19 brought its corruption to the surface.

“I launched Graith Care from my own home not knowing what was around the corner with all the vaccine mandates, protocols, and the use of drugs like remdesivir that, in many cases, have been deadly,” Ms. Romans told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

Since then, she’s expanded her business to help people throughout the United States and internationally.

To help those who can’t afford patient advocacy care, she’s set up a nonprofit called Graithful Giving for donations.

Priscilla Romans, 2022. Courtesy of Christina Tierney

In her work, she’s seen the worst of what COVID policies had to offer, from hospital treatment protocols to vaccine injuries.

“My concern with these headlines coming out is that people are still fearful,” she said. “Right from the beginning, people were told to isolate when they shouldn’t have been isolating.”

Some of them went to hospitals and were put on drugs like remdesivir, which only made them sicker, and was fatal in many cases, she said.

“We tended to see more males get caught up in the hospital system,” Ms. Romans said. “Those wives are struggling and have PTSD from having to see their husband dying in a hospital bed. They are very scared of going back.”

A patient advocate, she said, can help navigate the hospital system if one needs to be admitted, but also keep them out of the hospital with other treatments.

Later in the pandemic, people were told to take a vaccine from which Ms. Romans is still seeing injuries, she said.

“It’s happening a lot,” she said. “People’s immune systems have been compromised by this vaccine.”

A mask reminder marks the door of a classroom in Tustin, Calif., on March 10, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

‘A Slippery Slope’

Morris Brown College in Atlanta and the film company Lionsgate led the way to mandating masks this week as news reports and editorials preached about the “uptick” in cases, while several hospital systems followed suit.

Meanwhile, the resurgence of excitement over face coverings is promoted on media platforms where public health officials and academics like Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, responded with a resounding “yes” to a question from PBS NewsHour on whether people should be wearing masks—in crowded places and at home—while encouraging social distancing and vaccines.

“My question is, what happens next? These headlines are a slippery slope, and we want to make sure people are better educated, stay ahead of the eightball, and not panic,” Ms. Romans said. “We want people to think on their own instead of just saying ‘yes’ to everything. We prefer that people are empowered with the information to make informed decisions.”

‘History Repeating Itself’

Dr. Richard Bartlett, a physician of 30 years in Texas who was involved in the effort to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data released by the Food and Drug Administration, told The Epoch Times that though he has seen an increase in COVID cases over the past five days, their symptoms are on par with flu cases rather than the severity of the Wuhan and delta variants of COVID.

“This is clearly history repeating itself as far as an attempt to control the masses,” Dr. Bartlett said.

“There was never any science to back up the multifaceted campaign forced on the American people: masks, lockdowns, social distancing, and later the vaccines. There were no randomized control trials saying this was safe and effective just as there were no randomized control trials for the medical tyranny over the last three years.”

Because of COVID policies, people died alone in hospitals without loved ones at their side being able to say goodbye, Dr. Bartlett recalled.

“That might have been acceptable in a communist regime, but we have patient rights that have been abused, and there were no randomized control trials saying that this was a good idea,” Dr. Bartlett said. “They put plastic bags over patients’ heads as a COVID protocol when someone tested positive for COVID. This was never backed up by randomized control trials saying that was safe and effective.”

Basic patient autonomy—or “your body, your choice”—was trampled, he remembered.

Informed Consent

Physicians and public health officials pushed vaccines on the American public without giving informed consent, not only regarding the financial conflicts of interest the officials had with the companies that made them but also regarding their potential adverse reactions.

“I think this is another power grab, and I’m concerned that we’re going to see more of the same unless the people demand basic patient rights for their children, parents, and spouses,” Dr. Bartlett said.

Dr. Richard Bartlett, 2022. Courtesy of Dr. Richard Bartlett

Dr. Bartlett referenced a 1995 speech made by former President Bill Clinton on a final report on human radiation experiments conducted by the federal government between 1944 and 1974.

The speech, he said, should have been remembered during this time when American citizens once again became the subjects of an experiment, but this time with novel vaccine concoctions.

President Clinton apologized for the experiments conducted by departments such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Public Health Services, along with the help of several universities such as Vanderbilt.

“Informed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo,” President Clinton said in the speech. “In too many cases, informed consent was withheld. Americans were kept in the dark about the effects of what was being done to them. The deception extended beyond the test subjects themselves to encompass their families and the American people as a whole, for these experiments were kept secret and they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security, but for the simple fear of embarrassment. And that was wrong.”

Trying to Mask Children

Dr. Eric Hensen, a Texas physician who’s still facing repercussions from not complying with the now widely discredited mask mandates issued during the pandemic, studied how masks negatively affect health.

Echoing Dr. Bartlett, he said the masks are about control.

“It’s ridiculous and I’m already seeing that they’re trying to put them on kids again, but it’s just going to retard their growth and development, not to mention their social development,” he told The Epoch Times.

Children wearing masks sit behind screened-in cubicles as they learn in their classroom after getting their pictures taken at picture day at St. Barnabas Catholic School during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scarborough, Ont., on Oct. 27, 2020. The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette

Yet public health officials avoid discussing the harms that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines have caused.

“There’s politics at play,” Dr. Hensen said. “I think there are a lot of doctors who bury their heads in the sand and do as they are told to keep their jobs. Eighty percent of doctors work for someone, so they have what’s called the golden handcuffs. If they break out of the narrative, they get fired.”

Dr. Hensen is an independent physician and has maintained an unrelenting defiance of the mask mandates at the cost of a continued legal battle with the Texas Medical Board that charged him with “unprofessional or dishonorable conduct that is likely to deceive or defraud the public” based on a complaint that he wasn’t wearing a mask while treating a patient in 2020.

“Being an experienced ear nose and throat, head and neck surgeon with extensive knowledge and training in the upper airway, I was well aware of the limitations of wearing a facial covering of any kind and aware of the dangers of wearing these face coverings,” Dr. Henson told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

Dr. Eric Hensen in 2023. Courtesy of Dr. Eric Hensen

‘You Have All the Authority’

Dr. Hensen has never seen credible evidence of masks stopping transmission of COVID, he said, but he has seen what harm they’ve caused.

“They make symptoms worse by increasing the viral load into the nasal cavity, which makes you sicker,” he said. “People get ’mask mouth' which leads to gingivitis and dental diseases. They cause respiratory problems from breathing harder, thus sucking the virus deeper into their lungs, as well as breathing in the polypropylene plastic fibers, which can cause lung cancer.”

One study (pdf) Dr. Hensen referenced presented “the Foegen effect theory,” which posited that “deep re-inhalation of hypercondensed droplets or pure virons caught in facemasks as droplets can worsen prognosis and might be linked to long-term effects of COVID-19.”

People who wear masks also experience a weakened immune system caused by an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels and a drop in blood oxygen saturation levels, leading to increases in heart and respiratory rates, he said.

“They become much more prone to infections,” he said.

To those who don’t want to play along this time with the authoritarian health policies, Dr. Hensen said it’s important to remember the concept of individual sovereignty forgotten during the pandemic.

“You have all the authority,” he said. “That’s what our forefathers established for us. We’re not under a king, and our representatives and public health officials work for us, not the other way around.”