Adrian Belyi, head of the Clinical Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department of the Emergency Medicine Institute, said he had in his medical practice patients who denied the existence of the novel coronavirus. Some of them denied having COVID-19 while receiving treatment.
In a public debate entitled “Who is afraid of COVID-19 and why”, which was staged by IPN News Agency,” the doctor said there were patients who said that it was chipping and they didn’t believe the made diagnosis. “There is an extreme minority, but there are such persons who cannot be persuaded, even if they went through infection,” he stated.
However, as Adrian Belyi said, the absolute majority of patients with COVID-19 convinced themselves that the virus exists, sometimes only after they contracted the virus and developed a serious form of the disease, comparing the state with previously experienced flu.
According to the doctor, the denial of the disease is due to particular personal convictions that cannot be refuted even by scientific arguments as not many people accept a scientific approach to processes and phenomena. For some, it is easier to perceive something by an explanation compatible with the person’s mentality, which is not necessarily scientific.
“The people’s skepticism about the existence of the virus is not related to medicine, but to sociological and sociopolitical research. The high number of infections generated by these beliefs is a consequence we experience.”
The doctor noted it would be interesting for a health professional to read a scientific article or a monograph describing a methodology or systematization concerning the phenomenon of lack of credibility on the virus from sociological viewpoint. “For example, it would be useful to know the profile of a person with negativist attitudes, the origin of these attitudes, beliefs, regional distribution compared with other countries, how they reached such convictions and by what media mechanisms they promote them or not. This would enable at a primary stage to take concrete measures to explain the realities to the population,” stated Adrian Belyi.
The debate “Who is afraid of COVID-19 and why” was the 149th installment of the debates project “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
