I visited Dr. Mackey on March 3 with leg/back pain, and had a follow up appointment the next week…read more Two days later she called to let me know she'd tested positive for COVID on the same day as my follow up, and she made it clear that a) she'd only taken a test because she'd been planning a trip to Hawaii, and b) she was only informing her close contacts because she was required to by law. She attempted to soft-pedal the news by saying she'd taken a (notoriously unreliable) rapid test that morning, which was negative, and that she doubted she actually had COVID because she didn't personally know anyone who was infected. The overall tone of this call was that none of this was a big deal.
Unfortunately, it was a big deal for me. I had friends staying with me that week, and none of us were vaccinated. To be safe, I immediately isolated myself in my room, and my friends packed up and left as soon as they could. Four days later I began having symptoms and took a COVID test, which came back positive.
A few days after that, I had a follow up call with Dr. Mackey and let her know I had in fact contracted COVID. During this call, she told me that:
1. Though she had been eligible and had had numerous opportunities, she had chosen not to get a vaccine because she felt it was still experimental and potentially more dangerous than the virus itself.
2. That there is no definitive evidence COVID vaccines prevent transmission of the virus, and therefore no point in getting one.
3. That she didn't feel she needed to be vaccinated anyway, because she was not personally in a high-risk group.
4. That she doesn't treat sick people, so even if one of her patients were to contract COVID, it wouldn't really matter.
5. That the common cold is also caused by a corona virus, so it's very possible that our PCR tests produced false positives and nobody actually has COVID.
6. That she chose to wear a thin cloth mask during appointments rather than an N95, because N95s only protect the wearer. (This is false, and pertains only to the types of mask which have an exhaust valve built in. However, when I pointed out that even if such a thing were true, she might have prevented herself from getting infected and then infecting me, Dr. Mackey paused for a long time before claiming there was no way she could know I actually caught COVID from her, and that I could have gotten it by going into a store, or using a gas station bathroom.)
I was fortunate because I had a relatively mild case, and have since mostly recovered. (Although I still have not recovered my sense of taste/smell.) My friends were fortunate because we cared enough to take precautions, so they were able to visit their elderly parents the following weekend. But what is truly maddening about this situation is that Dr. Mackey seemed unable to understand or take responsibility for the fact that her bad decisions around COVID don't just affect her. Even if it were true that every single one of her patients is young and healthy and in a "low-risk" group, some of them would certainly leave her office and interact with other people who aren't. Never mind the fact that even people in low-risk groups have died or been hospitalized, and that there are other negative long-term effects besides death that we still don't understand.
I'm not writing this review to hurt Dr. Mackey or her business. I just wish that I'd known the things I know now before choosing to see her. If you've read all of the above and don't think any of it is relevant to you as a patient, that is your prerogative. But if, like me, you would prefer to see a medical professional who is not a vaccine skeptic, who takes every possible precaution to protect her patients, and who doesn't become defensive or evasive when asked to accept responsibility for her actions, then you now have that information, and you can make a more informed choice than I was able to.
