Watch as 67-year old Joe McCarron, hospitalized with Covid-19 in Ireland, is urged by a fanatical anti-vaxxer and covid-denier to check himself out of the hospital while a doctor calmly, kindly, and patiently explains why that would not be a good idea for someone in his condition and urges him to stay, saying that he was very ill and could die if he went home. But the person with McCarron badgered him to leave and he finally acquiesced. Two days later, he was back in the hospital with breathing problems and subsequently died.
Video of McCarron leaving Letterkenny University Hospital with the help of Antonio Mureddu Gravegliu began to circulate on social media on September 14.
“We are saving Joe’s life,” Gravegliu says in the video. “Today is a winning day for Ireland.” He goes on to thank Dr. Dolores Cahill, a prominent figure in Ireland’s anti-vaccination movement.
A doctor pleads with McCarron in the video to stay in the hospital: “You have the right to decide what you want to do.
“You’re barely able to breathe,” the doctor says. “We want you to stay to help you.”
Gravegliu, who was wearing a mask under his chin, tells McCarron, “If you stay here, they going to f***ing kill you, Joe.”
“I’m very worried about you,” the doctor tells McCarron who appears to be struggling to breathe in the video. “I want you to stay, I think he is saying something very dangerous. What he is saying is wrong and very dangerous.” He added: “I’m not lying to you, you could die.”
“It’s better if you die in the house,” Gravegliu tells Joe.
Upon his re-admittance to the hospital, his family issued a statement that said, “Una (Joe’s wife) would like to thank the staff and apologise for the actions of Joe’s so-called reckless friends earlier in the week. They did not help Joe’s recovery in any way. We would encourage everyone to follow proper medical advice.”
What puzzles me is how a ‘friend’ could make this kind of decision when McCarron has a wife. In the video, I think his wife is there at the time but seems to have been steamrolled by Gravegliu.
The police are now investigating this incident and Antonio Mureddu Gravegliu, who is described as “an Italian restaurant owner with a long history of conspiratorial and far-right activism”.
Mr Mureddu, a former Italian soldier, carried out the “rescue” with assistance from members of the Common Law Information Centre in nearby Ballybofey. The group promotes a bizarre interpretation of the law which states legislation only apply to people if they consent to it.
Common law groups came to prominence during the recession when homeowners facing bank repossessions were encouraged to frustrate the court process using tactics such as not recognising the court and attempting to perform citizens’ arrests on judges.
In one video published after Mr McCarron left the hospital, Mr Mureddu and Michael McGee of the Common Law Information Centre advise followers to use baseless common law tactics and documents to carry out similar actions in other hospitals.
…He is a supporter of the Italian far-right Lega party and in 2019 sought to host a meeting for Irish supporters of the party in his restaurant.
Mr Mureddu was recently pulled over by a garda for speeding. In a video he uploaded, Mr Mureddu, who is sitting in the front seat of his car, denies he was driving and tells the garda “I am the master and you are the servant.”
He seems like a real piece of work,.
These kinds of people with delusions of grandeur who think they know better than everyone else, are everywhere. The fact that McCarron was readmitted before he died will be used by them as confirmation that it was the hospital that killed him.
Sovereign Citizens is the American version of this pretend-law fantasy.
I’ve decided to save my sympathy for dehydrated horses that are led to water, but refuse to drink.
The elderly guy seemed very passive. I wonder if he had any issues of reduced capacity.
This is a new thing. Vigilante loons trying to remove Covid-19 virus patients from hospitals.
And also trying to convince people to not even go to the hospitals when they come down with Covid-19 virus.
AFAWK, they haven’t actually managed to get anyone other than MCCarron out of the hospital, though they’ve tried. A patient in a coma on a ventilator isn’t going to get very far.
These Covid-19 virus denier/antivaxxer patients can be hard to treat.
Since the virus doesn’t exist, they usually wait until they are very sick, come in by ambulance, and have advanced cases of pneumonia and other medical problems.
They are also often hostile, scream at the health care workers, and occasionally attack them.
If your delusional fantasy world says the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist, then it is hard to deal with being in a hospital, very sick, weak, having trouble breathing, surrounded by people in full PPE, and in real danger of dying. A lot of the patients panic right before they end up on a ventilator.
What the right wingnut vigilantes have had a lot of success with is in keeping Covid-19 virus patients out of the hospital. It works quite often. They end up dying at home.
In my local area, from time to time, most of the Covid-19 virus deaths happened to people…at home.
Why was that guy even allowed to be there? At least in the Netherlands, conversations over condition and treatment would be between docter and patient *only*.
The guy was in a wheelchair in a hallway, not in a consult room. I suspect he was already on his way out in the company of his friend before this encounter developed and began to be recorded.
Though at the very least they should have required him to sign an ‘against medical advice’ form.
Sure, they will… But they’d blame it on things they don’t like no matter what. I run into people like Gravegliu once in awhile as I’m gaming. They want to be special and the way they do it is tell themselves they’ve Figured It All Out and other people haven’t. When I watch that video I don’t see a deluded person misleading their friend. I see someone stroking their own ego and lying to themselves about what they’re doing. I don’t think he cares about his so-called friend at all, I think he’s already written the guy off as dying. Mostly when I dealt with this type of person as a gamer they’d keep the kooky ideas to gaming and other fictions. But now I think there’s a political strategy around empowering this sort of nonsense.
We have not seen the last of this. Old people brow-beat to leave by fanatics and blow-hards.
Acronym to save time.
Against medical Advice = AMA.
There was an AMA form that had to be signed and witnessed. Once saw a man die of a heart attack getting into a car driven by his faith-healing pastor. He had left AMA. Utter chaos. The code-blue team stood outside of the car as the pastor declares, loudly and repeatedly: ‘in the name of Jesus you are healed’. After five minutes, with the body turning cold and gray, he let the team try to help. A minute later he changed his mind, literally kicked the nurse trying to do CPR out, started the car, and speeding away with the door still open and the dead man’s feet sticking out.
He drove away, got on the main road, jumped the curb, got out, stuffed the dead man’s feet in, slammed the door and drove to his church where the congregation gave it a go. After an hour of prayer and speaking in tongues, evocation of the blood of Christ, and generous anointings with oil they called an ambulance. At which time the well lubricated body was hauled back to the hospital and declared dead at the ER.
There were threats of charges of ‘abuse of a corpse’ but nothing came of it.
I honestly think modern industrial civilization is utterly doomed even WITHOUT the reality of “climate change” beginning to bite. The internet allows loons to find each other and amplify the crazy. Throw in the reality that our elites, our governments ARE corrupt, ARE conspirational ARE dangerous (hat tip to Marcus Ranum for providing so many examples)