WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) held a roundtable discussion on Monday highlighting firsthand accounts of Americans mistreated in hospitals during the COVID-19 era.
The event (full video here), billed as the first “devoted entirely to what happened inside hospitals,” invited “patients, families, doctors, and nurses to discuss how hospitals failed to administer proper care and treatment to patients suffering from COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.”
“To date, we [have] received 583 testimonies from 46 states,” Johnson said. “The fact that these attitudes were widespread is indisputable. In selecting the small subset of witnesses who are testifying today, we attempted to find a cross section that accurately reflects what so many others experienced.”
On X, Johnson compiled several highlights, including Peggy Hokett of Oklahoma, whose husband died 24 days after hospitalization and being put on a ventilator without consent; 39-year registered nurse Donna Lowery, who was fired after trying to get a patient his physician-ordered ivermectin prescription; doctors and patients telling both their own stories and recounting how they witnessed others denied options and even visitation; and more.
8/ Darla Smith’s husband, Keith, was hospitalized with COVID in York, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 2021.
Darla unsuccessfully fought to advocate for his treatment, and Keith died on December 12 after being placed on a ventilator. pic.twitter.com/5UQuyXvr0T
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) September 29, 2026
12/ Karen Hayles’ son, Chase, was a childhood cancer survivor with preexisting kidney damage.
He was assured he would not receive remdesivir when he was hospitalized in Houston in 2021. He received it anyway, further damaging his kidneys. Chase died while awaiting a kidney… pic.twitter.com/rW0uRszqj8
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) September 29, 2026
“What I experienced there changed my life forever and exposed me to a system that abandoned individual patient care in favor of rigid protocols, coercion, isolation and fear,” testified Texas resident Gail Seiler, a Catholic who contracted COVID in December 2021. “When the hospitalist in the ICU learned that I was unvaccinated, he looked directly at me and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Seiler, but you’re going to die.’ From that moment forward, I was treated as if my death was expected and inevitable.”
Seiler recalled being pressured to take remdesivir (one round of which she accepted in order to receive last rites) and be put on a ventilator while being denied requested medications such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, budesonide, vitamin C, and zinc. At one point, she says she was even denied water for one week and food for almost two.
“Doctors insisted that my lungs were permanently damaged and I would not survive outside their care. They were wrong,” added Seiler, who fully recovered only after her husband went through a six-hour police standoff to get her discharged and her family found another physician willing to pursue alternative treatments.
“When I advocated for patient care rather than harmful protocols and spoke against the fraud, I was targeted for removal through baseless disciplinary actions with the stated goal of taking away my medical license and ability to ever practice medicine again,” testified ex-trauma surgeon and intensive care unit provider James Miller. “I endured countless unfounded disciplinary hearings, show trials and sham review procedures, which included the threat of me being arrested, and this was all in retaliation for me speaking out.”
Attorney Ralph Lorigo represented 212 families in 40 states. He won 72 attempts to force hospitals to administer ivermectin, all but three of whom survived. By contrast, all 140 cases in which he was either denied or “couldn’t get to court quick enough” resulted in the patient dying.
“I believe that our healthcare system needs great modification. We need a national right to try [to] act that includes off-purpose drugs,” he said. “This is no longer about COVID or ivermectin. This is about medical freedom and the right to try. This is about governmental suppression and how big giants like Big Pharma control our destiny.”
A large body of evidence has found that the medical establishment’s initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak caused far more harm than good in terms of personal freedom and economics as well as public health and that lives could have been saved through far less burdensome methods, such as the promotion of established therapeutic drugs, narrower protections focused on those most at risk (such as the elderly and infirm), and increasing vitamin D intake.
In 2024, the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released what it called the “single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date,” which found among other things that masking, school closings, and lockdowns caused significant harm to the economy, to physical and mental health, and to children’s education and social development far outweighing whatever good they may have done.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has called America’s COVID response one of “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” against which Congress, state legislatures, and courts alike were largely negligent to protect constitutional rights, personal liberty, and the rule of law.
The years since the COVID lockdowns have seen plummeting trust in the medical establishment and a renewed critical look by many at conventional vaccines and the laws governing them, provoked by the federal government’s lack of transparency regarding the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 shots that were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, as well as attempts to mandate the shots.
So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market. It has largely settled on leaving the current shots optional but not supporting work to develop successors, and limiting recommendations to those in “high-risk” groups for COVID itself.