 Dr. Ahmed Al-Hadid is the ICU medical director at Jupiter's Medical Center in Florida, and he went on CNN to discuss his experience working in the ICU with COVID-19 patients. And he tears up describing this experience of nonstop pain, suffering, and death that he sees every single day, which is difficult to grapple with considering all of these deaths that he's witnessing. It's all preventable. These people would likely not be in the ICU had they gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, so take a look at his experience and then I want to talk about what he says when we come back. My next guest says he is tired, exhausted, and he's working double shifts to keep up. Dr. Ahmed Al-Hadid, the ICU medical director at the Jupiter, Florida Medical Center, joins me now. Doctor, thank you for your time. You are frustrated. Why? Thank you, Pam, for having me. We're frustrated because we're tired of seeing people die and suffer because they did not take a vaccine. The vaccine has been available since December 14, and it's readily available. Over 350 million doses have been given in the United States, and we're tired of telling the families that their loved one's not going to make it. We're tired of telling the patients, you know, what do you have to say to your daughter or your son? I recently had a patient that's 37 years old, has two kids, and she was not vaccinated, and she had to FaceTime her kids for the last time before she had, you know, a tragic end. I mean, what you just described could have been me if I wasn't vaccinated. I mean, that is the scary thing, and I think that is the important point is that at this point in the pandemic, if you are not vaccinated, you could be that person you just described. How much more difficult is it right now to fight the coronavirus compared to this time last year? Well, this variant is eating the way out the lungs. It's causing collapse of the lung, it's causing air to escape and surround the heart and compress the heart, and we're seeing the patients die faster with this variant. The patients are requiring, you know, everything we have, but we have no medicines to help us with this. The only thing that we see that is preventing death is a vaccine. You know, we're tired of seeing these people die just because they're not vaccinated. It's very frustrating. The nurses are overwhelmed. The nurses are crying. My practitioners are crying. You know, and even I, you know, when talking to somebody and telling them this is it, you have anything to say to your loved ones for the last time. You're not going to say anything else. We're going to put you in a chemically induced coma, and you're going to be dead in a few days. It's very hard to say that over and over and over again. That's got to take such a tremendous emotional toll on you. What is that like having to go through that day in, day out? It is very difficult. You know, if it wasn't for my wife and my kids to go hope to, but it's even harder when it's your friends. I have a patient now that's the father of one of my son's classmates, and he's not expected to make it. He was not vaccinated, and I also have an ICU nurse that was just delivered a baby and didn't take the vaccine because she didn't know if it was safe or not. And it's not her fault. It's not anyone's fault. We just urge, you know, people to take the vaccine because we don't want to lose anybody else. That was really tough to watch. Seeing him tear up made me tear up. It's just, I can't imagine what it's like to see this every single day. I mean, I've talked about compassion fatigue on this program that nurses are experiencing working with COVID-19 patients who they beg to get vaccinated. They don't. And then, you know, it's the same story. But not everyone develops this like thick skin. A lot of people are traumatized working with this COVID-19 patients. He explained how, you know, nurses are overwhelmed. They're crying. General practitioners are crying. ICU doctors are crying. It's just, it's so much death that you are seeing every single day. And it's more emotional. It's more difficult to deal with knowing that every single death here could have been prevented. I mean, these doctors, individuals like him, they're going to suffer with PTSD for the rest of their lives. Sure you can say that they signed up for this, right? They agreed that they wanted to do this. They wanted to be medical professionals. They wanted to help people. But I mean, something like this, this is too much. I mean, they're human beings. There's only so much that you can handle in seeing this every single day. It's going to take its toll. And we saw it take its toll on him. He's the ICU medical director at Jupiter's Medical Center. And he's tearing up, describing the situation, telling another patient that they're going to die. Do you want to call your family? I mean, it's just gut wrenching. And he said that there's a 37-year-old unvaccinated woman who had to FaceTime her kids for the last time before she died. This is heartbreaking. It's so heartbreaking. It really speaks to how deadly misinformation is. Because every single one of these people believed that they were better off not getting vaccinated because they either saw it from a Facebook meme or part of some Facebook group that led to them believing in anti-vaccine nonsense because they saw it from Fox News or Newsmax. Either way it shows how deadly misinformation is. He's seeing the consequences firsthand of people spreading this anti-vax bullshit. He says, you know, we're tired of telling families that their loved one's not going to make it. We're tired of seeing people die and suffer because they did not take the vaccine. I mean, I would imagine that if you're a doctor, the worst thing ever is having to tell a patient's family that they didn't make it. But they're experiencing this every single day, multiple times per day. And it's just so sad. So he described how he was saying to one patient or he tells patients that they're not going to make it. They're going to be put in a medically induced coma. Do they want to call their family and then let them know they're going to be dead in a couple of days? To do this over and over again, like him describing it once really had this huge effect on me emotionally. But to do this every single day, can you imagine the trauma that these doctors and nurses have to feel the nightmares that they experience? Even when they get a day off, they probably still can't shake the feeling of dread knowing that they're going to have to go back into work in a day or so and deal with it all over again. It's like a nightmare that they can't escape. It's so sad. Now, he lays out the differences here between the current wave with the Delta variant and previous COVID-19 waves like the dark winter that we experienced, and he makes a very powerful pitch as to why people should get vaccinated. This round, we're seeing the younger patients, 30, 40, 50-year-old, and they're suffering, you know, they're hungry for oxygen and they're dying. Unfortunately, this round, they're dying faster and we're putting them on a ventilator and, you know, some are dead within 24 hours. Some are lasting a few days. Some are lasting a week or so. And we have to go to extreme measures to keep them alive, and at the end, you know, they're going. So, there's no magic medicine. We have, we've been trying everything that anyone can think of globally to, you know, try to prevent these people from dying, but it's not working. The only thing that we're finding is that the vaccine is preventing death. It's preventing patients from coming to the ICU. And yet, as we speak right now, there are still so many people in the country who are eligible to get vaccinated who refuse to. What is your message to them? My message is, you know, don't take a chance. There's a simple thing that you can do is just take a vaccine, and it's going to fight this virus. It's going to prevent you from getting, you know, getting into the ICU and dying. If I had told you that, you know, there's a line in the backyard and get into your house and protect yourself, you're going to take that, you're not going to even look for the line. You're just going to get in your house and protect yourself. So that virus is that lion. And all you have to do is take a vaccine. It's like a force field. That lion cannot touch you if you have that vaccine. So I really like the analogy that he used about the lion being in your backyard, because I mean, if you knew that there was a lion in your backyard, it's not like you'd come up with some alternative solution as to dealing with that. You wouldn't propose building a big cage to capture the lion. There's no time. You do what's necessary. You go in your house and protect yourself from the lion. But the virus isn't like a lion, which is why it's so difficult, right? People can't see a virus, but they can see a lion. And they can deduce quite easily that that lion is a threat to their lives. So since they can't see a virus, they don't think of it as a threat. But you know, if we think of the virus as a lion, then the vaccine acts as a sort of force field that protects you, makes it so the lion can't get to you. I think that these doctors who make this case, if there's going to be any success whatsoever at convincing reluctant anti-vaxxers, their stories are going to do it. But then again, some people are so far gone that they think that individuals like this doctor are crisis actors and nothing will convince them. They just have to experience it for themselves, unfortunately. And I hope that that's not the case. But I mean, what do you do? There's only so much that you can do. The vaccines are free. They're widely available. You can walk into a wall, graze and get it. But people are still refusing to do it, and it's leading to this. You know, he says there's no magic medicine. The only thing that we're seeing is that vaccines are preventing deaths and they're preventing people from going to the ICU. And that's the thing. There isn't an effective way to treat COVID-19 yet. There are things that they're using to treat COVID-19, medications that they're using, but there's no magic bullet. The thing to stop COVID is to prevent it in the first place with the vaccines. And he says this round, we're seeing younger patients in their 30s, 40s, you know, 50 year olds and they're suffering, they're hungry for oxygen and they're dying and this round, they're dying faster. So, I mean, these stories are going to continue to get out. They're difficult to hear like hearing him speak is, I think, probably tough for a lot of people, but I think it's really important. And at this point, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir because people who are watching this channel already know the necessity of getting vaccinated. But I mean, if what you think this doctor says is going to resonate with anyone you know in your family, in your life that is, you know, unvaccinated, share this video, share everything that you can. I've kind of taken it upon myself. Every piece of misinformation that I see on my Facebook, I commit to sharing three pieces of good information, accurate information about the vaccines, about the effectiveness of masks. Because if we all try some way, I mean, really, the solution is to regulate Facebook or just delete it from existence. But I mean, realistically speaking, in the short term, the best thing that we can all do is commit to like blow out the misinformation spreaders. If you see one of your friends on Facebook posting something about how masks are stupid or bad, post three more pieces of pro mask information to make sure you drown out all of the misinformation. And it's not this isn't like a perfect solution. But misinformation is so rampant currently that people who weren't even previously that political are susceptible to radicalization because they're being bombarded with it so much. So whatever we can do to make a difference, even if it's a small amount, I think is worthwhile because people are dying and every life matters. Even people who are stubborn and anti-vax, I want them to not die. I want to stop them from dying. And the best way we do that is to convince them to do what's best for their own health and get vaccinated.