Beehive State News

Dr. Mary Tipton has a prescription for Americans concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic: Listen to health-care professionals, not politicians or the media.

“I believe physicians need to lead,” Dr. Tipton told Beehive State News. “Patients don’t know what to believe and they need us to be a voice of reason. It can be difficult to evaluate absolute and relative risk, but we can help with that. If we do not, then others with agendas which are not in sync with our patients will decide. And ... we are all patients.”

That’s why she joined Restore American Communities Safely, a coalition of doctors, scientists, public health officials, economists and social scientists who say they are “uniting to get the country and the economy back on its feet.”

Dr. Tipton was born and raised in Anchorage, AK. She trained at University of Arizona as a chemical engineer, graduating Summa Cum Laude before attending medical school at University of Utah.

“I trained for two specialties in Dayton, Ohio, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics,” she said. “I’ve been a physician and owner at Copperview Medical Center in South Jordan, Utah, for 14 years.”

She has personal experience with the crisis which shaped her thoughts and ideas on how to respond.

“I have worked throughout the epidemic even more than full-time,” Tipton said. “I have four children, all in school that my husband and I had to home school. I own a business with 16 health care providers and over 50 employees and it has been an extremely stressful time.

“But the stress has not come from seeing sick patients,” she said. “We started doing coronavirus testing outside, under a tent in our parking lot by the dumpster, right away. We have tested 300 persons for coronavirus and only had seven positives. All our positives have been mild to moderately ill and none hospitalized.”

Tipton said they took all possible steps to ensure people were safe, but there were challenges that made it more difficult to properly treat people.

“We have blocked all sick patients from being seen in the office due to inability to keep my staff safe and not being able to know who has coronavirus and who does not,” she said. “These patients with sick symptoms and other high-risk patients have been evaluated by telemedicine, which is really non-ideal. We have already had some near-misses and I fear there will be more. The children, especially, are getting sub-par evaluations via telemedicine with the risk of either under- or over-diagnosing or missing things all together.”

A large portion of her patients are suffering an epidemic of mental illness, especially anxiety, Tipton said. Lockdowns have only increased their suffering.

“I have seen heartbreaking isolation and depression in the elderly. I have seen countless lonely teens, numbing themselves on a constant diet of electronics and depression-promoting social media,” she said. “I have cried with many who are unable to visit their loved ones in the hospital while they were dying (due to causes unrelated to COVID). I have felt helpless counseling parents of special-needs children who are feeling defeated trying to work from home, while also being the teacher, physical therapist, social worker, occupational therapist and psychologist.

“It simply can’t be done,” the doctor said. “These special-needs children are suffering and their parents feel helpless watching them decline. I have seen many patients afraid to go to the hospital or my office wait way too long for evaluation of their medical condition and then have worse outcomes because of it.”

She supported the initial lockdown. It played an important role, in her view.

“I feel that our leaders did what they felt they had to do with the information provided to them at that time (early March),” Dr. Tipton said. “However, I believe it’s time to weigh out the costs of further shutdowns with the risks of death from coronavirus. We know so much more now than we did three months ago.

“We can target our approach and identify carriers, and outbreaks and provide hospital care while still allowing people to live,” she said. “The collateral damage of isolation and lockdowns is great and we are just starting to see a measure of the coming wave of more consequences. These must be taken into account before any future lockdowns are entertained.”

The public needs concrete ways they can protect themselves and their loved ones. Her diagnosis is be honest with them and allow people to make informed choices.

“They need to understand that the numbers and reports they see on their screens may not apply to them personally, or in their community,” Dr. Tipton said. “They need to be allowed to make choices for themselves, i.e. to accept risks and consequences of their actions, while still considering the risks they can be to others. The public needs access to testing and encouragement that they shouldn’t fear testing or contact tracing because it helps us keep our communities open.”