“I realize that some people feel the restrictions shouldn't apply to them,” Shannen Doherty writes in an impassioned plea on Instagram. “They are young and healthy and [think they] will survive this,” says Doherty, who has been fighting stage 4 breast cancer for over a year. Like many cancer patients, Doherty is likely to have a compromised immune system which puts this group at increased risk of infection by the coronavirus.
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Read More- “Do you have a grandparent you love?”
- “Do you have a family member with a compromised immune system?”
- “Do you have a friend with cancer?”
- “And do you really want to roll the dice on your own life right now?”
As we’ve seen reports of students on spring-break and others who fail to grasp the gravity of the coronavirus outbreak, celebrities have added their voices to the cry for social-distancing.
Some Celebrities Are Ignoring the Social-Distancing Rules
“Lost” actor, Evangeline Lilly, posted one of the more tone-deaf messages on Instagram recently: “#morningtea â˜•ï¸ Just dropped my kids off at gymnastics camp. They all washed their hands before going in. They are playing and laughing. #businessasusual.”
Lilly also revealed that she's living with her father, who has stage 4 leukemia, the Daily Beast reported. So she is also increasing his chance of infection from the virus. Blood cancer patients are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, says Dr. Marc Braunstein, MD, PhD, of NY Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, Assistant Professor of Medicine NYU Long Island School of Medicine, due to their weakened immune systems.
“In times like this, I worry even more so about my patients who are immunocompromised as a result of their cancer and their treatment regimen," says Dr. Braunstein, “Many of my patients with hematologic malignancies have altered adaptive immunity and, not uncommonly, they encounter pneumonias during the course of their treatment.”
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Among the thousands of outraged responses to Lilly’s post, this one from “woodmanseeee” stands out: “I am a nurse in the ICU and my husband an ER Doctor. THIS IS SERIOUS. 20 and 30 something’s are currently being intubated as well as older population that is at even more risk of death.”
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The ICU nurse continued: “There are not enough beds and things haven’t even got as bad as they are going to get. While I [too] respect [the] concept of freedom I also respect concepts of medical experts that see things differently. Your actions are selfish and misinformed.”
Shannen Doherty’s Cancer Journey
Doherty was public about her first journey with cancer after a 2015 biopsy determined that a lump in her breast was cancerous, she told Health. She initially tried to fight the disease through hormone therapy but, due to the cancer spreading to her lymph nodes, it was ineffective.
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A year after her diagnosis, she had a single mastectomy and underwent courses of chemotherapy and radiation followed by reconstructive surgery.
She received her new diagnosis stage 4 about a year ago, but Doherty opted to keep the news private as she worked on filming the "90210" reboot (since canceled) leaning on castmates, such as Brian Austin Green, she said.
Doherty went public with her stage 4 diagnosis in a Feb. 4 interview with ABC's Amy Robach, herself a breast cancer survivor, "I definitely have days where I say, 'Why me?' And then I go, 'Well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this?’" Doherty said. "None of us do."
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