Dr. Brytney Cobia talks her viral ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’ social media post - AL.com

This story is part of AL.com's series "21 Alabamians who made a difference in 2021," highlighting people who have made our state a better place to live this year. Stories in this series will publish each weekday from Dec. 5 to Dec. 31. Find all stories in the series as they publish here, and read about the Alabamians who made a difference in 2020 by clicking here.

In July 2021, Dr. Brytney Cobia found herself fighting a war on two fronts.

First, as a hospitalist practicing at Birmingham's Grandview Medical Center, she worked to keep a surging number of critically ill COVID patients alive as the delta variant began to spike in Alabama.

Second, she battled a flood of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy, trying to persuade those who had not yet gotten the shot to do so before they ended up as another sad statistic in the state's struggle against an unforgiving virus.

Cobia hadn't planned to make the second fight quite so public. But her exasperated Facebook post and subsequent AL.com story ignited sparks across all corners of the internet, making her the face of thousands of frustrated healthcare workers begging people to take a simple shot that could potentially save their own lives.

In her first interview since she became internet famous, Cobia told AL.com last week that she thinks her statements took off because she was expressing the frustrations and anguish that thousands of other doctors and healthcare workers were experiencing at the time.

"It's important to remember that I'm just a regular person," Cobia said. "I'm just a doctor during a pandemic who just happened to have a really bad week and a series of really devastating patient encounters that compelled me to make a Facebook post, which is something I don't typically do, at a time when everybody really needed to hear it.

"I really feel that there's nothing special about what I said. Thousands of healthcare workers across the country have and continue to say the same things. But for some reason, my words resonated at that particular time."

Alabama was, at the time, last in the country in vaccination rate with only 33.7 percent of the population fully vaccinated, and the delta variant was surging throughout the state, causing COVID hospitalization numbers to skyrocket to levels that hadn't been seen since the vaccines became widely available.

Only this time, the patients flooding Alabama hospitals had almost all made the choice to forego the vaccine, a choice that cost many their lives.

In a moment of frustration and exhaustion from treating growing numbers of unvaccinated COVID patients, Cobia wrote a Facebook post that would be shared millions of times on social media, headline newscasts around the world.

"I've made a LOT of progress encouraging people to get vaccinated lately!!!," Cobia wrote on Facebook. "Do you want to know how?

"I'm admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they're intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I'm sorry, but it's too late.

"A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. They cry. And they tell me they didn't know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn't get as sick. They thought it was 'just the flu'. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can't. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives."

That July 18 Facebook post, and her July 21 interview with AL.com, took off even faster than the delta variant.

President Joe Biden referenced Cobia's story later that week in a plea to increase vaccinations. Alabama Republicans like Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth shared the story urging Alabamians to get the shot.

Days later, Gov. Kay Ivey wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post urging Alabamians to get vaccinated.

On August 13, Ivey announced that Alabama's vaccine distribution had increased by more than 100 percent from the past month.

"One of the most amazing parts of the whole experience was watching the vaccination rates in our area rise after the story started spreading," Cobia said. "And I remember a couple days after everything went viral, I was contacted by a colleague at UAB, who told me they had one of their biggest surges in vaccine appointments since the initial rollout of the vaccine."

Some of that was likely related to Alabama's soaring number of delta variant cases and hospitalizations, but some was likely also due to Cobia's story.

"Of course, in no way is that all attributable to me, but the timing of it reinforced that these conversations need to be had," she said. "They're so difficult but they're so important, and they will save people's lives."

But there was a down side too. Her email and social media accounts were flooded with thousands of messages as the story spread across the globe. Some were positive, from other health care workers who were experiencing the same thing she was, or from people who said they or a loved one had decided to get the vaccine after reading her story.

"The people of Alabama, they are my people," Cobia said. "They're my friends and family. I was born and raised here. I studied here, I trained in medicine here, I practice medicine here. I'm raising my kids here. And I want to see all my friends and neighbors and Alabamians live, and I don't want to watch them die."

But some of the responses were less encouraging. She received messages that attacked her credibility, threats directed at her and her family.

"The aftermath of the article and the viral nature of the post and the article was completely unexpected," Cobia said. "And it was accompanied by this crushing attention."

After the AL.com story posted, Cobia stopped doing additional interviews. She tapped trusted friends to help filter her social media accounts and email inbox, deleting the worst of the deluge of negativity that flooded in.

"I didn't read any comments," Cobia said. "I didn't watch or listen to any news media coverage. I just kept my head down, kept going to the hospital every day and doing my job."

But she couldn't escape the attention entirely, and was hounded by internet detectives who used outdated statistics to try to disprove her story.

"It's a very weird feeling to have your integrity questioned so passionately," Cobia said. "And it was hard at the time because the data on new cases and deaths were lagging behind my post. So of course there was nothing to support my declaration that cases were rising, people were dying."

According to statistics from the Alabama Department of Public Health, Alabama was just beginning a surge of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths when Cobia made her post, peaking in August with numbers that hadn't been seen since January 2020, when the vaccine was not widely available.

"Of course, it all seems rather obvious that I wasn't lying now that we're on the other side of this most recent surge," Cobia said. "But one of the most difficult parts of this was knowing that I just had to be patient and wait for the truth to come out."

It helped that Cobia got some good news about her own family in the midst of the media maelstrom.

Two days after the AL.com story was published, Cobia found out she was pregnant with her third child.

"That was one thing that helped us get through the craziness, was discovering that we were expecting baby No. 3," she said.

Cobia and her husband Miles, who is also a physician, already have two children, Claire and Carter.

Cobia said that she received her vaccine booster dose to help protect herself and her unborn child from the virus.

"When the time came, my OB did encourage me to get the booster and I got it around 20 weeks," Cobia said. "I feel very grateful knowing that no matter what happens with the new variants and whatever may come next that right now I've given me and my baby the best chance that we have to be safe and healthy."

Looking back now, Cobia says she is glad that she made her post, even with all the negative attention it attracted.

When she was a child, her mother would drop her off at school and tell her to "make a difference," every day throughout her childhood.

"All the way through high school, if she forgot she would roll down the window and scream at me as I went to the building," Cobia said.

"And I feel no matter how difficult this has been and unexpected with all the attention and all the challenges that this brought, I feel certain I will look back on this time as one of the most meaningful experiences of my life."