Forced Weekly Nasal Swabs During the Pandemic – Another Layer of Coercion on Vulnerable Patients

Anyone else remember the weekly Thursday routine at River Oaks (AAC) during the pandemic?

At this facility in Riverview/River Oaks, FL (and I imagine similar policies at other AAC locations), patients were not allowed to continue treatment unless they sat in a nursing office and submitted to a long swab jammed deep into the nasal passages...“up our skulls,” as many of us described it.

It was extremely painful. Refusal meant risking discharge, which for many of us on probation, court-ordered, or otherwise coerced into treatment for addiction or trauma-related issues carried the real threat of jail or worse.

Many people I was with reported significant symptoms afterward. At the time it was framed purely as COVID testing/protocol. Trust in institutions was already low; experiences like this made it lower.

Recently circulating posts (sources clearly questionable) have pointed to U.S. Patent Application Publication US20130085472A1 (“Microneedle Nasal Delivery Device,” inventor Christopher Shaari, assignee Toxcure LLC, filed 2011, published 2013).

The application describes a nasal device with one or more microneedles on a substrate (examples include cotton, sponge, probe, roller, etc.), sometimes with a reservoir, intended for delivery of compositions/therapeutic agents into nasal or sinus mucosa. The patent application was later abandoned and never issued as a granted patent.

It is a proposed delivery tool, not a diagnostic sampling swab. Standard COVID-era nasopharyngeal or nasal swabs used for PCR/antigen testing were designed for specimen collection (flocked/synthetic fiber tips on plastic or wire shafts).

Extensive fact-checking and public records show no credible evidence that mass-testing swabs incorporated microneedles, reservoirs, or delivery technology from this (or similar) abandoned applications, nor any link to Anthony Fauci directing such use, nor that the swabs were “laced” with anything beyond standard materials.

That said: the patent application is real, the idea of microneedle nasal delivery exists in the research literature as an intended medical technology (for drugs, vaccines, etc.), and the forced, painful, weekly nature of the testing at River Oaks (tied to continued access to treatment for people already in a highly vulnerable, often court-coerced position) remains an ethical problem regardless of the conspiracy framing. Patients with addiction, trauma, or dual diagnoses were already under extreme pressure.

Adding mandatory invasive procedures as a condition of care is one more example of the power imbalance and lack of true informed consent that this petition has documented across AAC facilities.

This fits the broader pattern the petition highlights: profit-driven or protocol-driven practices that treat patients as revenue sources or compliance checkboxes rather than people in crisis.

Many of us were there under threat of legal consequences for having a medical/mental-health issue.

One more ethical violation on unsuspecting, vulnerable patients.(Related personal context: some of us also carried trauma from phenomena such as being stalked by a “flying predator” experience—see my other petition [https://www.change.org/flyingpredatorphenomenon].)If you experienced the weekly swab protocol (or anything similar) at River Oaks or another AAC site, and especially if you had lasting symptoms or felt the coercion, please share in the comments or contact me privately.

Documentation of these practices strengthens the case for independent investigation, audits, and accountability.

Sign and share if you haven’t: we need regulatory bodies, accreditors, state health departments, SAMHSA, and others to look hard at AAC’s pattern of preventable harm.

No more treating vulnerable people as disposable.