Does acting as a life coach and motivational speaker also qualify someone to venture into the realm of pandemic treatment? A new report from Zoe Schiffer at The Verge explores the unsettling lawsuit that Debbie Kosta, a longtime employee of Tony Robbins and Robbins Research International, recently filed against Robbins.
Like far too many people this year, Kosta grappled with a severe case of COVID-19. In Robbins’s account, he offered insight that helped Kosta recover. In her telling, Robbins’s actions complicated her recovery.
Certain facts are not in dispute. Schiffer writes that, in April, Kosta was hospitalized after spending three days with a fever of 104. At the hospital, she was given a ventilator; the staff also put her into a medically induced coma.
In Robbins’s telling, he convinced the doctors to lower the pressure on the ventilator, fearing damage to Kosta’s lungs. Kosta’s lawsuit, meanwhile, accuses Robbins’s wife of trying to “pry information from” Kosta’s daughter Stella regarding Kosta’s health and condition. A spokesperson for Robbins told The Verge that the “allegations concerning RRI, Mr. Robbins and his wife, are false.”
As Schiffer notes, the lawsuit also raises larger questions regarding Robbins’s handling of the pandemic.
“Robbins had been walking a thin line between COVID-19 skepticism and denial,” Schiffer writes. “He didn’t doubt that the disease existed, but he hinted that the news coverage surrounding the death rate was exaggerated.”
Robbins has also begun touting a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Covaxx, a company that’s received funding from Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital group in which Robbins is a partner.
More Like This
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
