On the one hand, medical gatekeepers sucks when they’re like the dumb-ass, racist nurse who didn’t believe I had pneumonia

For what it’s worth, without the lab testing you wouldn’t know whether it was bacterial/viral/fungal/mycoplasma pneumonia or something with secondary pneumonia. Take the wrong antibiotic and it does nothing while your condition worsens. Take them for viral pneumonia and they do nothing while the condition resolves on its own. Medical gatekeeping is there for a reason.