Why do they rely on Doctors and medicine when they are sick, but not to prevent the illness?
In my opinion, yes. Unless it can be demonstrated that the community would experience real clear and present harm. Otherwise, some docs will refuse to give lifesaving treatment to the intoxicated due to fear that the drunk will kill someone by DUI. Or not treat a gunshot victim if he’s a drug dealer, lest a future customer die of OD. Etc. etc.
Besides, who’s going to interrogate the victim to find out what their beliefs/lifestyles are, and determine if they’re fit to live? Not me, I’ve got other things I need to do for sick people.
Because people are dumb.
I think the issue here is different than treating drunk people.
In this case we literally are running out of ICU beds, running out of ventilators and (as noted above) some hospitals are closing their emergency rooms which affects anyone with an emergency of any sort.
Unvaccinated people are making matters worse and causing an ongoing problem. Hospital staff in many areas are starting to complain that they simply cannot keep up the pace.
If you tell people ahead of time that if they are unvaccinated they will not be treated at the hospital then they can make their own choice knowing the consequences of that choice.
This video is not exactly on topic for the OP but it has some relevance and is interesting:
Not really. It’s not remotely the ‘best’ way and is far closer to being entirely useless than it is to being even somewhat effective. It’s comparable to an attempt to reduce crime by increasing sentencing guidelines. Criminals don’t commit crimes with the expectation of being caught, and anti-vaxxers don’t avoid vaccines with the expectation of needing a ventilator.
While I’m fine conceptually with de-prioritizing unvaxxed Covid patients, it shouldn’t be for the purpose encouraging vaccination. If there is another, legitimate, reason to put them further down the list, let’s do that, otherwise it should be normal triage.
And many are not. @Johnny_L.A posted the article below in another thread.
Some tidbits:
Our friends in health care have seen plenty to impale the heart in this COVID-19 pandemic, but nothing more tragic than this: the sight of guilt-ridden young children who believe they’ve killed an unvaccinated parent by bringing the virus home.
“And as they’re dying, the kids are at the bedside apologizing,” a hospital nurse tells me.
And…
“He asked her if she’d had her vaccine, and he was just like, ‘You’re stupid,’” the nurse says. “Just laid into her about how everybody’s falling for what the government says and COVID’s not real and you shouldn’t get the vaccine. While he’s laying in an ICU bed.”
While the story has more anecdotes the people telling these stories say they see this kind of thing all the time.
Big problem.
Governments had many months, before any vaccine was available, to build a system so vaccine status could be verified. They didn’t, so those of us who are pro-mandate have a problem.
Next time, they should. And failing to be vaccinated should be punished by a fine, as was commonplace during local epidemics a century ago.
As for medical staff, not treating the unvaccinated equally would be unethical.
I would like it if those hospitals which have required vaccination for all staff to put up signs to that effect, and also mention a preference that unvaxxed patients, on a voluntary basis, seek care elsewhere.
It has nothing to do with punishment. In normal times, severity is how cases are triaged. When resources are low, that isn’t necessarily the first criterion. When things get really bleak, triage sometimes has to prioritize who has the greatest chance of survival. If you are unvaxxed, your outcome is more dire. If they have to choose, the person who will more likely survive will be the one chosen. That’s kind of why we’ve been encouraging vaccination and social distancing. To flatten the curve and not make medical professionals have to choose.
No tougher than deciding whether to treat normal weight patients with M.I.s before morbidly obese ones. Or deciding if the non-smoker with pneumonia gets precedence for an I.C.U. bed over a smoker.
Isn’t it a cardinal principle of medicine to conduct triage according to moral judgments?
Again…there is an important distinction here.
The hospitals are running out of ICU beds and some are closing their ERs. So many people refusing vaccination are overwhelming our medical system. More, it is not a temporary blip where a hospital is overwhelmed for a few hours. This looks to go on for weeks or months.
Obese people are not flooding ERs and shutting them down.
To add to my previous post…stuff like this:
Obese people do not affect my health.
Unvaccinated people do affect my health.
Problem with all of this is that sometimes you still may be picking an unvaccinated over a vaccinated in triage.
I am guessing a 30 year old unvaccinated has better chance of survival than 75 year old vaccinated, once they get to the point of needing an ICU bed. Yeah, the 30 year old will survive the experience more likely, but their decision is taking resources away from someone else who could have had a better chance.
Well, at least a few local governments have. My job just started requiring mandatory verified vaccination or 2x/week testing (and it may soon became mandated period now that Pfizer has full approval). Per HR said vaccination cannot be verified by a simple image of your vaccination card, but only by a downloadable QR code from the California state database (which then just takes you to a picture of your card).
There are potentially devastating long-term social implications of politicizing healthcare, and we can say that refusing to care for the unvaccinated is not a political decision, but that’s really what it is. There would be a breakdown in trust between the health professions and the communities they serve. In fact, this breakdown in trust is cited as one of the reasons that African Americans are vaccine-hesitant, and understandably so.
The best place to put pressure on the anti-vaxxers is to make their lives inconvenient. Make it harder for them to work, to socialize with others, to eat out at a restaurant. Isolate them out there, but not when they’re sick.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’ve been curious about this. As I understand it, Africa-Americans cite the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. But in that case, vaccines were withheld. Today, vaccines are being given. It’s the opposite of what happened at Tuskegee.
It’s a lack of trust in the public health system, not so much distrust of the vaccines. Some – I have no idea how many – don’t trust healthcare institutions (public or private) to act in their best interests. For some, they might be vaccine hesitant; for others, this lack of trust might be manifest differently.
I was just using that one example to show that it’s potentially - likely - counterproductive to impede access to healthcare to punish those who avoid vaccination and end up needing a hospital bed. I have no problem with standard triage, and perhaps even some rationing such as keeping certain beds or hospital wings open for non-COVID cases.
And it continues:
And more:
“All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it,” Dr. Jason McElyea, a doctor based in Oklahoma, said. “If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
The unfortunate part is not only are the ambulances unavailable for the unvaccinated and Ivermectin self-dosers, they are out for everybody else as well. I’d say stories about some guy who had a stroke unrelated to either but couldn’t be treated in ER because of that need to be played up, but don’t think it would move the needle with those who are willingly ignorant.
If an antivaxxer or invermectin overdoser comes into hospital and there is an available bed, staff and equipment, then treat them and give them standard care.
If a situation develops where somebody vaccinated presents with covid, or a stroke, accident or other patient needs a bed, and there is none available, then the antivaxxer/invermectin overdoser should be removed from the room, put in a hallway or parking garage and given compassionate comfort relief only. Let them pass away peacefully, while giving regular care to regular patients. It’s what they signed up for.