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Comment by MontagFTB | Hacker News Reader

I believe a serious issue with your “protect the unvaccinated” statement is it overlooks the amount of pressure they exert on our shared medical system. If your hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others.

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As I mentioned on another thread, I just spent a few days in the hospital with an appendicitis. The hospital was swamped with COVID patients. It took 16 hours for me to be admitted to the hospital, which I was told was quite long for this hospital. My hospital roommate waited nearly 30 hours. The non-covid floor that I was on was severely understaffed, with nurses caring for 2.5x as many patients as normal. The nursing staff was run ragged.

I'm not sure exactly what we should do. We can't just refuse to treat the unvaccinated (I half suggested this before, which I regret), but we need to maintain our ability to care for other people. I didn't make a conscious decision that landed me in the hospital. My roommate didn't decide to let a spider bite his foot. The stage 4 cancer patient whose "elective" surgery was postponed didn't decide to get cancer. The heart patient who can't get an ICU bed didn't decide to have a heart attack.

I could imagine having regional FEMA/national guard run COVID hospitals. But where would the staff come from? There are a limited supply of trained medical staff.

I'm just not sure what we can do that's humane and fair to everyone besides just provide incentives to get vaccinated. We probably need WWII level propaganda to convince the unvaccinated.

So your assumption is that all the covid patients were unvaccinated?

Not an assumption. Just the data showing this to be true almost universally across the US. Statistically, breakthrough cases also skew older. Locally where I live >95% of patients in the hospital with COVID are unvaccinated.

It's a safe assumption that MOST are unvaccinated based on all available data. But of course not ALL (statistically speaking).

We could address the hospitalization issue by doing a better job of deciding when to hospitalize. It seems that more than half of the cases of those who are taking spaces in hospitals are asymptomstic, mild, or incidental.

https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448...

That study is based on VA data and not reflective of the general population. It seems very problematic to talk as if that's true for all hospitals.

They're in the hospital for other reasons.

> hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others

Was in Jackson Hole for Labor Day weekend. They border Idaho, whose voluntarily unvaccinated have filled its hospitals. In four days I met as many nurses and one doctor who quit out of frustration. They could no longer empathise with their patients, each describing a visceral anger at tending to ICUs of COVID patients, all unvaccinated.

I was there too. I was also in Boise, and Twin Falls, ID.

I went to no less than 20 doctors or nurses in the space of 2 weeks

Not one doctor mentioned anything about quitting or being short-staffed.

This is definitely one of the reasons I bailed after Medical school. Unvaccinated COVID patients are new, but that kind of decision making is not. Once I realized medicine was as much begging people to make good decisions as it was actually helping people, I just didn't think I could spend a lifetime doing that. Anecdotally, the few physician contacts I've kept are regularly posting about how much they are working. Which is impressive, because to them working 60+ hours a week is not considered too much.

> Not one doctor mentioned anything about quitting or being short-staffed

This likely comes down to self selection. You were in Idaho, I in Jackson. Also, relatively-rural Driggs versus denser Boise having different rates of spare hospital capacity as well as vaccination. (Or seeing a doctor at their office versus off duty.) Given Idaho was flirting with crisis standards of care, I think it’s objective to say they have a problem.

20 doctors/nurses in 2 weeks? I hope you were taking a survey or selling medical equipment, and you were not ill.

It did seem crazy at the time.

But not ill. Thanks for your concern.

One of the doctors was an ophthalmologist. Did the full vision test while at it. I was not driving - mostly doing uber to get around.

Made the mistake accepting the eye drops they often do for vision testing.

My phone was a complete blur after the drops.

Yes...I had a few more appts that day.

Trying to get around or even something as basic as calling was hard. Now imagine having to fill out online forms on mobile. Nightmare

In quiet desperation, i tried to turn on the accessibility settings on my android.

The phone suddenly started parroting loudly YOU ARE NOW USING ACCESSIBILITY SETTINGS PLEASE CONFIRM in the middle of a quiet waiting room.

The 3 hours that followed where the most vulnerable and humbling of my life.

Percentage of 65+ people in Idaho with at least one covid vaccine dose: 93.2%

Percentage of 65+ people in Wyoming with at least one covid vaccine dose: 89.2%.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...

I don't understand their frustration.

There's not much they can do for a patient once that patient is admitted to the ICU.

Hospitals should have been setting up Covid wards, or tents. The hospital had enough time. Other than intubation there's not much. I guess if you are important enough you get those coveted antibodies that were donated, or blood thinning drugs if you have blood clots in your lungs.

I've never met a doctor who quit over ethics. I've seen many who quit over ego disutes, or pay.

In medicine there's something called Professional Deniability. American doctors gave it in spades.

I'm all for getting the idiots vaccinated, but don't buy the caring doctor quitting because he/she has a moral dilemma.

(I think American doctors are good, but caring no. Ethical just enough to keep them out of a Malpractise suit.)

> Hospitals should have been setting up Covid wards, or tents.

They have, at least where I am. As demand goes up, they've even shut down whole clinics to reserve them for COVID patients.

> The hospital had enough time.

They definitely did not have enough time to train and hire new nurses and doctors.

They are not quitting out of ethics, ego or pay. They are quitting because they are overworked (more patients per doctor), and putting their own lives at risk because people made a choice not to get vaccinated.

> Hospitals should have been setting up Covid wards, or tents.

didn't this happen basically everywhere already, and most if not all of ended up being unneeded at the time? our local civic center converted into a temporary emergency covid care facility months ago and it was never used, so they shut it down. now the local healthcare corporation CEO is claiming the ICUs are full again. well if that's truly the case, we could easily set up the emergency care facility again, our mayor and governor have shown they're more than willing to help when the situation arises. so, at least here in my neck of the woods, something doesn't add up.

>They could no longer empathise with their patients, each describing a visceral anger at tending to ICUs of COVID patients, all unvaccinated.

Did you ask them if they treat obese people the same way?

If obesity could be prevented with a simple shot, and was otherwise overwhelming our healthcare system, that might be a useful question.

It IS overwhelming our health system. The 1,3, and 9th causes of death can all be attributed to in whole or at least in part to obesity. And guess what it has a super simple treatment called exercise and healthy diet. You can add it to reasons for dying from COVID as well.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-...

While we're at it since you seem to be really into some weird sort of eugenics mindset why don't you let us all know whether drug addicts should get treated? You might wanna tread carefully on this authoritarian attitude you've got going. You're treading a very fine line deciding who's worthy of treatment and who's not.

I do not want a medical system that gets to pass judgement on who they're going to administer treatment to. That's absolutely horrifying. These nurses can vent all they want but the moment they suggest they're not going to do everything they can to save people they should be relieved of their jobs.

> While we're at it since you seem to be really into some weird sort of eugenics mindset

I’m morbidly curious what leads you to say that.

I mean you could get Osha to start banning foods or do whatever with the jurisdiction they have now. Tax sugar out of existence. Then government subsidize all healthier foods. I mean the amount of money we spent no Covid we could have done all this....

But wait are you saying people should be able to make their on decisions? Obesity effects only a single person. Nope obesity is transmissible. I've seen too many couples where 1 is skinny and the other is obese or overweight. They both become overweight.

No one in the history of the world has died from obesity two weeks after simply spending time with another obese person.

Yes but if we sent everyone a Peloton in March 2020 and required use of it how many people would we have saved by now? Just pay people to use it which seems more ethical than paying people to take the vaccine.

Pandemics come and go. We might as well use fear to pass policies now like we did after 9/11

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