Originally published at: ICUs full of COVID-19 patients forced into leaving people with treatable conditions to die | Boing Boing
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I do hope that all the unvaxxed clogging up ICUs will recover.
However, in their case (and only their case), I do feel like the crippling medical debt is somewhat justified.
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Just the other day a family member had to call 911 over a health crisis not directly related to COVID. There’s a hospital about five minutes away, but the ICU/CCUs there were full so the ambulance had to take them to one fifteen minutes away instead. Fortunately the crisis wasn’t acute, but when an ambulance is called every minute really starts to count.
This happened in an urban area in a sane state, so I’d imagine that getting sick or injured is an even worse “idea” in a rural area of a backwards state.
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Texas here. We’ve had to medivac auto accident victims out of state from Amarillo, and that was over a month ago. Even the “Doc in a Box” ER grifters were taking overflow from the real ERs and were full.
My 89-year-old father who is on blood thinners fell in the bathroom yesterday. Fortunately, it wasn’t bad. Had he needed the ER, I don’t know what we would have done.
I’m especially worried about folks with asthma and heart conditions right now.
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I’m in Idaho still for school (counting down the damn days till I can escape) and it’s really turning into a hellscape up in the northern part of the state. Alaska is starting to look similar: elective procedures are being approved on a day-by-day basis and the hospitals don’t have any beds. Getting bumped from an ER in Anchorage means you have to get flown down to Seattle.
Meanwhile, our elected officials refuse to encourage masks or vaccines. I’ve absolutely had enough of this shit.
(Edited for clarity and wrath)
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The guilt & shame the unvaxxed will feel, Oh wait a minute, their kkkpublicans/Qnuts they don’t have any shame nor guilt, or responsible for their shitty actions.
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Or, just hear me out, send the Covid patients home on hospice/palliative care and take people with treatable conditions? Since if they have to be intubated their chances of making it are very small, yes?
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Absoulutely.
If you show up to the hospital with COVID symptoms and no vaccine, you are putting everyone else at unnecessary risk and have a terrible prognosis. Triage rules say you would be a waste of limited resources, and should be turned away.
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Kind of an interesting side note to the Doc in a Box aspect to your note…
I guess we got very lucky in my community. We have two FSED near me; but both of them are run by the local hospital group, and are part of their insurance systems. One of them appears to be basically holding at that minor emergency room/ advanced urgent care level (although the same hospital group offers several urgent cares in the same area). The other one appears to be being built up into a full fledged hospital surprisingly quickly; it started out as an FSED, and it’s now got full imaging and blood work labs, a surgical center, several specialist practices, and a very small hospital ward. They are supposed to be building more hospital space and upgrading to a mid-level hospital within the next two years. Since they have 30 more acres at the site… it kind of feels like they always had this open as a possibility and just built the ER first since it is what was most needed in the area.
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This is a national health crisis. It NEEDS to become standard policy to turn away COVID patients who are willingly unvaccinated. If our resources are so strained that we’re having to choose between helping people who have deliberately refused protection and normal people suffering from maladies that couldn’t have been predicted, the choice is obvious. Bonus: the normal people won’t be abusing and trying to sue their doctors for attempting to save their lives.
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Hard to find the words on this. I went to the ER with appendicitis back in February. Luckily they had me on the operating table by the time my appendix burst. Still took a month to recover from the fever and infections. This happened slightly before the worst of Ontario’s third wave, and the hospital was clearly struggling. But I lived. It could have so easily gone the other way.
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As has been the case with this thing, national statistics are very deceiving.
Hospitals in Alabama have exceeded 100 percent capacity of ICU beds. The Alabama Hospital Association on Tuesday reported that there were 1,592 ICU patients in the state and only 1,549 staffed ICU beds, an excess of 43 patients
In Texas, 169 out of 506 reporting hospitals have ICUs above 95 percent full, which is up from just 69 in June
Alaska’s largest hospital—Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage—implemented crisis standards over the weekend
In Illinois, the state’s Department of Public Health reported for the first time that one of its health regions had run out of ICU bed
That 25% doesn’t sound so awfully bad, but where you are makes all the difference in the world. Life and death sort of difference.
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Someone crunched the numbers and compared the risk to others of being unvaccinated and driving drunk - and found they were the same. But I don’t think they included the ICU issue, and because unvaccinated folk are killing a lot of people indirectly this way, that would make being unvaccinated more dangerous to others than drunk driving.
Nope. It’s been pointed out, long before Trump, that the current Republican party has essentially weaponized their total lack of shame. It’s only gotten worse.
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As a fellow appendectomy survivor who was operated on just in time, I feel you. I was three days in, and would not have survived if this is the way things were at the time.
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A friend who is doing a surgery residency told me they had an ambulance call in with an need for a tracheotomy. They were the only facility with ENT surgeons available and had to turn the ambulance away because they literally couldn’t take in any more patients. It’s bad out there.
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And just think of the bills and expenses that will be assessed for the ER visit(s), medevac, and around the clock ICU efforts.
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I’m waiting for the day that insurance companies are going to refuse payment for hospital services in unvaxxed patients. They are the ones draining the system, not the people with medical conditions beyond their control.
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You know how much insurance companies love paying for expensive medical care that could have easily been avoided.
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Completely agree. They’re draining resources, personnel and PPP. Sending them home will not only help save patients that need the ER through no fault of their own, but also Docs, nurses, respiratory therapists, etc. won’t be spinning their wheels for a bunch of people who most likely won’t make. I have no sympathy for any of these MAGAts who choose not to be vaccinated, go to the hospital, are in ICU and THEN ask for the vaccine. I got mine as soon as it was available, and I’ll get the booster too. I’m hoping kids under 12 are able to hold on until vaxx’s are approved for them.
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Bigly.
