What you’re talking about could be accomplished by establishing a non-COVID buffer capacity, based on each hospital’s typical pre-COVID ICU load. If the hospital usually has 6 ICU beds taken up with cardiac, pulmonary, or neuro patients, then reserve that 6 bed buffer capacity for non-COVID patients. What you can’t reasonably ask anyone to do is choose who is going to die from the people right there in front of them. The organ transplant system uses algorithms and doesn’t put the decisions in the hands of the people who are already caring for the patients who are candidates for treatment.
My assertion isn’t about the patients, per se. It’s about the caregivers, who you are so eager to condemn to a lifetime of psychological trauma.
I’ve never stated the caregivers should be given this burden and I’ve made that clear several times. You are incorrect to assert that about what I’ve posted.
Yes, but you’ve gone much further than I am willing to presume what this mechanism would be. But what you describe would have to be informed by doctors, and not bureaucrats or insurance companies. That kind of oversight of policy and system can and should happen without traumatizing doctors.
That is technically what Gupta proposed. He didn’t suggest limiting COVID admissions. He specifically used language talking about unvaccinated COVID patients who are already taking up an ICU bed.
The whole idea of triage is to prioritize people who can more likely be saved, not to prioritize based on how they got into such condition in the first place. It is not about deciding who lives and who dies, but who can be saved so that limited resources go to ensuring that they are saved.
So if things get really bad, we may have to triage, but it won’t work the way that you are suggesting.
only relative to describing a system potentially overwhelmed. He said nothing that suggested pulling somebody from care. He did not say “admissions” but he was talking about admissions.
Of course. Do you think that a vaccinated person and an un-vaccinated person have equal chances of recovery? Or do you propose that we ignore this one particular very significant medical factor because of…? politics?
In the case of a heart attack or traffic accident? I thought we were talking about ICU capacity in general. And that’s why triage wouldn’t work the way you are proposing.
Mm hm. You could always take the same reasoning and shift it back and step. “We need more investment in critical care immediately, and we need governments to step up trying to persuade people to be vaccinated. I know they’re reluctant. But otherwise we would need to start rationing health care for them, which is too unconscionable not to do everything in our power to avoid.”
There are people here I really did think better than this.
I’m not in favor of denying the unvaccinated medical care in general, but prioritizing voluntarily unvaccinated people with COVID below vaccinated people with life-threatening conditions, when there are limited resources? Absolutely. They’re the reason for the overload on hospitals in the first place, they could have protected themselves, and they’re just going to spit in the doctors’ faces when they’re cured and go right back to infecting people. That said, I realize it’s not so easy as that, and probably isn’t feasible even if people weren’t arguing that it’s unethical (I would say letting a vaccinated person die in their place is much MORE unethical, but I’ve never worked in the medical field).
So once again, I guess there’s no solution and the voluntarily unvaccinated will happily continue to spread their COVID and conspiracy theories while still receiving all the benefits of the society they hold in contempt, while the rest of us suffer and perish because of their selfishness. Great.
