So the big news is that there is some doctors(curiously no intensive care specialists in your article) say "there should be a debate about it"? That is clear evidence that NOBODY gives a shit about these opinions. Oh... And a "Family physician"(the "bullshit specialist" who has no idea how an ICU works, never set foot in one and whose main training is "how to be a communist doctor") says that "public health" is more important than an individual's health? Shocker!!??? You have no idea what you're talking about. Fuck your propaganda bullshit.
Note that hospital systems across the country are already de-prioritizing the unvaccinated for ICU space. This is not just a discussion by media pundits; it is underway in hospitals. Starting with the North Texas hospital system which caused all the initial controversy over this issue. If Covid vaccine refusers are turned away at hospitals and doctor offices, is that ethical? Taking vaccination status into account when deciding whether to treat a patient can be acceptable — sometimes. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...ned-away-hospitals-doctor-offices-ncna1277475
There is no "de prioritizing" and no "hospital systems across the country"... Even in your BS article. A memo is considering this or that... Horseshit as usual.
Whatever... you can easily find over 800,000 results on prioritization and triage criteria for hospitals based on Covid vaccination status. This subject is still being hotly debated within the medical community as different hospital systems set their standards. Are you trying to claim that hospitals already don't prioritize ICU beds based on multiple patient health factors -- aligned with the likelihood of survival. Covid vaccination status is just on more indicator on the likelihood of the patient surviving which is being taken into account when deciding if patient A or patient B gets the ICU bed. Vaccination Status May Be Considered To Get ICU Beds At Dallas-Area Hospitals If Covid Spread Worsens https://www.forbes.com/sites/nichol...tals-if-covid-spread-worsens/?sh=caf0f2f1620e
When the Hippocratic Oath meets the hypocrisy of the unvaccinated https://thehill.com/opinion/healthc...-oath-meets-the-hypocrisy-of-the-unvaccinated The historic COVID-19 pandemic has brought us to a critical point. Pillars of our advanced society — hospitals, schools, businesses — have been severely stressed or on the cusp of failure. As both veterans of medical institutions and patients with serious chronic conditions, we are keenly aware of the fragility of our beleaguered emergency room, intensive care and other hospital staff. We fear for their future. Yet, each day our health care system faces the relentless demands of a daily tide of the nearly dead — largely unvaccinated, but needing and demanding sophisticated care nonetheless. Exhausted doctors and nurses try heroically to treat all comers. A general, vague understanding of the Hippocratic Oath seems to demand that everyone requires care regardless of the why of their conditions. Although the so-called oath is neither a true oath nor a binding contract signed by doctors and hospital administrators, the very notion of denial of care seems to betray the essence of the caring profession. Nonetheless, a growing number of people have begun to suggest that vaccination should be a condition of treatment, with the simple phrase, “No vaccination, no hospitalization.” This emerging sentiment was challenged in a recent Atlantic article, “It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People.” A physician and ethicist at the University of Colorado, Matt Wynia, summarized this view, “It is completely contrary to the tenets of medical ethics, which have stood pretty firm since the Second World War.” “We don’t use the medical-care system as a way of meting out justice. We don’t use it to punish people for their social choices,” he added. This view seems to miss the essential point of our current quandary. In our uniquely and deeply individualistic society, discussions of social dilemmas are quickly reduced to questions of personal liberty, choice and compulsion. Threats to essential institutions take a back seat to the widely reported and always moving stories of individuals. Given the resultant deep cleavage in worldviews, two camps emerge. Those who value science, American medicine and our health care systems are those who get vaccinated, wear masks and try to follow the evolving rules. We make every effort to stay out of the hospital unless all else fails. Those of us facing regular visits to hospital clinics, the ER, dialysis or pre-transplant appointments must go the extra mile, answering the COVID-19 symptom questions, taking the test of the day and showing our vaccination cards — just to get through the door. We do this to protect ourselves, other patients and hospital staff. Because we survive on the fruits of this amazing system, we honor its demands. At the same time — and in the same country — tens of millions of people differ strongly. They expect health care professionals to practice some version of the Hippocratic Oath, but they seem to practice what could be called “the Curse of Hypocrisy.” They appear to be comfortable treating society’s institutions as dispensable and disposable. Many ridicule medical best practices, promote fraudulent cures and demonize the nation’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci as well as tireless physicians and nurses. Yet, the people turn to them in breathless agony when, at warp speed, their ongoing vaccination denial turns to deadly disease. This solipsistic concern of the unvaccinated for only their wellbeing is at its heart profoundly anti-social. The unvaccinated so crowd ERs and ICUs that in some cities, hospitals have at times ordered EMTs to stop sending ambulances to pick up the desperately ill. “Elective surgeries” for pacemakers or organ transplants have been postponed or canceled. The impact of this endless wave of preventable illness over years risks the erosion if not destruction of the health care system our complex society depends on now and will in the future. The time has come to pull back the curtain and prioritize the maintenance of our health care system and its worn out staffs. In pre-pandemic days, shortages and system collapse were not on the horizon. This pandemic is a massively disruptive event, raising the most basic issues of life and death. It is not business as usual. COVID-19 has attacked our society, its institutions and its people mercilessly. With nearly 1 million dead and with thousands more ill and our hospitals on life support, we cannot be guided by a distorted reading of Hippocrates or a rampant epidemic of hypocrisy. Ideally, those who seem to live in a distorted reality will somehow begin to revise their anti-science and anti-medical views. Failing that, they can abandon their hypocrisy and stay true to their skepticism by avoiding hospitals and, when stricken, treat themselves with the questionable cures they tout at home. Otherwise, when new variants may emerge and our fragile systems could again begin to fail, the larger society will do what it must to defend itself. After all, there can be no greater harm to all of us than catering to the hypocrisy of some of us and killing the safety net of our health care system for the rest of us. Just as individuals make the choice of life over possible death, of vaccination over likely hospitalization, so must hospitals choose to persevere and serve patients rather than commit institutional suicide. “No vaccination, no hospitalization” may move from slogan to policy, because of the continuing collective choice of the unvaccinated themselves.
If you had the opportunity to save someone from Covid...would you spend your time and energy to save someone that understands the importance of vaccines or would you prefer trying to change the minds of those that are ignorant ??? At the Pandemic peak waves, soon after a Variant of Concern showed up, many hospitals were forced to go into a "triage mode" because they were near/at capacity levels that require them to determine which patients are more important than other patients. Some look at the insurance of the patient, some went by first come first serve, some looked at the age of the patient and some looked at the vaccination status of the patient. It's an ugly side of hospital care but it does happen when hospitals reach capacity levels that force them to decide which patient is more important than another patient. This happened at my brother hospital when another hospital reached capacity and needed help from his hospital... He asked them to send him only their "vaccinated patients" because Nurses and Doctors at his hospital had been infected by those not vaccinated and his hospital could not risk losing any more healthcare workers plus they didn't have the ICU capacity for the worst cases that tended to be not vaccinated. Regardless, its not an issue right now because Covid numbers have dramatically been coming down thanks to Omicron and the Vaccinated. Hospitals slowly going back to number but its unsettling due to the fact that we've reached an acceptable daily Covid Death level that prior to the Pandemic people would say is unacceptable. wrbtrader