6 ms·

I'm not scared of Covid-19, I'm mostly concerned that as the numbers continue to rise and the hospitals/ICUs around me get more Covid-19 cases, it'll force the

by colmvp 5y ago

I'm not scared of Covid-19, I'm mostly concerned that as the numbers continue to rise and the hospitals/ICUs around me get more Covid-19 cases, it'll force the government to have to issue harsher measures to prevent the system from bursting at the seams because hospitals don't have limitless resources. People who don't want strict measures can't hand-wave that potential reality away.

doubled112 5y ago
It was pretty much this for me and at this point more so. I've received both shots and was pretty low risk to begin with. However, local hospitals were shipping patients off to other cities, and sending adults to the children's hospital. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that the outcome of something like being in a car accident would be worse now than normal.
ethbr0 5y ago
At some point prior to saturation, hospitals and the public deserve to have unvaccinated COVID-19 patients (without a medical reason) turned away. We can do one of two things as communities: (1) Mandate vaccination for everyone, and provide everyone care (2) Allow everyone the freedom to remain unvaccinated, and limit care There's no other "normal" world where a highly communicable disease that causes a sufficient number of hospital cases exists and circulates in the human population. * Where normal means "normal freedoms of movement" + "normal social interactions allowed" + "normal economic operation" + "hospitals aren't overwhelmed and have capacity for normal care"
- h3cate 5y ago
  Do hospitals turn away people with the flu away if they are not vaccinated? Or is it only Covid that you would impose this rule for?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Fair question. It looks like flu (influenza) hospitalizations run at about 0.15% of total population, per year. SARS-CoV-2, at 1-5%? Although that might be vs confirmed cases (?), which would muddle the numbers. But suffice to say substantially higher. So I think there's an argument to be made for this being a COVID only measure (and probably measles, etc too). IMHO, people are entitled to freedom regarding their choice to vaccinate. But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair. They're externalizing the consequences of their decisions onto me, and the rest of society. So yeah, IMHO, their decisions: their bill to pay. With their life, if necessary. (But I may be biased, as I have family working ICU, triaging unvaccinated coronavirus deniers who show up at the ER, begging to be saved, who are then sapping care from non-COVID patients...)
    - luckylion 5y ago
      > But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair. You can easily make that argument for plenty of things though. Didn't care for education and wanted to party instead? No welfare for you! Overweight? Sorry, you're limiting my freedom via increased healthcare costs. Broke your leg while skiing? Sorry, you knew the risk, now live with it, insurance is for real accidents only.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        All of those other examples have additional characteristics that cast the argument differently. Education and obesity both have income and access issues. In that, if you are poor, you don't have access to the same options as those who are wealthy. Skiing is actually the best example (Alaska aside!), given that it's a purely personal decision to engage in or not. So hypothetical... If hospital ICUs were filling with ski accident victims, to the extent they were unable to provide normal care to non-ski patients, and the economy was being impacted (businesses unable to operate, jobs lost, etc.) due to this ski pandemic, then you would say "Skiing is a personal choice that everyone deserves to make, and I have no problem with my tax and insurance dollars paying for skiers"?
  - pbourke 5y ago
    Has there been a flu season in recent history that caused the hospital system to collapse?
    - nradov 5y ago
      Hospitals in some areas were overwhelmed with influenza cases as recently as 2018. https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        For reference, when I looked up the numbers, influenza hospitalizations (estimated, total annual US) vary from around 150,000 to 550,000, depending on the year and strain. So yes, year to year has a lot of variance.
  - gilbetron 5y ago
    Health systems operate by prioritizing, via an imperfect system, patients based on need. If you run a red light and slam into another car, but you're more injured than the other person, you will be prioritized even though you were culpable. I think that is the appropriate, ethical, and practical approach. However, the calculus changes when the health system is at or over capacity. Now, if two people come in and both are critically ill, but you only have room for one, I'm ok with choosing the one that was vaccinated. Likewise with many other situations and illnesses. If you cause a car accident, and both you and the person you hit require the ICU, but there is only one spot open, I'm ok with the person that got hit getting the spot. Now, I'm assuming you are jaded like me and know that actual answer is probably the person with the most money tends to get the treatment, but that's another bitter, cynical discussion.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Here's my current level of jade -- listening to repeated stories about hospital staff having to argue with a patient's family (all unvaccinated) about why they can't visit the patient (also unvaccinated) in the COVID ward, when care is being withdrawn due to organ failure. At some point, it's like, "Jesus. Just stop talking, and please let me help you not kill yourself."
- jcadam 5y ago
  By this logic, we should also turn away the morbidly obese, all smokers, anyone who injured themselves while participating in risky activities (e.g, skiing), and so on and so forth.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  No. Everyone deserves medical care, even if you and I consider the decisions that led to that care to be illogical. You are proposing a slippery slope. Currently you could say that we should turn the unvaccinated away but why not the obese? If someone is obese, generally it is a personal choice much like the unvaccinated. What about homosexuals that contract AIDS. I am all for vaccines and I even support businesses requiring their employees be vaccinated. But I am very much not for beginning to play the game where your lifestyle choices determine if we provide treatment. Everyone deserves to be treated to the best of the hospitals ability.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Yes. Everything about health insurance (which is what we're basically talking about) is a slippery slope. Our health care system is unsustainable. And it's unsustainable because of one very simple reason: we want people to have absolute freedom and an absolute right to emergency care. I don't think those two are compatible. I don't think they've ever been, but historically that contradiction has been papered over with others' money (either in the form of your insurance premiums or your tax dollars). Cue present situation. We have a scenario where there is a (1) free, (2) available, (3) well-tolerated, (4) effective preventative option in vaccines. If someone chooses to remain unvaccinated, without medical reason, that is a pure personal choice. And moreover, unlike in normal scenarios, their making that choice directly burdens everyone else. Economically, through damage to normal economic functioning. And medically, through consuming limited hospital capacity. These arguments could be made for other conditions (e.g. obesity), but in a much murkier and more tortured manner. COVID is crystal clear: if you can be vaccinated, and you choose not to be, you are imposing a greater burden on society. Last I heard, the anti-vax crowd was big on personal responsibility. So why shouldn't individuals pay that debt of their own making?
    - wonderwonder 5y ago
      I hear what you are saying but I can see this spiraling out of control. What happens when global warming and over population is considered to be a dire threat to the continued existence of human life? Do we allow hospitals to refuse services to women on their third child or men / women that refuse to be sterilized after the government approved x children. Seems far fetched but our definition of clear and present dangers can shift over time to fit the scenario something similar has already happened in China. I am very much not for allowing institutions to make those sort of decisions regarding the care provided to people as entities don't usually relinquish power once granted. Edit: I am ok with triaging the vaccinated over the unvaccinated in a scenario with limited space as mentioned by another poster below.

by colmvp 5y ago

doubled112 5y ago

It was pretty much this for me and at this point more so. I've received both shots and was pretty low risk to begin with. However, local hospitals were shipping patients off to other cities, and sending adults to the children's hospital. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that the outcome of something like being in a car accident would be worse now than normal.

ethbr0 5y ago

At some point prior to saturation, hospitals and the public deserve to have unvaccinated COVID-19 patients (without a medical reason) turned away. We can do one of two things as communities: (1) Mandate vaccination for everyone, and provide everyone care (2) Allow everyone the freedom to remain unvaccinated, and limit care There's no other "normal" world where a highly communicable disease that causes a sufficient number of hospital cases exists and circulates in the human population. * Where normal means "normal freedoms of movement" + "normal social interactions allowed" + "normal economic operation" + "hospitals aren't overwhelmed and have capacity for normal care"

h3cate 5y ago
Do hospitals turn away people with the flu away if they are not vaccinated? Or is it only Covid that you would impose this rule for?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Fair question. It looks like flu (influenza) hospitalizations run at about 0.15% of total population, per year. SARS-CoV-2, at 1-5%? Although that might be vs confirmed cases (?), which would muddle the numbers. But suffice to say substantially higher. So I think there's an argument to be made for this being a COVID only measure (and probably measles, etc too). IMHO, people are entitled to freedom regarding their choice to vaccinate. But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair. They're externalizing the consequences of their decisions onto me, and the rest of society. So yeah, IMHO, their decisions: their bill to pay. With their life, if necessary. (But I may be biased, as I have family working ICU, triaging unvaccinated coronavirus deniers who show up at the ER, begging to be saved, who are then sapping care from non-COVID patients...)
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair. You can easily make that argument for plenty of things though. Didn't care for education and wanted to party instead? No welfare for you! Overweight? Sorry, you're limiting my freedom via increased healthcare costs. Broke your leg while skiing? Sorry, you knew the risk, now live with it, insurance is for real accidents only.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      All of those other examples have additional characteristics that cast the argument differently. Education and obesity both have income and access issues. In that, if you are poor, you don't have access to the same options as those who are wealthy. Skiing is actually the best example (Alaska aside!), given that it's a purely personal decision to engage in or not. So hypothetical... If hospital ICUs were filling with ski accident victims, to the extent they were unable to provide normal care to non-ski patients, and the economy was being impacted (businesses unable to operate, jobs lost, etc.) due to this ski pandemic, then you would say "Skiing is a personal choice that everyone deserves to make, and I have no problem with my tax and insurance dollars paying for skiers"?
- pbourke 5y ago
  Has there been a flu season in recent history that caused the hospital system to collapse?
  - nradov 5y ago
    Hospitals in some areas were overwhelmed with influenza cases as recently as 2018. https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      For reference, when I looked up the numbers, influenza hospitalizations (estimated, total annual US) vary from around 150,000 to 550,000, depending on the year and strain. So yes, year to year has a lot of variance.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  Health systems operate by prioritizing, via an imperfect system, patients based on need. If you run a red light and slam into another car, but you're more injured than the other person, you will be prioritized even though you were culpable. I think that is the appropriate, ethical, and practical approach. However, the calculus changes when the health system is at or over capacity. Now, if two people come in and both are critically ill, but you only have room for one, I'm ok with choosing the one that was vaccinated. Likewise with many other situations and illnesses. If you cause a car accident, and both you and the person you hit require the ICU, but there is only one spot open, I'm ok with the person that got hit getting the spot. Now, I'm assuming you are jaded like me and know that actual answer is probably the person with the most money tends to get the treatment, but that's another bitter, cynical discussion.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Here's my current level of jade -- listening to repeated stories about hospital staff having to argue with a patient's family (all unvaccinated) about why they can't visit the patient (also unvaccinated) in the COVID ward, when care is being withdrawn due to organ failure. At some point, it's like, "Jesus. Just stop talking, and please let me help you not kill yourself."
jcadam 5y ago
By this logic, we should also turn away the morbidly obese, all smokers, anyone who injured themselves while participating in risky activities (e.g, skiing), and so on and so forth.
wonderwonder 5y ago
No. Everyone deserves medical care, even if you and I consider the decisions that led to that care to be illogical. You are proposing a slippery slope. Currently you could say that we should turn the unvaccinated away but why not the obese? If someone is obese, generally it is a personal choice much like the unvaccinated. What about homosexuals that contract AIDS. I am all for vaccines and I even support businesses requiring their employees be vaccinated. But I am very much not for beginning to play the game where your lifestyle choices determine if we provide treatment. Everyone deserves to be treated to the best of the hospitals ability.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Yes. Everything about health insurance (which is what we're basically talking about) is a slippery slope. Our health care system is unsustainable. And it's unsustainable because of one very simple reason: we want people to have absolute freedom and an absolute right to emergency care. I don't think those two are compatible. I don't think they've ever been, but historically that contradiction has been papered over with others' money (either in the form of your insurance premiums or your tax dollars). Cue present situation. We have a scenario where there is a (1) free, (2) available, (3) well-tolerated, (4) effective preventative option in vaccines. If someone chooses to remain unvaccinated, without medical reason, that is a pure personal choice. And moreover, unlike in normal scenarios, their making that choice directly burdens everyone else. Economically, through damage to normal economic functioning. And medically, through consuming limited hospital capacity. These arguments could be made for other conditions (e.g. obesity), but in a much murkier and more tortured manner. COVID is crystal clear: if you can be vaccinated, and you choose not to be, you are imposing a greater burden on society. Last I heard, the anti-vax crowd was big on personal responsibility. So why shouldn't individuals pay that debt of their own making?
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    I hear what you are saying but I can see this spiraling out of control. What happens when global warming and over population is considered to be a dire threat to the continued existence of human life? Do we allow hospitals to refuse services to women on their third child or men / women that refuse to be sterilized after the government approved x children. Seems far fetched but our definition of clear and present dangers can shift over time to fit the scenario something similar has already happened in China. I am very much not for allowing institutions to make those sort of decisions regarding the care provided to people as entities don't usually relinquish power once granted. Edit: I am ok with triaging the vaccinated over the unvaccinated in a scenario with limited space as mentioned by another poster below.