I think it was for @TexasTiger2.
Colleges need more variety in mascots!
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Iām just glad I donāt have to read back through this thread 
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Well, as long as youāre hear, Iāll say, āHi!ā
Sorry @Tigerwife92, yes @TexasTiger2 lol! Getting all my people mixed up!
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To address the issue, hospitals could set aside x% of bed for non-COVID emergency. There must be a way to live together while let others live their life. We are all turning into control freaks. We could put our heads together and devise a way to accommodate each otherās need whether we agree with the other position or not instead of ridiculing and yelling.
Do they? Or it is first come, first serve? The Covid patients from what Iāve heard spend many, many days in ICU.
If ICUās did that, putting aside ICU beds for non Covid emergencies, would that be rationing care for those Covid patients?
I donāt know the answers to these questions and wonder about the ethics of doing such an approach
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I donāt think they do but they could or should. It is not to punish the unvaccinated. It is to care for other emergencies as well as COVID.
Some smaller hospitals do not have sufficient ICU space to set aside ICU beds for specific populations.
Yes, I have no first-hand knowledge but I would think it is first-come, first-served. If thereās one open bed, and a COVID patient needs it, I donāt see how ethically you can deny care to that patient. Some of the larger hospitals can have extra beds, but I donāt think thereās any reserving for COVID or non-COVID. And, as someone said, the COVID patients stay for a long time, and once theyāre on you canāt take off and give to someone else, which reduces the turn-over availability.
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THis is happening right now in Idaho (?) They are rationing health care to those who will have the best possibility of survival. Many ICU patients being cared for by 1 nurse (usually this is a 1:1 situation. People being housed in conference rooms and hallways. I am trying to convince my parents not to travel to Florida this summer, not because of COVID concerns but because they may have a treatable issue that would be life threatening or even worse severely life altering because they could not get immediate, high quality care in the overloaded system.
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@Iglooo, This is wishful thinking and doesnāt reflect the current reality. The covid situation is overwhelming the medical facilities and, more so, the medical professionals. Even essential non-covid procedures are being postponed because of lack of ICU space. See the link above regarding the rationing that is now taking place in Idaho. Military personal have been brought in because staff are overrun and overworked. Patients are being housed is classrooms, waiting rooms and hallways. Among Covid patients more severe cases are being taking off essential ventilators and being moved to ācomfort careā which is a euphemism for a place to wait to die.
So, No. Hospital canāt just shuffle the deck chairs and accommodate everyone.
Sure, but in the current situation the unvaccinated are not only punishing themselves, they are also punishing the healthcare workers and others who need health care. To my mind it is a despicable act of selfishness.
Added: @helpingthekid73, sorry, our posts crossed. The Idaho situation is really frightening, especially for those of us who have at-risk friends and loved ones who live there. I posted a similar article above, but it is certainly reiterating.
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Childrenās hospital here said today they may start delaying non-emergency surgery because they have so many children with covid. They usually do schedule non-emergency care with the idea that they need to be able to drop everything and pick up emergencies, but I think they are finding they are rescheduling too many things just to have the emergency capacity they need.
Logistically how does it work in hospitals now, since I assume they have to keep contagious people separate from everyone? You canāt mix covid and non-covid ICU beds in one room, or have nurses treat covid and non-covid at the same time, can you?
I am just thinking that by the nature of quarantining, there would be some rationing of care. If the covid beds are taken, you canāt just open beds in the non-covid section of the hospital.
Here they just turn another wing or floor into a covid unit. Move other patients out if they can
Yeah, I figured. But that raises an interesting question- if there is a demand for non-covid and covid both, who gets the wing? Do you keep a non-covid wing non-covid, even if not every bed is taken? How do you staff that?
It is complicated, and it just seems rationing is inevitable and exacerbated by segregating the patients.
Good question. Donāt know how that works. Also, you have to wear specific personal protective equipment to enter a covid room. You canāt then go out of that room and into a non-covid room and transfer everything. So there has to be separation, easier to do in larger hospitals, but I donāt know how the smaller community hospitals handle this. And once a Covid positive person vacates the room, wouldnāt everything (machines, walls) need to be decontaminated before a new patient enters?
Everyone is punished by the unvaccinated. They have altered the course of the pandemic for the worse. I have no sympathy AT ALL for them. I would favor rationing their care.
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in one of my facebook groups someone has asked for anyone who knows where an Ecmo machine is for a friend of theirs son who is 51. No one has asked if this person was vaccinated or not and got that sick. I almost did in a snarky way āwow sorry the vaccine did not work for this personā. but decided not to .
You are in Colorado, right? Do you have a link for that announcement or wherever that was reported? I try to monitor whatās happening at Childrenās.
Itās easy to create regular hospital rooms by shuffling around. Itās not easy to create ICU beds/rooms.