Hospital Shortages; who deserves care.

The discussion was about whether people unvaccinated for covid should be triaged last (i.e. given lower precedence) because they failed to take a step that likely would have prevented their illness.

My opinion is that if we applied this principle equally, then we would also deprioritize AIDS patients who had unprotected sex and heart disease patients who ignored calls to lose weight and change their diet. I find the idea of choosing who to treat based on their personal failings to be a problem.

I think that sums up the topic.

There is a flu vaccine available. Should we prioritize others before those who did not get the vaccine?

We never get the stats of how many are hospitalized for flu or heart issues.

Your opinion is not logical. How many times does it need to be explained to you – we are dealing with a pandemic, an infectious disease which is spread in the air. The reason triage is even being discussed is because hospitals are running out of beds – and staff – to treat the incredible daily influx of new patients. Even at the height of the AIDS crisis, hospital admittance for the disease never remotely approached these levels. Nor do thousands of new people show up with cardiac problems every day. The prospect of triage is not being raised as a punitive measure and it has nothing to do with judging people's "personal failings". It's simply a matter of not having the physical space, equipment, and manpower to cope with the numbers.

You do realize, don't you, that admissions have picked up considerably since you were treated?

As you point out, our hospitals were not ready to face this (unprecedented) emergency. In an emergency, customary procedures are often unable to cope and caregivers often need to devise new rules and methods.

How brilliant! Meanwhile we are confronting growing crisis which has to be dealt with in real time. So what do we do while we're waiting to train tens of thousands more health care professionals, solve funding problems for rural hospitals, and overcome vaccine resistance?

Thanks, man. I'm sure maxdancona appreciates the work you've put into this reply. What a breath of fresh air!

lol @ hightor!

1. I agree with you about transmissibility. I don't think it is relevant to the topic.

2. I think you are exaggerating a bit. Covid is a global pandemic and is certainly a serious issues. However, Covid is the third biggest cause of hospitalizations and deaths in the US (and has never been the top). As far as I can tell, covid patients occupy between 5 and 30% of ICU beds depending on the state.

3. The topic is; should vaccinated patients get preferential treatment? I am arguing that they shouldn't. The transmissibility argument is irrelevant because covid patient need to be quarantined equally regardless of vaccine status.

4. I believe very strongly that Our Healthcare system should be designed to function in a disaster.The numbers I see suggest that the extreme problems with shortages that are being reported are fairly rare, and that in most of the country hospitals have open beds and are taking patients for non-urgent procedures.

Where hospitals are failing to meet increased need during a pandemic indicates a problem in the health care system to meet a foreseeable problem. There will be emergencies where the numbers of patients increase. We should plan for that.

Nobody has insinuated or suggested that vaccinated patients should get 'preferential treatment'. Can you not read or comprehend? All we suggested is that they be triaged along with Covid patients, not have their procedures put on hold (as is the case in Canada).

Een da UK
Eef ya obey
Ta av chemeecals put in you
Ya can do
What ya wanna do

Da ceenema, theeatar, concerts
Eez free for ya
Az long az ya bend ova
An let em
Fk a ya.



Hey - I have no agenda - I couldn't care less, If I wake-up tomorrow, and all 8 Billion of you have perished - I DON'T CARE!

As long as today is lovely
Tomorrow is absurd.

Do you really agree with me, Mame?

My position is that vaccination status should have zero impact on triage decisions. Vaccinated covid patients and unvaccinated covid patients should be treated the same when it comes to receiving medical care.

If we agree on this, that would make me happy.

I am talking about people who have been on a wait-list for medical procedures, who have had their treatment delayed by medical authorities who have put COVID patients (most of whom are unvaccinated) first.

I disagree with this. I have said nothing about the wait-listed people being vaccinated or not. If you've been waiting for 3 years for a hip replacement, you need to get a hip replacement. The medical authorities have made the wrong decision, IMO.

One fellow here was waiting for a knee replacement. He was stuck on his couch for over 2 years due to the pain. He was scheduled for a replacement, but was put on hold by the medical authorities who prioritized Covid patients. He wound up flying to Lithuania for his knee replacement.

Another fellow has a brain tumour. He is still waiting because his scheduled surgery was postponed.

I have no idea of their vaccination status.

To all those 'degenerate scumbags' who choose to do unto themselves 'AS THEY SEE FITTING' and NOT succumb to the MORONIC, OMICROM (See what I just did - you fools)
Btw O 17th letter gk alphabet = OMI"K"RON (any fkwad knows this) - But 'MORONIK' doesn't quite 'connect'.

OBEY! NOW!

I am not sure of your position.

One person is dying of covid and can likely be saved by being put on a ventilator in an ICU bed. Another person needs a new knee. They are in pain, but there is no risk to their life.

Who do you prioritize?

My position is that you prioritize the person with the greatest need (i.e. the person who will die if you don't treat them).

A lot of people in hospital with Covid are not on ventilators and are not necessarily 'going to die'. They may need care, but they're not in ICU. The guy should get his knee.

A, recent study (UK) Proposed that a New Drug (Strombivoxofluxibollux) (I forget its true title, coz it's bollux) Is 79% Effective in preventing hospitalisation and/Or death.

How Do You Measure This?
Not knowing if either outcome was assured, regardless of 'intervention'?

Example - If I gave 100 people a banana - And 2 of them had a car crash within the next year - Could I Claim that bananas are 98% Effective in preventing annual road-traffic accidents?

Are you ppl batshit crazy?

Part of my position is that health care systems should be built with enough capacity to handle a pandemic or other emergency. The fact that if more people were vaccinated it would be easier to manage this pandemic is irrelevant. There was never a guarantee that there would even be a vaccine that worked... and the health care system should still have capacity for this emergency.

I don't know why any American would go to Lithuania for a knee. They are doing elective knee-surgery in Massachusetts (which is a much closer option).

Some states have a more robust health care system (i.e. greater capacity) than others.

Well, of course the health care system SHOULD, but it's not. Clearly. So triaging is necessary. As I said before, all patients should be triaged, not some put on hold for whatever you don't happen to think is urgent.

These two gentlemen are Canadian. The knee fellow may have been able to go to another province, for all that, I don't know his particulars.

Here in Germany (and I am sure in all other countries), triaging ("initial assessment") is part of everyday life in emergency medicine: patients with severe or life-threatening symptoms are treated quickly and, if necessary, preferred to those who have no medical disadvantages due to later treatment.
he patients usually do not even notice this procedure. This is because the concept is based on the assumption that all incoming patients can actually be treated, just not all of them equally quickly.
In an emergency room, therefore, people who are in particularly bad shape are also treated particularly urgently. In war, disasters or other exceptional cases, however, this principle changes.

Here, we talk about triage when there are not enough intensive care beds available for the number of patients and there is also no space in other hospitals. The most important decision criterion is still the so-called clinical prospect of success.
If there is no other way to avoid it, patients who have only a very small chance of survival are not treated with intensive care. On the other hand, priority is given to those patients who have a higher probability of survival due to these measures.

Vaccination status is not (and never has been) a criterion for triage decisions.