The stories are as harrowing as they are heartbreaking – doctors and nurses in overloaded hospitals around the country, describing their exhaustion as intensive care units fill to overflowing with people who didn’t have to be there, people who are struggling to survive COVID after rejecting the vaccine that could have prevented the imminent threat to their lives.
Mixed in with their fatigue and sadness is a frustration bordering on anger: those patients didn’t have to be there. The answer was right in front of them. And their refusal to listen to the science now means that medical personnel are stretched to the breaking point… and hospital care may not be available for others who need it.
We’re not to the point in Springfield, at least not yet. But ICU bed availability has fallen to just 20 percent, a worrisome threshold that puts us closer to the horror stories coming from other parts of the country. And almost all of it was preventable, if people had only gotten the vaccine that has been readily and easily available, free of charge, for months.
It’s understandable that people are frustrated by what’s unfolding all over the country. We’ve been through this before, and through the superhuman efforts of medical professionals on the front lines, we’ve come back from the abyss more than once. But here we are again, and again the selfishness and carelessness of some people has put many others, innocent bystanders, at risk.
That’s led some people to suggest that medical care should be prioritized differently, that if you had the chance to get the COVID vaccine and refused it, you should go to the back of the line. Save those hospital beds for people who didn’t disregard the science, who did try to protect themselves and others. It’s not hard to see why people would feel this way, and there is a certain rough justice in the idea. But it’s a dangerous door to open, and one we’d all regret sooner or later.
Health care is, and should be, prioritized based on need. The sickest people get the most immediate attention. We don’t stop to assess someone’s political beliefs or life choices first, nor should we.
It’s fair to be upset at the hypocrisy of people who ignore medical professionals when it comes to the benefits of vaccination, then demand the immediate assistance of those same professionals when they must face the consequences of their choices. But by that same logic, couldn’t doctors simply refuse to treat the smoker, or the overeater, or the teen who shouldn’t have been texting while driving?
We have the right to make those kinds of value judgments in our day-to-day interactions with family and friends. But doctors and nurses should not be substituting those subjective criteria for an objective assessment of a patient’s medical need. Everyone deserves treatment, even those who are in danger because of their own ignorance and stubbornness.
