General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rant On: OK, I know this might be unpopular and some will call me brutal, however, [View all]GB_RN
(2,355 posts)It was done earlier this year in Idaho, when Delta swamped that state. As people gather, travel and get careless with social distancing over the holidays (plus winter weather which is more conducive to the spread of the virus), the numbers will rise even more than they normally would have and the medical system is going to be swamped, once again. Hard choices will have to be made about who gets access to limited resources. In those situations, the person most likely to live will be the person chosen, and more often than not, the vaccinated will win out over the unvaccinated.
For example, if you have two cardiac arrest patients, both needing ventilators (all other things being equal) and you have one to use, one patient has been vaccinated and the other hasn't, the hospital is most likely going to give the ventilator to the COVID vaccinated patient first. The reasons being: 1) The vaccinated patient is less likely to have the virus coming into the hospital. 2) The vaccinated patient will be less likely to contract the virus while in the hospital and 3), if that patient does contract the virus, the patient will be more likely to survive the virus than the unvaccinated patient, given the instability of both patients.
Sidebar and note of fact: During the height of the first wave of COVID, EMTs were told not to bother bringing in patients who had collapsed with cardiac arrest whose arrests were not witnessed (meaning no one knew how long the patient had been without a heart beat), because of 1) higher chances of not being able to restart the patient's heart and 2) the huge risk of permanent brain damage if the heart is restarted (many patients don't wake up, others do, but with significant impairments). EMTs were told they could "call it" (time of death) in the field. That measure could return if COVID caseload gets bad enough and Emergency Rooms are overwhelmed again. I know this, because I'm a cardiac cath lab RN, and I work to fix these patients.