People who refuse vaccination should be denied hospital admission for COVID-19

This story from my home state is just infuriating:

Dover said he’s saddened but not surprised that his state is getting walloped with Covid-19.

“Michigan is not one of the highest vaccination states in the nation. So it continues to have variant after variant grow and expand across the state,” he said.

The next few weeks look hard. We’re over 100% capacity right now,” Dover said.”Most hospitals and health systems in the state of Michigan have gone to code-red triage, which means they won’t accept transfers.

And as we go into the holidays, if the current growth rate that we’re at today, we would expect to see 200 in-patient Covid patients by the end of the month — on a daily basis.”

And that would mean “absolutely stretching us to the breaking point,” Dover said.”We’ve already discontinued in-patient elective surgeries,” he said. “In order to create capacity, we took our post-anesthesia recovery care unit and converted it into another critical care unit.”

Note that “elective surgery” doesn’t mean some grifting faux-billionaire’s Slovenian pleasure unit’s latest boob job: it means literally any surgery that can be delayed without that delay killing the patient immediately.

Meanwhile, how are the front-line heroes that we honor every day doing?

Nurse Leah Rasch is exhausted. She’s worked with Covid-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic and was stunned to see so many people still unvaccinated enter the Covid unit.

“I did not think we’d be here. I truly thought that people would be vaccinated,” the Sparrow Hospital nurse said.”I don’t remember the last time we did not have a full Covid floor.”

The relentless onslaught of Covid-19 patients has impacted Rasch’s own health.

“There’s a lot of frustration,” she said. “The other day, I had my first panic attack … I drove to work and I couldn’t get out of the car.

Thank you for your service, Leah! We as a nation are willing to do absolutely anything to support you in your time of need except for, um, anything! Because Freedom ™.

Dover said many people have asked how they can support health care workers.

“If you really want to support your staff, and you really want to support health care heroes, get vaccinated,” he said. “It’s not political. We need everybody to get vaccinated.”

He’s also urging those who previously had Covid-19 to get vaccinated, as some people can get reinfected.

“My daughter’s a good example. She had Covid twice before she was eligible for a vaccine,” Dover said.

“She still got a vaccine because we know that if you don’t get the vaccine, just merely having contracted Covid is not enough to protect you from getting it again. And I know that from personal experience.

“And those who are unvaccinated shouldn’t underestimate the pandemic right now, Dover said.

“The problem is, it’s not over yet. I don’t know if people realize just how critical it still is,” he said.”

But they do realize it when they come into the ER, and they have to wait three days for a bed. And at that point, they realize it.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who haven’t even gotten COVID have already died as a result of the epidemic, because of spillover effects like not being able to get urgently necessary medical care, because this nation of backward ignorant morons won’t get vaccinated, and we continue to do next to nothing about that, because Freedom ™.

What we should do is say freedom’s just another word for if you’re eligible to receive the vaccines and choose not to get vaccinated then no hospital admission for you when you do get COVID.

Yes, the “slippery slope.” Let’s talk about that. Slippery slope arguments are almost always cheap rhetorical devices, because every slippery slope goes both ways. To wit:

“If we say you can’t get admitted to a hospital for COVID treatment if you refused to get vaccinated, then one day people won’t be able to get treatment for diabetes because they ate a Twinkie one time.”

OK that’s not too cool.

But wait a minute:

“If we say people can choose to reject a completely safe and free vaccine during a global pandemic, with no consequences to them for making that choice, that means that one day millions of Americans could die needlessly during such a pandemic, while the nation’s entire health care system crashes.”

See if you can spot the very subtle difference between these two hypothetical entrants into what lawyers call a “parade of horribles.”

I knew you could.

As for “setting a bad precedent” what do you think we’re doing right at this moment anyway? (We should of course do everything reasonably possible to ensure that the by now tiny percentage of Americans who haven’t gotten the vaccine because of genuine access issues are able to get it.)

But enough is enough.