Who Dies When the Hospital Is Full?
Personal freedom meets social responsibility
Dale Weeks is dead.
“…he stayed for 15 days at Newton’s relatively small hospital because the bigger Iowa facilities said they couldn’t spare a bed for him, his family says. Iowa’s short-staffed hospitals have been jammed for months with patients, including people severely sickened by coronavirus.
It’s infuriating that people who are not vaccinated are clogging it up,” said Jenifer Owenson of Des Moines, who is one of Weeks’ four children.”
Though it is not the case, everyone in the United States of America should be able to get the best health care available. Rephrased, everyone in the richest nation in the world should have access to excellent health care. But we all know reality is less equitable.
And during this pandemic, yet another inequality.
Dale Weeks succumbed to what many would call stupidity. And not his own. Dale Weeks died because others chose not to take simple available steps to keep themselves out of a hospital bed. Dale waited and died while those who were unvaccinated received care.
Currently, most suffering from serious complications of COVID-19 have not received any vaccination. If we follow the line of reasoning which says that those sufferers exercised their freedom by refusing to be vaccinated, they have also exercised their freedom to catch and suffer from the disease. But when their disease becomes acute and extensive hospital care is necessary, they may well be crossing the line from merely exercising their own freedom into infringing the freedom of others by preventing them from receiving care.
Unvaccinated COVID sufferers rolled the dice and lost
These unvaccinated COVID sufferers have every right to the best health care available. But should their choices prevent others with life threatening conditions who are vaccinated from receiving the best care available?
Simple personal responsibility dictates that they do not. But according to the Hippocratic Oath which guides those in the Health Care profession, this is not the case.
The Modern Hippocratic Oath specifies:
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
“… all measures that are required,” implies that the Doctor must treat the patient until a reasonable conclusion. In fact, a Doctor or hospital is at risk of being charged with abandonment if once begun, they do not follow through with treatment. Hence both the guidance of the Hippocratic Oath and the specter of lawsuits encourage continued treatment of the unvaccinated even if it is at the expense of others.
Is this as it should be? Are we playing God if we do anything different? Or are we already playing God by letting the likes of Dale Weeks die?
You’ve heard them say it. “COVID is a hoax.” With that and other unscientific beliefs, many choose to avoid vaccination. They’ve exercised what they consider to be their right to keep foreign medical matter out of their body.
“Nobody tells me what to do.”
When an adult chooses not to get vaccinated without any data-supported reason, it seems that person also takes personal responsibility for the effects of the action. If you are one of the unlucky unvaccinated who has serious complications from the disease, it is the result of not taking simple preventative measures. We all hope that the health care system will be able to treat you and help you recover.
But do you have the right to prevent vaccinated persons from receiving care? If the hospital becomes full, should you expect to be moved out of the ICU so that those who chose differently can be treated?
These questions are moot. The “way it works” is that once under care, that care will continue to be provided until recovery or death.
And your decision may cause the death of others who did make the effort to protect themselves.
