Victims of the Unvaccinated

[swag]

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/health-care-priority-for-vaccinated-covid19-patients-by-peter-singer-2022-01

Jan 5, 2022
PETER SINGER

When both a vaccinated and an unvaccinated patient with COVID-19 need the last available bed in a hospital’s intensive care unit, the vaccinated patient should get it. Those who view vaccination as a “personal choice” need to bear personal responsibility for choosing to place others’ lives at risk.

MELBOURNE – Novak Djokovic, the world’s top-ranking tennis player, has just been granted a medical exemption to take part in the Australian Open. Djokovic, who has won the event nine times (one more victory would give him a record-breaking 21 major titles), refused to show proof of vaccination, which is required to enter Australia. “I will not reveal my status whether I have been vaccinated or not,” he told Blic, a Serbian daily, calling it “a private matter and an inappropriate inquiry.”

The family of Dale Weeks, who died last month at the age of 78, would disagree. Weeks was a patient at a small hospital in rural Iowa, being treated for sepsis. The hospital sought to transfer him to a larger hospital where he could have surgery, but a surge in COVID-19 patients, almost all of them unvaccinated, meant that there were no spare beds. It took 15 days for Weeks to obtain a transfer, and by then, it was too late.

Weeks became another of the many indirect victims of COVID-19 – people who never had the virus, but died because others who did were taking up scarce health-care resources, especially beds in intensive care units. His daughter said: “The thing that bothers me the most is people’s selfish decision not to get vaccinated and the failure to see how this affects a greater group of people. That’s the part that’s really difficult to swallow.”

Last month, Rob Davidson, an emergency room physician at a hospital in Michigan, wrote an essay for the New York Times that provided a vivid picture of life in a hospital that had consistently been at or near capacity for several weeks. The overwhelming majority of the patients had COVID-19, and 98% of those needing acute critical care were unvaccinated.

. . . more

[Turbineguy]

1. None of the anti-vaxxers will ever accept any share of their responsibility

in the deaths of others. Never. Ever.

The only way to get anti-vaxxers to participate is to appeal to their selfishness.

[Skittles]

2. public health is not a private matter

Djokovic is a fucking asshole.