20 years of sorrow, here we are

Posted on by August 15, 2021

ETA: And listen to John Cole too.

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The anger is justified

Posted on by August 12, 2021

This guy is angry, and he has every right to be.

Hospital systems in states with low vaccination rates are close to collapse.

Mississippi’s Hospital System Could ‘Fail’ In 10 Days, UMMC Warns As Feds Rush In

With COVID-19 patients overflowing at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, including in its pediatric center, hospital leaders are warning that the medical system statewide could be on the verge of failing without drastic intervention. Two days ago, Mississippi health officials announced that zero intensive-care beds remained available in hospitals statewide.

“Since the pandemic began, I think the thing that hospitals have feared the most is total failure of the hospital system. And if we track back a week or so when we look at the case positivity rate, the rate of new cases, the rate of hospitalizations—If we continue that trajectory within the next five to seven to 10 days, I think we’re going to see failure of the hospital system in Mississippi,” UMMC Associate Vice Chancellor for Clinical Affairs Dr. Alan Jones said during an afternoon press conference….

Healthcare workers are angry and exhausted. And that is no surprise.

Vaccine Refusers Risk Compassion Fatigue

After the horrors that health-care workers have endured during the pandemic, many are struggling to sympathize with people who won’t protect themselves.

…Finally, in the depths of winter, during the week of my birthday, I received my first vaccine shot. Science had brought us a solution, and we could finally see the end of all those months of fear, exhaustion, and sacrifice.

But that’s not what happened. COVID-19 hasn’t ended. Instead, infection rates are going up. The Delta variant has taken hold, and hospitals are filling up again. But this time the suffering seems different, because it is avoidable. Optional. A choice….

“What makes me the maddest,” one of my doctor friends told me, “is that these people will reject science right until the second they need everything I have to keep them alive, and then they feel that they can come to our door and be entitled to that help and that hard work.”

I am full of pain for the kids who are so sick now, and for patients who need vital care and can’t get it because of these unvaccinated assholes.

But I have no sympathy for those who are refusing to let the country embrace the freedom these vaccines offer. Who are cruelly holding the rest of us back, subjecting us to this even more dangerous Delta variant, and doing so quite deliberately. These days I console myself with one small bit of potential schadenfreude: that 1-2% excess deaths among the redhats could swing some close elections next year.

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Another point of view

Posted on by July 23, 2021

The patience and empathy of healthcare workers, as expressed in the post just below, is one response to the idiots who remain unvaccinated and who will therefore, with great certainty, end up with COVID and likely become quite ill. But my own feelings are much closer to those expressed in this blog post by The Rude Pundit.

Why We’re So Fucking Angry at the Unvaccinated

…We’re furious. We’re furious at adults who made adult decisions that fucked it all up. We’re furious that, after all the shit they’ve done to fuck up this country by voting for Trump, they won’t do this one goddamn thing by getting the vaccine that Trump is legitimately partially responsible for getting developed so quickly. So this was your win, and you refused to take the W….

We’re fucking angry because we were legit so fucking close to being over this virus. If vaccinations had continued at the rate they were going in the first part of the year, we’d be at herd immunity. But rather than that actual freedom, you fucknuts think that you have the “freedom” to go around spreading Covid to whoever the fuck gets in your ignorant way and you call that a constitutional right. No, it’s not. It’s not your right to spread a disease that might kill even 1 out of 100 people who get it….

But most of all, we’re angry at how easy this could have all been. The vaccines were done. They were rolled out pretty damn smoothly and quickly. I can’t get past how such a simple, common thing like getting a vaccine became a war. It’s so ludicrous. It’s so goddamn ludicrous. How can you look at case after case of people who were against the vaccine who now are sick or dead and still cling to that belief? That makes you such a fool. You’re wrong. You’re just so fucking wrong about everything here….

Edit to add:

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‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’

Posted on by July 21, 2021

Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients

…“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

…“[The families] cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”…

Read the whole thing. I don’t know if I could summon the patience and empathy this doctor has for her dying patients and their families, but I certainly do feel that empathy for the heathcare workers now being forced back into the COVID wards because these people refused a free, life-saving vaccine.

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