On the unvaccinated
It’s time for hospitals to establish leper-like wards, preferably off-site, for unvaccinated covid patients. Priority in staffing should go to unvaccinated nurses and others like unvaccinated police officers for security. Local prisoners should be temporarily furloughed so they can mop floors, deliver food trays and clean bed pans.
Manual ventilators will be provided for patients with pulmonary distress, heart failure, asthma, bronchitis and the like. Unvaccinated family members will be recruited to operate these ventilators and be given a 15-minute training video complete with an illustrated operating manual.
Covid victims of 2020 were caught by surprise and defenseless against the contagion, while 2021 victims are blessed with a vaccine that’s free and widely available.
Every day we hear of rising covid cases pushing hospitals to their certified “bed” limits; ICU beds are scarce if they exist at all, filled with unvaccinated covid patients; and ventilators are similarly scarce helping patients breathe due to covid’s harmful effects on lung function.
Over 90 percent of these admitted patients are unvaccinated. Let’s not get mired in the reasons these people have resisted being vaccinated; I believe almost all have no defensible reason.
It’s time for new rules that should be fair to all who unexpectedly require hospitalization and admissions and follow triage standards of priority based on patient need vis-a-vis their behavior.
If I suffer from unexpected neuro-trauma due to an auto, sports or work accident, I may be denied the standard of care normally available to me because the nearest primary-care hospital is overrun with unvaccinated covid patients.
Covid is a double-barreled health risk: One is invisible, the aerosolized contagion itself; the second is disturbingly visible. This barrel is loaded with the deliberately unvaccinated. They’re a clear and present threat to themselves, their families, their neighbors and strangers like you and me. They are terrorists and possess the moral baseness of a serial killer.
HARRY HERGET
Little Rock