@PinkTonic
No one is being 'thrown to the wolves' to prioritise the 'terminally stupid'.
We have enough ICU beds and ICU capacity for everyone at the moment, regardless of the reason why they might need ICU. No one is missing out on medical treatment in an ICU because of an unvaccinated person 'taking up' a bed.
@Watapalava's phrasing shows she doesn't understand what her 'ICU nurse friend' has said.
Doctors have always had to make decisions about who should get ICU treatment. This is no different for covid.
For people whose only knowledge of medicine is watching Casualty, it is probably difficult to understand, but a considerable number of people who receive ICU treatment and survive to leave hospital, never truly recover their health. Many die within 12 months.
ICU treatment is brutal on the body. Not everyone will survive the treatment, and many who do survive will not regain a meaningful quality of life afterwards. Doctors have to weigh this up when deciding the best course of treatment for their patients. There is much debate amongst the medical profession about this - prioritising life over quality of life. The decision to put an 85 year old on a ventilator for 3 weeks is not a straightforward one. If they survive, only for them to have six months of severely compromised, highly medicalised quality of life afterwards before they inevitably die, is it really worth putting their body through that trauma? Obviously it's a discussion to be had with the patient (if they have capacity at that point) and their family, but medical professionals have to be realistic about people's prognosis. Unlike in hospital medical dramas, people don't just wake up from comas when they've been on ventilators and a plethora of other machinery to take over the work of their vital organs for several weeks, and jump straight back into their daily lives. It takes weeks and months of physical therapy to get back to fitness, and for people who are already weakened by age or severe illness, often they will never get their full fitness back and will rapidly decline and die shortly afterwards. Look up post ICU death statistics. The chance of death compared to the general population increases enormously after a stay in ICU.
I really wish people on Mumsnet with very limited knowledge of medicine, public health, or statistics, would stop posting absolute rubbish. It's so misleading and is continuing to lead to a horrible witchhunt against people who aren't vaccinated.
It is not unvaccinated people's fault that the pandemic still exists. Hospitals are not full because of unvaccinated coronavirus patients. The government would like us to think this so that we are distracted from looking at their failures. Please don't buy into this narrative. It's only serving to divide us. Demonising and othering those who have made a different decision to you does not make them stupid. We are living through a terrifying time and everyone's trust in authority has been shaken. For some that means having the vaccine is not something they feel they can do because they are frightened and mistrustful of their government. I don't agree with them but I do understand why they feel as they do. I have compassion and empathy for them. I would never in a million years say they shouldn't have access to healthcare or that they are selfish and deserve to die. People who genuinely think this attitude towards other human beings is acceptable need to take a bloody good look in the mirror and sort themselves out.