Unvaccinated

[Ineke]

Does anyone else feel frustrated that so many people are waiting for urgent hospital treatment such as cancer and heart surgery, but their slots are being cancelled because hospital beds are being taken up by unvaccinated Covid patients. Many of whom beg to be vaccinated when they reach Intensive Care but by then of course it’s too late. I am beginning to feel that if you are anti Vaxer, then you should not expect a hospital bed if and when you get ill. If you refuse a vaccine, then sign something to say that you will refuse treatment if needed. I feel anguish for those people whose cancer treatment has been postponed because of selfish people too proud to be vaccinated.
The other frustration I have is that now positive Lateral flows don’t need to be confirmed with a PCR, so track and trace is not in place, I would imagine that many of those asymptomatic people with positive lateral Flows will just carry on as normal and go about those daily businesses , and not self isolate, perhaps they will keep away from their family and friends, but will not stay indoors for seven days if they feel ok and don’t have to report their status to anyone. How many people send in their results, negative/positive after each test that they take.. I must admit, that I only send in one out of three but we should send in the result each time. So far, I haven’t caught this virus, but am expecting to sooner or later with Omicron.

Pickledlipstick - it's completely different as the vaccines are a medical product - offered free by the NHS to stop you getting ill. If you don't want that, you can't pick and choose what parts of NHS other medical treatments you want instead, taking scarce resources because you didn't want what they offered you. Refusing the vaccine is not a lifestyle choice. It's a deliberate decision not to take a medical product which could save your life.

Alcohol/tobacco/unhealthy foods (causing obesity) aren’t really good comparisons for vaccinations because we tax those at source, partly as a deterrent and partly because it goes some way to funding the care for those things they exacerbate. I don’t think you can maintain a financial penalty and denial of care. I suppose you could tax unvaccinated people but the set up and running of that would be horrendous to put into practice, likely costing more than it would generate.

To be clear, I don’t support conditional healthcare anyway. My main motivator is that it would have to be enforced by HCP’s and I think that’s a horrible position to put them in given we ask them to work to standards that oblige them to ensure that no one comes to unnecessary harm. Truthfully peoples lifestyle/healthcare choices already mean that certain treatments/surgeries are unavailable to them because of their general condition.

@Snowcov

Pickledlipstick - it's completely different as the vaccines are a medical product - offered free by the NHS to stop you getting ill. If you don't want that, you can't pick and choose what parts of NHS other medical treatments you want instead, taking scarce resources because you didn't want what they offered you. Refusing the vaccine is not a lifestyle choice. It's a deliberate decision not to take a medical product which could save your life.

The key word there is “offered”. Declining the offer comes with consequences for your social life. It comes with consequences for your personal risk of being seriously ill. It does not abs should not come with consequences for whether you get treated in hospital if you’re seriously unwell.

Purpledaisies. It's not just personal risk though. It affects everyone if you need the bed when you declined a recommended medical product. Why should you get priority if you said no to that over others who didn't have the option of a medical product to stop their illness?

Why should you get priority if you said no to that over others who didn't have the option of a medical product to stop their illness?
Neither vaccinated nor unvaccinated should get priority based on that. It’s who needs the bed most.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone should get vaccinated. Public health needs to work harder to reach the people who aren’t there yet.

I work in the care sector so have no choice about vaccination or testing and self isolation. If I was retired now ( and I would be if Covid hadn't come along) and I got a positive asymptomatic LFT result I'd isolate but I don't think I'd register the result. My family would be aware of the contact and there is usually no one else I've been physically close to. I feel that if we follow the rules my status is really of no concern to the government. Interestingly today there has been the suggestion that positive but asymptomatic care staff should be allowed to work on the basis that the risks are now no greater than those associated with all sorts of other winter bugs. This is really the start of the wind down. The virus has evolving benefits from being less severe but more infectious so hopefully for all of us it will cease to be a factor in how we lead our lives this year.
Interestingly there was a flu virus around in victorian times which was very severe, that virus still exists and infects a small number of people now but it presents from the point of view of symptoms as just a mild cold.

@Snowcov

Pickledlipstick - it's completely different as the vaccines are a medical product - offered free by the NHS to stop you getting ill. If you don't want that, you can't pick and choose what parts of NHS other medical treatments you want instead, taking scarce resources because you didn't want what they offered you. Refusing the vaccine is not a lifestyle choice. It's a deliberate decision not to take a medical product which could save your life.

If you decide not to have the vaccine, you are still offered treatment if you become ill with Covid. The NHS will never turn you away based on a decision you made. Choosing not to vaccinate is not also a statement that you are declining all Covid treatment. How you are describing things is an NHS that exists only in your head.

@Xenobitch in the event of a crisis and not enough beds, something has to give. In the event that happened, for me and many others, the person who took the decision to ignore the offer of a vaccine had to be less priority that someone else who could not have taken a treatment to stop them getting sick.

[quote Snowcov]@Xenobitch in the event of a crisis and not enough beds, something has to give. In the event that happened, for me and many others, the person who took the decision to ignore the offer of a vaccine had to be less priority that someone else who could not have taken a treatment to stop them getting sick.[/quote]
In the event of a crisis, whether someone "did the right thing" or not wont come into it it. Priority is not given based on what steps the patient took to avoid their situation. That is simply not how triage works.
You can bang on about it all you want... the reality is different. You are bordering on stating misinformation.

@Xenobitch i'm stating an opinion. And my opinion is also that if push came to shove and multiple people needed life saving care but there weren't enough resources to treat them all, priority should not be given to those who ignored medical advice to take a medical product which could have prevented their situation. I would be beyond livid if someone died of an illness they had no medical remedy to prevent as a bed was given to someone who ignored medical advice to take the vaccine. I'm talking about what I think would be the best way to allocate resources in the event of a complete breakdown of healthcare and not enough beds being available. Lots of people agree. Who knows how decisions would be made.

The NHS in some areas has now declared an emergency and is saying that people can help by getting vaccinated, this is the treatment that is provided to help stop serious illness and/or death. As a previous poster has said, this is not an argument for not treating smokers, or extreme sports followers or obese people who are ill.None of those categories prolong the spread of the virus. The Vaccine is the protection we can all have which will give bed space for the other people needing treatment for other unrelated illnesses such as heart and cancer treatment, hip surgery, eye cataracts, to name only a few.
But Science has provided a protection in the vaccine. Getting a vaccine will help ease the pressure on the NHS. Apart from health reasons, what valid reason is there for not protecting yourself and the NHS and all the Medics and Staff in Care for not getting vaccinated, I am really interested to know and to understand what is making some people hesitant. The Army have been called on for assistance as have the fire services. Health care is affected in all situations, if you have elderly relatives in care, or family needing hospital appointments, the knock on effect of staff shortages directly impacts their care too. I wonder if those who refuse to be vaccinated have elderly relatives, or any family needing care and hospital treatment. If so, their refusal, impacts upon them. It is never too late to get vaccinated. Many people are taking up their first jab now. Most people seem to know all this already and have done the responsible and moral thing.

I would never say that those people who refuse the vaccine shouldn’t receive treatment for covid. But what I do struggle to understand is the thinking of people who refuse the vaccine due to concerns over it being novel or experimental, but who are then happy to exist treatments for this equally novel virus. Surely if a covid vaccine is experimental, treatment for covid is equally experimental?

Who knows how decisions would be made

It would be based on who was most likely to survive if we got to that point. We already do that to some extent, people aren’t given extreme treatments or surgeries if they’re unlikely to survive, the bar would just get higher.

One of the reasons contributing to a high proportion of unvaccinated pregnant women being on ECMO (in context of the availability of it) is that they’re of an age where they’re statistically likely to survive and have a moderate to good outcome afterwards. That decreases dramatically with age.

@Ineke

Does anyone else feel frustrated that so many people are waiting for urgent hospital treatment such as cancer and heart surgery, but their slots are being cancelled because hospital beds are being taken up by unvaccinated Covid patients. Many of whom beg to be vaccinated when they reach Intensive Care but by then of course it’s too late. I am beginning to feel that if you are anti Vaxer, then you should not expect a hospital bed if and when you get ill. If you refuse a vaccine, then sign something to say that you will refuse treatment if needed. I feel anguish for those people whose cancer treatment has been postponed because of selfish people too proud to be vaccinated. The other frustration I have is that now positive Lateral flows don’t need to be confirmed with a PCR, so track and trace is not in place, I would imagine that many of those asymptomatic people with positive lateral Flows will just carry on as normal and go about those daily businesses , and not self isolate, perhaps they will keep away from their family and friends, but will not stay indoors for seven days if they feel ok and don’t have to report their status to anyone. How many people send in their results, negative/positive after each test that they take.. I must admit, that I only send in one out of three but we should send in the result each time. So far, I haven’t caught this virus, but am expecting to sooner or later with Omicron.

And this is a good example of misinformation.

Care isn't being cancelled because I'm vaccinated people may be taking up more ICU beds. It is however being prioritised because there is a HUGE staffing crisis in the NHS and it's come to a head right now.

But this has little to do with covid. This has been going on for many years pre covid, we have sounded the alarm and been totally ignored by both the labour & conservative governments and we've been let down by our unions too in my opinion. Staff have been driven into the ground over many years. We all came together during the initial pandemic but this is enough now.

We have a BIG older workforce in the NHS, lots are still yet to retire. I then worry for April when there will be more staff leaving posts because of the mandatory vaccine (both vaccinated and unvaccinated staff). Failure to retain staff over the last 10 years is the cause of why we are in this big mess now.

Yawn