"But most of all, angry"

[adventure_rn, MSN, NP]

Read this really interesting editorial in the HuffPost by an ICU physician (Thahn Neville MD).

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ICU-doctor-health-care-workers-unvaccinated-patients_n_6102ad2ae4b000b997df1f17

Quote

I am angry that the tragic scenes of prior surges are being played out yet again, but now with ICUs primarily filled with patients who have chosen not to be vaccinated. I am angry that it takes me over an hour to explain to an anti-vaxxer full of misinformation that intubation isn’t what “kills patients” and that their wish for chest compressions without intubation in the event of a respiratory arrest makes no sense. I am angry at those who refuse to wear “muzzles” when grocery shopping for half an hour a week, as I have been so-called “muzzled” for much of the past 18 months.

I cannot understand the simultaneous decision to not get vaccinated and the demand to end the restrictions imposed by a pandemic. I cannot help but recoil as if I’ve been slapped in the face when my ICU patient tells me they didn’t get vaccinated because they “just didn’t get around to it.” Although such individuals do not consider themselves anti-vaxxers, their inaction itself is a decision — a decision to not protect themselves or their families, to fill a precious ICU bed, to let new variants flourish, and to endanger the health care workers and immunosuppressed people around them. Their inaction is a decision to let this pandemic continue to rage.

I know we say this stuff on AN anonymously all of the time, but it's interesting to see such a bold, honest stance announced to a huge media outlet. It really breaks from the 'self-sacrificial martyr hero' narrative that healthcare workers have been pushed into.

[SmilingBluEyes]

I am angry, too. And tired. The privilege in this country. In others, they are begging for shots, like Australia, Canada (in pockets) and All over Africa. And here, we turn out noses up at it. It's stunning to me.

[MunoRN, RN]

Comments on the situation at a Louisiana hospital by their Chief Medical Officer.

https://fb.watch/7aK4JvGh8N/

[dogmombyday, RN]

I don’t know many of us that aren’t angry. I know I am. And frustrated and scared and sad and a lot of other things. I work in an ICU, so we see the worst of the worst cases of COVID. As of my last shift a few days ago, only one out of all of our intubated COVIDs was vaccinated, and not fully. It’s really disheartening that, after a year and a half of death and loss, we’re not any better off. It was bad enough when this whole mess started and people said it wasn’t real. I’ve had people tell me, to my face no less, that we (nurses) and want people to think it’s real because we make money off of it. One, I’m not sure how that would even work and two, clearly those people don’t understand that nurses would probably be the last people that money would go to ? I like that this doctor expressed his anger. I think more of us should. And not because we are “judging” people, but because we are so tired of seeing people die the same way, week after week, and if we don’t have an outlet for the way we feel about it, we won’t make it through.