My Turn: Proposal for unvaccinated COVID patients

Our hearts go out to the exhausted health care workers and support staff in the hospitals of North Idaho. The tragedy of it is that it could have all been avoided but for a constant barrage of misinformation and downright lies fed to a gullible wing of the Republican Party by Russian trolls.

Here’s what a friend of mind proposed:

That 20 or so beds be set aside for unvaccinated COVID-19 patients and the rest of the hospital remain for the use of regular hospital patients and children who couldn’t receive the vaccine yet.

Unvaccinated people are crowding our hospitals. And children who aren’t old enough to receive the vaccine are seriously ill and need beds. How many children will die while the CDC fools around with approving the vaccine for children? A child died in Oregon from COVID this week.

The vaccine is free. The long hospital stays of the unvaccinated are not. One woman who “didn’t believe COVID-19 was real” came out of the hospital after a six months’ stay with a million-dollar bill.

Do all of the unvaccinated have insurance? I doubt it. If they do not, they owe a huge hospital bill, maybe with years of their wages being taken to pay that bill.

According to one urgent care nurse, some of these COVID patients will be on oxygen for the rest of their lives or in nursing homes.

All of this suffering could have been avoided if everyone eligible had been vaccinated.

Donna Harvey is a Hayden resident.