In other jurisdictions, we are seeing some hospitals refusing organ transplants to the Covid unvaccinated. Is there a trend to deny medical services to the unvaccinated? Here are some comments from the AMA Victoria giving an indication that this sort of thinking is out there in technocratic Australia. But, I expect breakthrough Covid infections, as seen in highly vaccinated Israel might throw a viral spanner in the works, or two.
“Covid-deniers” and “anti-vaxxers” should opt out of care in the public health system if they catch the virus as Victoria reopens, says the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association.
The AMA Victoria president, Dr Roderick McRae, said those who do not believe Covid-19 is real or a threat should update their advanced care directives and inform their relatives that they do not wish to receive care in the public health system if diagnosed with the virus.
From Friday, many restrictions will lift across the state as it has exceeded 70% full vaccination of those aged over 16. Though Victoria is still recording high daily case numbers, with 2,232 new cases reported on Thursday, high vaccination combined with lower than predicted length of stays in hospital has given the government confidence the health system will cope with measures lifting earlier than first anticipated.
But McRae, who is an intensive care physician and an anaesthetist, said health care workers were fatigued from lockdowns, Covid-19 outbreaks, and pressures on the health system, including staff shortages that existed before the pandemic.
“Within the public hospitals, the knees are knocking as restrictions ease, because the situation is stressed to the point that tents are going up outside of the public hospitals to facilitate the removal of ill patients from ambulances, so those ambulances can go and get the next patient,” he said.
Health workers would also be grappling in coming months with a backlog of patients who had been forced to delay their elective surgery because private hospitals and staff were being redirected to treat Covid patients.
“So these patients continue to suffer some pain or disability for a longer period of time, and they’re often patients who’ve been double vaccinated, they’re elderly, and they’ve done everything right, but their knee replacement is being delayed and the public hospital waiting lists are growing,” McRae said.
“We’re all juggling everything the best we can to avoid and prevent deaths. We know as we reopen it’s the unvaccinated who are going to get Covid, and they are going to get great hospital treatment with many new experimental drugs, even though they think the vaccine is ‘experimental’.
“A whole lot of these people are passionate disbelievers that the virus even exists. And they should notify their nearest and dearest and ensure there’s an advanced care directive that says, ‘If I am diagnosed with this disease caused by a virus that I don’t believe exists, I will not disturb the public hospital system, and I’ll let nature run its course’.”
Victoria’s deputy premier James Merlino rejected McRae’s comments.
“I can understand the sentiment but that’s not the way we operate. We need to care for every single Victorian,” Merlino told ABC radio on Friday.”
Apparently natural immunity does not even exist, for a disease that one would think from the shrill remarks above is the new Black Death. Personally, I think critics should call their bluff. I would prefer friendly faith healers to these dudes anyway; just my cranky opinion. Fine, keep your hospitals, if necessary I die in my flat, where I have been locked down, and may already be dead anyway, typing on in the afterlife as a Covid Purgatory.