Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom

From the longer article:

To the extent that he or she takes risks, those risks should be on behalf of others. As a person created in the image of God, taking care of yourself is an independent good. Taking care of yourself so that you can care for others is an even nobler good.

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We have to be careful about claiming that God spoke to us. Often it’s our own imaginations. And sometimes the mentally ill actually hear God telling them to kill somebody. So talk this over with a doctor.

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As a postscript to my last post in this thread, here is the exact same headline from over 100 years ago- a vocal anti smallpox vaccine activist dies of smallpox:

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Hi…appreciate your concern and I am NOT having auditory hallucinations.

So, I will be leaving this discussion for this reason. I find it interesting that people who do not know me or my walk with Jesus and my relationship with the Holy Spirit are telling me I have not heard from them. Reminds me of what the Pharisees said to Jesus…You are not the Son of God.

thank you for your concern…I wish you well.

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God has been ‘telling’ too many evangelicals not to get a COVID vaccine!

How does the Holy Spirit communicate with you? Through ‘feelings’ or verbally somehow? If you are being ‘told’ anything that is contrary to scripture, it is not the Holy Spirit!

And the excerpt cited above is scriptural! –

To the extent that he or she takes risks, those risks should be on behalf of others. As a person created in the image of God, taking care of yourself is an independent good. Taking care of yourself so that you can care for others is an even nobler good.

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If you claimed that God told your to murder your family we would not believe you. Sorry.

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That site is being updated every day! One 40-year-old guy left behind a pregnant wife.

How am I supposed to :white_heart: that?! :confused:

(Taking care of yourself so that you are not a burden to others in your decrepitude from long COVID or permanent disability due to organ damage is also a decent motive for getting a vaccine.)

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We should be motivated to NOT take up space in an ICU if it can be avoided. ICUs are in short supply these days. Why not save them for somebody who needs one through no fault of his own?

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Looks like we may have lost @coulditbe here, but if you’re still out there, @coulditbe, allow me to take the liberty to share some insider info about COVID with you.

You’ve had maybe five or six months now to get vaccinated — whenever the vaccines became broadly available for non-health care workers and the like. I’m frankly unclear as to what the Holy Spirit might be waiting for to help clarify the matter any further for you.

Some of the regulars here know this already — I’m an anesthesiologist in North Carolina. In addition to the usual anesthesiologist things I do, over the last 18 months, my job description has expanded to intubating COVID patients, placing dialysis catheters in COVID patients, and assisting with tracheostomies for COVID patients who have been unable to wean from their ventilator after two or three weeks. We’ve seen a resurgence in our COVID cases over the last several weeks; we’re now at the highest case numbers we’ve ever had.

In the second quarter of 2020, our hospital drastically reduced elective surgeries, because at that time we were all really unsure just how bad this was going to be. Patients had to wait months to get that total hip replacement done; surgeons had to furlough nurses and admin staff from their offices — i.e, a number of those folks didn’t get paid for a couple months; and countless ICU and ER nurses put themselves in harm’s way to care for patients with this new and terrible communicable disease…for nine months, without a vaccine available.

In the process, my physician and nursing colleagues in our ICU’s watched lots of people die. And for a few months there, patients died alone, even if they died from something other than COVID. We weren’t allowing families into the hospital, so people died alone — no family at the bedside, no pastor, nobody — just an ICU nurse who kept the family updated over the phone. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking I found that to be.

And now it’s all coming back. For the past few weeks we’ve had post-op patients spending the night in the recovery room, because there’s no hospital room upstairs… six or eight every night. We’re again cutting back on elective surgeries to deal with the bed crunch. The hospital administration is doing everything it can to avoid a broad shutdown of surgery this go around, because they took such a financial beating with that in 2020.

I know of nurses in the ICU and ER who are about ready to quit. They’re going to go work in a doctor’s office or elsewhere, and just take the pay cut that’ll come with it, for doing less acute care nursing work. One of our ICU physicians told me the other day that she’s also likely going to take a leave of absence for a while. They just feel as though they can’t do this all again. Few of us have a truly bottomless well of compassion, and for some of us our wells are beginning to run dry for those who have declined the vaccine, only to contract COVID now and get sick. So on top of the scarcity of resources which this new surge in cases may precipitate, soon we may see a scarcity of ICU staff, too.

And to be brutally honest: this time around it’s 90% due to people like you who won’t get vaccinated.

If you pull the data for any sizable hospital — say, maybe 500 beds or more — you’ll see very similar numbers across the board. For current COVID hospital admissions, 90% of these patients are unvaccinated. For ICU admissions, 95% are unvaccinated. For those on ventilators, 97% are unvaccinated. And for COVID deaths, 99% are unvaccinated. Again, dig up the numbers for any large hospital, and you’ll see these percentages, maybe give or take 2-3%. I’m confident that the Holy Spirit is well aware of these numbers, too.

@jpm & @Randy — and any other physicians around here — will tell you that back in medical school you had some version of an ethics seminar, where you discussed theoretical scenarios where healthcare might be rationed, with treatments given to some patients but not others. It was all kind of an interesting exercise at the time, but frankly one that you didn’t take terribly seriously. This is the United States, after all. We have plenty of ventilators, dialysis machines, and the like.

Well we’re having those discussions for real now. There’s not some warehouse out there where they keep 100,000 ventilators. So if it comes to that point, are you comfortable with the ethical position that vaccinated people get first crack at a ventilator? Patients need ventilators for reasons other than COVID, of course. Would you remove a ventilator from an unvaccinated COVID patient — and presumably thereby sentence them to death — and give it to a vaccinated patient instead, if there were no more ventilators available in the hospital? I can promise you that there are protocols like this being discussed at hospitals across America right now.

So ultimately, this surge in COVID cases was 90% preventable. But when those people who wouldn’t trust the vaccine now find themselves sick with COVID, they come running back to the healthcare establishment for help. Funny how those who stomp their foot about one’s right to refuse the vaccine don’t seem to want to exercise that same right to die at home when they get COVID. That same ICU colleague told me that one of the more common questions she’s getting from family members is, “Isn’t there something new for treating COVID since last year?” Well, yes. There is. It’s called a vaccine, and your dad chose not to get it. One of the treatments for COVID is monoclonal antibody therapy. Consider for a moment the lunacy of refusing a vaccine (which works to create antibodies in your system against a potential future infectious agent) only to later agree to infused antibody therapy (where antibodies are given to you to combat an existing infectious agent).

Don’t be so surprised that folks here found your claim so dubious about listening to the Holy Spirit on whether or not get vaccinated, even if there’s a very small risk involved. It’s a bit like claiming that you’re discerning the will of the Holy Spirit on whether or not to wear your seat belt (where there’s always a risk of a fractured left clavicle if you’re in an accident) or to go to the dentist (where there’s an almost certainty of introducing oral bacteria into your bloodstream). But it’s worse than that…because those examples concern you and you only.

We can beat this thing. But we only beat it if we get the critical mass of people vaccinated. This isn’t a seat belt. It’s not just about you. It’s about your neighbor. Give all that some thought.

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I appreciate your kind attitude. Remember, though, that the security from fear is not of this world…it doesn’t have anything to do with preventing action, but it helps us to do the right action even better.

@moderators Can Scott Garrison’s incisive post be turned into an article? It would be good to maximize the readership.

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Very touching and accurate summary, Scott. Our doctors,nurses, and hospitals are in the exact same position here. Bless you in your work.

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Yes, just talking with staff in our area… One health system had to let a lot of docs and staff go because of Covid, and now nurses and MA s are leaving with burn out.

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Teachers might be joining the ranks of the burned-out. As schools start back up, there are reports of parents verbally and physically assaulting teachers over mask mandates. One parent even showed up with zip ties.

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@Chris_Falter , you’re too kind.

I’m rarely on Facebook anymore, but I took the liberty of posting it there (without attribution, except for what you included in the body text) since it’s public here – I hope you don’t mind… I can sure take it down if you want.

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A little dark humor – medical ethics triage: the antivax crowd is soliciting votes from the medical community for the Darwin award competition.