COVID19

[Buffalobiian]

What do you guys think about this subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

I'm largely indifferent.

I don't know how privacy stuff works in USA.

From an educational perspective, I don't think it changes anything.

From a venting/entertainment perspective, some may find this useful.

It's the other side of the commonly-touted "echo chambers". There's bias there. They're just on the correct side of science right now.



My personal view on this is that:

1) I'm vaccinated so my chances of dying or having severe disease are as low as feasible right now.

2) Others can do whatever they want. They're not my concern.

3) Other people's actions may increase or decrease my family members' chances of catching COVID, but that's not something I can control so I leave that issue aside.

4) If shit hits the fans and I consider my workplace unsafe then I just have to decide on whether or not I resign - that's all I can do anyway.

[shinta|hikari]

I like it from an entertainment perspective, but it looks like the sub has changed some people's minds about the vaccine. If it saves even just a few lives, it's probably a good thing to have.

The people that say that the cruelty of that sub makes them dig their heels deeper wouldn't get the vaccine for any reason anyway.

[Buffalobiian]

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I've been trained to not find amusement in patients' misfortunes, even if it's their own fault.









... or so I'd like to say, but triages like "Drunk last night. Now can't find vibrator. Anus tender. ?foreign body" still have me laughing my ass off before seeing them.

[Kraco]

2) Others can do whatever they want. They're not my concern.

If Australia had been hit worse, it would be your concern because it would burden the whole healthcare system. Many places have been running out of ICU space because Covid patients have filled them up. Finland wasn't affected that catastrophically either, but because of Covid, folks did get their less urgent treatments postponed regularly. The more people refuse vaccination, the slower things return to normal. It's also a problem in public healthcare countries that a vaccination costs nothing compared to having a person live in a hospital for a while, let alone in the ICU. In the USA a person pays it themselves (good luck with that) or their insurance company pays it, but over here, and many other European countries, the taxpayers pay the thousands of euros just because some blistering idiot doesn't want to get vaccinated on principle.

[Buffalobiian]

It has trickle down effects on me in the same way trickle down economics is supposed to. They could use the last ventilator in my state and screw me over if I ever needed one after a motor vehicle accident for example, but the causation is removed enough that I can't directly sue the unvaccinated chap over there for using up my ventilator so that's what I mean by "not my concern".

I guess people being negligent about their health isn't a new thing for me, and there's an abundance of people doing stupid shit and costing healthcare dollars all the time. It'd be similar to a poorly controlled diabetic using that bed due to septic necrotising fasciitis that they might have been able to prevent, or an intubated COPD exacerbation who should have stopped smoking years beforehand.

I'm disillusioned by it all and look at the bright side of this behavior - they keep me in a job. Unless I fuck up really badly, no one's firing me anytime soon. If I instead consider my risk exposure to be too high I can make a personal decision to quit my job, but the ball is outside my court for everything else.

Australia being democratic and a public healthcare system means we just have to deal with the consequences of it. If our borders are closed but vaccination rates are low, we just shut up shop while vaccinations rates rise (and suffer the economic consequences of that). On the other hand, if we decided we've had enough and we're going to open up despite poor vaccination rates and just overwhelm the healthcare resources then collectively we deal with that as well.

[Kraco]

Since you actually work in the healthcare sector, I'll have to accept your word for it. For someone working in the field, things will always look different compared to an outsider looking at it from a distance.

[Buffalobiian]

Since you actually work in the healthcare sector, I'll have to accept your word for it. For someone working in the field, things will always look different compared to an outsider looking at it from a distance.

I should say that this would be a personal opinion, colleagues' may vary.

One thing is certain though, in the Australian public health system wait times are pretty abysmal for non urgent matters as is, ICU beds can be scarce, and it's not uncommon for patients at my hospital who are admitted in Emergency to be waiting hours (if not days) to be moved to the hospital ward (because they're full, so the patient is stuck in Emergency). Someone waited 7hrs to get their ankle sutured up the other day.

Any extra pressure is unwelcome. No doctor would dispute this.

I'm in no position to stop people doing undesirable things, so it ends up going into the "I don't care / it doesn't bother me" basket.

Now, if I was in a position to order mandatory vaccinations for employees of my hospital etc... that'd be a very different question... thankfully I'm not in that position and someone else called the shots.

Anyway, in Australia now some states are opening up to each other, masks aren't mandatory where I live currently (for the general public that is), and international travel is slated to begin around Christmas.