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‘Sophie’s choice, over and over’: Death panels are the new phase of the pandemic

Danny Westneat - The Seattle Times — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 19:21:29 +0000

Registered nurse Jack Kingsley attends to a COVID-19 patient at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center in Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. St. Luke’s Health System has paused certain elective surgeries and procedures because of increasing COVID-19 cases. (Kyle Green / The Associated Press)

Remember “death panels”? Well, they’re back, and this time, they’re real.

“Death panels” was a phrase coined by Sarah Palin, the folksy-talkin’ former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate. She imagined that Obamacare would cause health bureaucrats to ration out medical care, after first sitting in judgment of who was most deserving to receive it.

This was awarded the “Lie of the Year” in 2009, as it was nowhere in any legislation. It was a right-wing fever dream.

But now a version of it has come true — in Idaho. Hospitals in northern Idaho are so flooded with COVID-19 patients that the state has declared an emergency, called “crisis standards of care.” It means when you show up to the emergency room, you may get treated based preferentially on who is most likely to live.

“If your mother has a heart attack, someone will have to assign her a point score designating how likely she is to survive,” the Idaho Falls Post Register wrote, describing the scheme last winter when it was first being contemplated. “If it isn’t high enough, she might not get an ICU bed, and a COVID patient will get it instead.

“We will ask the nurses and doctors who’ve broken their backs trying to save us to make that Sophie’s choice over, and over, and over.”

This past week the 200-bed hospital in Coeur d’Alene had 218 patients — so many it was treating patients in hallways and running out of oxygen to help them breathe, The Associated Press reported.

“What about the people who need emergency care but, because of the exploding COVID crisis here, can’t get it?” asked the Coeur d’Alene Press. “Do we just let them die?”

The answer to that is: “Yes.” Letting them die is actually the plan. The GOP governor of Idaho said it was “an unprecedented and unwanted point in the history of our state.” But he made no moves to try anything else, such as requiring vaccinations for anyone (he earlier had banned the governmental use of “vaccine passports” in the state). It’s a red state, and so for the most part they’re letting the virus rip and run.

Remember years ago when a tea party debate audience cheered the idea of letting someone without insurance die? What’s happening in Idaho is even worse because it’s so preventable.

Doctors in Idaho have said their COVID-19 patients are almost all unvaccinated. “We don’t have any vaccinated patients here,” an ICU doc in Boise told The Associated Press. “Misinformation is hurting people and killing people.”

Idaho ranks last in the percentage of its population having at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, at only 45%. The U.S. is about 63%; Washington state 69%.

But Idaho is not the only place where the “death panel” concept is creeping into the conversation. The main hospital in Yakima is seeing a record number of COVID-19 patients, almost all unvaccinated. They’re raising the specter of rationing care there, too — something the chief medical officer said has never happened at the hospital.

“I sure hope we don’t get there, but that’s where we’re heading,” he warned in The Yakima Herald-Republic on Wednesday.

When I wrote last week about a COVID-19 skeptic and anti-vaxxer who had died of the disease, asking whether society should care, I heard from a slew of readers furious because their own medical care is being delayed or cut off — a diffuse version of the triage going on in Idaho.

“Am I angry? You bet I am,” wrote Mike Morrissey, of Snohomish, who says his cardiac surgery has been put off indefinitely due to a flood of COVID-19 patients. “My heart is failing without intervention. I can’t walk a block without stopping. But their choice [to not get vaccinated] just negated my urgent need.”

Echoed a nurse at a regional hospital: “They’re dying of stupidity by choice, but at the same time taking up space in the hospital and displacing stroke, cancer and cardiac patients.”

“Do I care what happens to those who won’t take a simple step to end this nightmare?” asked reader Jon Kraus, who said his brother-in-law had a surgery to fix a painful back condition put on hold due to COVID-19 levels. “I’m tired of catering to people who don’t care about anyone but themselves.”

This is why Gov. Jay Inslee and President Joe Biden suddenly feel more comfortable mandating the vaccine for groups of workers and businesses. Yes, the right-wing flank of the GOP will sue, march around in tri-corner hats and scream at their local school boards. But people are done. The vaccinated — the majority in most states — have had enough.

Now, as the workplace vax wars rev up, the best point to keep in mind is offered up by reader Michael Andreoni:

“Who I DO feel sorry for are the medical personnel who have to deal with this mess,” he wrote.

It’s the story of our time, how a pandemic that was visited upon us, through no fault of our own, ended up morphing into such a self-inflicted wound for America.

It didn’t take a tyrant or a deep state or a committee of banal bureaucrats to bring death panels to life, as Sarah Palin imagined in her fever dream. We willingly did it to ourselves.

Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com; Danny Westneat takes an opinionated look at the Puget Sound region’s news, people and politics.

Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/sophies-choice-over-and-over-death-panels-are-the-new-phase-of-the-pandemic

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You Will Have to Make Sacrifices to Save the Planet

Emily Atkin — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 13:12:14 +0000

We can save millions of lives from climate change, but only if we change our own. Democrats should start acknowledging that.

When it comes to climate change, Washington Governor Jay Inslee is unlike any other Democrat running for president. He’s based his entire campaign on addressing the crisis, and his climate plan is the most detailed and aggressive of all of his competitors. Inslee is also uniquely willing to admit to hard truths about what victory in this fight will require, even when those truths are political minefields. He’s admitted that it requires eradicating the fossil fuel industry. He’s admitted that it requires eradicating Republicans.

“They need to fall, and they have fallen,” he said last month. “Ten Republicans [in the Washington state legislature] lost last fall, in part because of this issue. We elected 10 Democrats. So until they get an epiphany, until the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt rises again, the only answer is to remove Republicans from office. I wish it was otherwise.”

But saving millions of lives and preserving a livable planet will also require something that even Inslee seems too cautious to admit: personal sacrifice from all Americans. In that way, he’s just like every other Democrat in the pack.

First and foremost, that sacrifice includes paying higher taxes. In an interview with NPR on Friday, host Rachel Martin asked him if he would commit to not raising taxes to cover his $9 trillion climate plan. Inslee said no, but only because “nobody running for office can make a statement about the future like that.” He then assured Martin that most of his climate plan would be paid for by private companies. “The government does have a role,” he admitted—but only an “appropriate public investment” would be made.

“Appropriate public investment” makes it sounds like the effect on the taxpayer will be minimal. But what is appropriate to save humanity? As Inslee’s plan rightly shows, it’s the exact opposite of minimal. The entire fossil-fuel economy has to be transformed in a very short amount of time. That’s going to cost trillions, an “appropriate” chunk of which is going to have to come from taxpayers. Whether that money comes from higher federal taxes on Americans, or taxes on private companies that pass down the costs to consumers, it doesn’t really matter. We will feel it, and it will hurt.

There is no avoiding this pain—and we’re not just going to feel it in our pocketbooks, but in our personal lives. Along with transitioning to a renewable-energy economy, any truly meaningful climate plan is also going to drastically reduce industrial meat production, expand public transportation, end our reliance on cars, and change the way cities are planned and built. The way we eat, the way we get places, and the way we live are all going to change. It will be much more than just an annoying inconvenience.

The Democratic Party’s most prominent politicians are currently choosing to write off this reality instead of addressing it, perhaps understandably so. The last time a Democrat tried to acknowledge such personal sacrifice was when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gently suggested cutting back on meat consumption to help fight climate change. Republicans went berserk, claiming that Ocasio-Cortez wanted to ban hamburgers. Republicans have created similar hysteria when any Democrat suggests raising taxes, which is one reason why the federal gas tax hasn’t been raised in 25 years.

Democrats may also fear backlash from the left. In France, left-wing protesters rioted in the streets after the government tried to implement a gas tax to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. But that protest was not because they didn’t want to solve climate change, or because they didn’t understand the need to sacrifice. It was because the French government demanded only sacrifice from the poor and middle class, not the rich. And policies like Inslee’s plan and the Green New Deal demand most of their sacrifices from corporations and the rich—those who are largely responsible for the climate crisis, and those who can most afford to help solve it.

In the service of avoiding political chaos now, Democrats might be ensuring societal chaos later. Implying that Americans won’t have to make sacrifices now to solve the climate crisis simply masks how bad the problem has become. The climate crisis threatens far more human and animal life than any war we’ve ever faced. And yet, we’re pretending that it doesn’t warrant anywhere near the type of sacrifices taxpayers made during World War II when rationing affected every American household and was widely considered to be for the common good.

Solving climate change likely won’t require the same type of sacrifice Americans made in the 1940s. But it will require a similar level of commitment and a shared understanding that we’re all in this fight together. If we fail in this regard—if we kick the can down the road—the struggle will only get harder. The planet will continue to warm, and American taxpayers will still have to make sacrifices—just ones that they didn’t choose to make and weren’t prepared for. They will pay more for food as the agricultural system fails; fund more wars and more international aid; pay higher medical bills due to increased heat and pollution; and suffer greater losses—of life as well as property—from sea-level rise, flooding, wildfire, and drought.

In this latter scenario, Americans won’t be rewarded with an economy that powers itself and a planet with a livable climate for future generations. We will be, quite simply, f***ed. Our politicians ought to have the courage to tell us, in frank terms, what we’ll have to give up today to avoid this grim fate.

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