Rationing ICU beds
I was very disappointed when I saw that hospitals are already doing or considering rationing health care so that there are sufficient ICU beds for COVID-19 patients.
Those of us that are vaccinated are already paying a high cost because some people choose not to get vaccinated. Unemployment is rising, the cost of health care is rising, testing is difficult to find, travel and friend/family/church/organization gatherings are limited, oxygen is running out and people are dying due to lack of hospital beds.
So, instead of prioritizing ICU beds for unvaccinated patients, why don’t hospitals reserve some beds for cancer/heart or other patients that need surgery and a place to recover. Those patients did not choose to get cancer, have a heart attack or accident. So, please don’t make them pay for those that choose not to take the vaccine.
Kathleen Huckabay
Waikoloa Village
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Time for some real information
The reprint of the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial in the Sept. 12 edition of West Hawaii Today has an interesting title: “Physicians who mislead the public deserve to have their licenses suspended.” In 1865, the Hungarian-Austrian physician Ignaz Semmelweis died as a broken man in a mental hospital. In 1844, he had established that the one in five deaths among women delivering their babies in the hospital could be cut to one in 100 by the simple measure of cleansing the doctor’s hands in a Chlorox-like solution before touching the mother. He tried to educate the rest of the medical establishment for many years.
In the end, he and his “theory” were rejected as heresy — as “misinformation.” Semmelweis effectively had his “license suspended” and his opportunities to teach obstructed. The “authorities” had to age and die before the simple fact proposed by Semmelweis was accepted. Sterilize your hands before performing any invasive procedure on a patient. Who knows how many thousands of mothers died and children went motherless while Semmelweis’ theory was resisted? The bull-headed conceit and unscientific attitude of those authorities were to blame.
The U.S., which spends yearly over $10,000 per citizen on health care, has documented 2,037 COVID-19 deaths per million citizens. India has only 317 deaths per million. There are confounding factors such as population age and obesity. However, the U.S. death rate is almost seven times that of India, which spends only $73 yearly per citizen.
It is time for some real information. The geniuses of our health care cartel should pause on determining what is misinformation until they have flown to India to ask humbly, “Please tell us your secrets.” The insurmountable obstacle is admitting to the American public, and the world, that the real “misinformation” is their own.
John Bellatti
Captain Cook
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