Should the unvaccinated not be treated in the hospitals? Why?

@SW-User beliefs? Or aggressive stupidity?

@SW-User If hospitals are below capacity, sure. Problem is when their beliefs and actions lead to hospital saturation, de facto starving others from equal hospital treatment.

@JoeyFoxx You can believe in stupid things, or be aggressive in your attitude and actions. So that's covered.

@Elessar Yeah. It's a problem indeed.

Unfortunately, chronic illnesses that take up a big % of medical resources like heart disease, hypertension or type 2 diabetes are majorly caused by poor lifestyle choices, as well. Like unhealthy diet, smoking etc.

The situation is definitely worse with COVID since it's an infectious disease that can be passed to the others and harm them. Yet the same concept applies to all infectious diseases like STDs and whatnot.

Let's hope that more anti-vaxxers change their mind and get vaccinated. Meanwhile better planning/more funding should be directed/invested by the governments toward/in the health system to prevent it from collapsing and failing. I think most countries have more experience now dealing with COVID and with statistical data ( % fully vaccinated population, recovered patients, infection rates) it is easier to predict a pattern and act accordingly.

@SW-User Yes, well, but at least over here chronic illnesses doesn't overload hospitals in a way that if someone needs to be admitted due to a stroke or a car accident, they have to be sent to another hospital or even another region/state altogether. SCV2, on the other hand, does and is extremely efficient at that, during the first wave it's taken circa three weeks for hospitals in the most medically-advanced region here to reach the point of saturation.

We've raised our total national number of ICU beds by something like +50% in 2020 compared to pre-pandemic times, but it still wouldn't be enough if we lifted restrictions and the current 20% of unvaxxed people got infected quickly and a portion of them needed intensive care.

@Elessar Chronic illnesses don't usually overload hospitals because of previous experience and better readiness by the governments/health sector. They have been dealt with for years. So the medical infrastructure (like number of hospitals including ICUs and bed capacity) + staff is decided according to the normal, predicted demand.

Twenty-twenty was a rough year even before the roll out of COVID vaccines. It was a learning curve for many governments to face the emerging pandemic.

I hope the situation never goes back to the disastrous 2020 state it was, for you guys there. And I understand the anger towards the anti-vaxxers because honestly, I've felt the same.

@SW-User The U.S. especially in the south is facing a major hospital crisis due to COVID in the unvaxxed right now. In spite of all the options we now have to reduce the number of people who'll need hospital and ICU treatment (at least compared to 2020). The potential to get back to that situation is there, so long as we have a sufficiently large portion of the population who refuses to get protected against the worst outcomes.