I’m reposting this from our local NextDoor forum in the hope it illustrates the dire situation our hospitals and healthcare workers are facing and the need to do everything we can to stem the spread of this virulent disease:

“My experience last night working in the emergency department.

I have been an emergency room doctor for 13 years. Last night I was working in the ER in one of our neighboring counties. I had a patient who needed an emergent life-saving procedure that can generally only be done at a major medical center and requires a bed an ICU afterwards. After hours on the phone, I found that every single tertiary care hospital in NC’s medical ICUs are full. So full that they wouldn’t even put people on waitlist. So I did something I’ve never had to do before and started reaching out to hospitals in South Carolina and Virginia. Same situation. The small hospitals where I was working ICU is full and so many ICU level patients have to remain in the emergency department, or go to floors they had lower levels of care they deserved.

Recently a group of doctors in South Florida staged a 15 minute walk out to bring attention to the fact that they are hospitals are so overwhelmed that they can’t take care of patients with simple medical problems like appendicitis or heart attacks (don’t worry, there were still doctors in the hospital taking care of patients during the walk out). I’m worried that we are fast approaching it’s kind of cliff in our area.

The simple, non-political fact is the healthcare system is being overwhelmed by Covid and that more than 98% percent of admitted Covid patients are unvaccinated. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-breakthrough-infections-vaccines.html).

This is not hate for unvaccinated people, but rather a plea to be part of the solution rather than one of the statistics. It’s now clear that our choices are strongly affecting other people.

I’m sure this is going to generate a bunch of unkind responses, but I feel like providing an honest picture of what’s happening in the hospital right now is worth risking the ire of social media. But please, before you hit that reply button to type something snarky, consider what I am spending my days and nights doing, and whether or not it’s something you would say to me to my face.

Praying for you to stay well and be courageous in your choices. If you have honest questions about the vaccine, please PM me and I will try to answer as many as I have time to.”