Vaccine-hesitant in Idaho? Crisis standards of care is a good time to get off the fence

The day has finally arrived in Idaho: Two health districts in North Idaho activated crisis standards of care because of “a massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization.”

This day is sad and predictable — and it was preventable.

It’s sad because patients can no longer expect the same treatment they would get in normal times.

When there aren’t enough health care resources to maintain typical health care standards, then resources and equipment, such as oxygen and ventilators, will be rationed, and providers will have to prioritize who gets treatment, based on age; pregnant women with a viable pregnancy; patients who “perform tasks that are vital to the public health response of the crisis at hand”; and finally a lottery, if there is still a tie after going through the first priority criteria.

Crisis standards won’t just apply to people with COVID-19. They will apply to patients who need medical care for any reason, such as car crashes, heart attacks, strokes and influenza.

Already, even without crisis standards of care, health care providers have put off elective surgeries. Primary care doctors are being diverted to hospitals to care for the seriously ill. That means many people are having to put off routine health checkups.

The situation is sad because even people who have to enter the health care system for non-COVID-19-related conditions, like heart attack or car crash or even cancer or a broken hip, are now affected because unvaccinated people with COVID-19 are clogging the health care system. Had those patients gotten vaccinated, the numbers show we would not be in this situation.

This was predictable. Idaho hospitals were close to implementing crisis standards last fall, but were somehow able to avoid it.

Not this time, though.

Too many Idahoans have been going about their lives as if we weren’t in a pandemic. The coronavirus spreads easily and stealthily. We’ve had a vaccine available for months now, but Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, despite the warnings and the pleas.

And as most of us can plainly see in our daily lives, too many Idahoans have forgone masks.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, most of us knew this is where it would lead us.

For others doubting the vaccine and doubting masks, it was willful ignorance. We suppose those same people also doubted that we’d get to crisis standards of care.

But here we are.

Of course, this was all preventable.

When the pandemic first hit, many of us did the right things: stayed home, practiced social distancing and wore masks when in public. We waited patiently to get through the worst of it until we could finally get the vaccine.

When the vaccine finally arrived, it was welcome news for many Idahoans, who quickly got the shot. But some were still hesitant, one reason being it wasn’t FDA-approved.

So we waited patiently again until the FDA gave its approval to the vaccine, which has proved to be safe and effective after millions of doses have been administered, with very few side effects.

Unfortunately, that still wasn’t enough to prevent our current situation.

Now that we’ve reached crisis standards of care, we put the call out once again to those who are hesitant to get the vaccine — for whatever the reason — to get vaccinated now, before the situation gets even worse.

Today, it’s two primarily rural Idaho health districts that are in crisis standards of care. Can you imagine how bad it will be if the Treasure Valley falls into crisis standards of care?

To avert that, more Idahoans need to get vaccinated.

We need look no further than the statistics that show those who are clogging Idaho’s hospitals are people who are unvaccinated and have COVID-19. Hospitalizations and those in the ICU are higher now than they were in December.

The COVID-19 case rate is five times greater for those who are unvaccinated. Hospitalizations are more than six times greater for the unvaccinated, and ICU beds are taken up by unvaccinated people at a rate four times greater than those who are vaccinated.

Maybe you’ve been hesitant, skeptical or apathetic about getting the vaccine up to this point. If ever there was a time to get off the fence and get vaccinated, that time is now.

This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 11:38 AM.