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The idea is that overburdening the health care system risks other people's lives, so you're actually still comparing your life to lives, not your life to an amorphous system.
Of course, even this version can be criticized in the way that socialism in general can be criticized.
Sure, but there is more to the life than just your pulse. Should we ban kids skating, because they can break their bone and thus be the burden on the system? What I found more scary is how readily this thing was accepted without question. Ask not what the healthcare system can do for you, ask what you can do for the healthcare system. And again, this is nothing new, I just realized it at that point. For instance in the UK there is heated debate if immigration is good or bad thing for their National Health Service. The NHS is like a sacred cow, people accept it without thinking and put such an importance on it, that it is almost as if NHS has agency of its own, and we need to think what will harm NHS. It is just weird.
It’s just a garden variety situation where you’re asked to pitch in so as to avert larger scale hardship.
Was that so alien to you beforehand?
For example, during the world wars people had to ration their goods so that everyone can eat and so that the soldiers could be supplied.
Would you have pushed back and eaten a second sandwich at lunch because you’re not going to sacrifice your personal enjoyment for some “system”?
Say you’re in a house with 3 other people. You all want a hot shower because you just got back from a long trek. You get the shower first. Are you really going to use ALL the hot water just because you like long hot showers? Or do the preferences of others enter into the mind at some point? Because if so, well it’s just the same logical process.
I know where I was at during COVID, the hospitals weren’t at capacity, but there was a time when it stayed right at the edge of capacity for a few weeks, and they had to roll up a few mobile morgues during that time (air conditioned shipping containers) to process the extra bodies.
I did personally see it as valuable for me and the community I was in to take at least some small sacrifices to make sure that those morgues didn’t fill up too quickly during those few weeks.
Britain could have just not fought the world wars and not rationed, next
Why am I in the house with three other people? Are they my immediate family? If yes, then obviously I will let them shower and skip my entirely because I love them.
If no, then I will pay for my shower and everyone else will pay for theirs, as befitting our agreement. Next.
I know where I was at during COVID (WTF is that? who came up with that? It's like Kyiv) and it was trying to get my dad an "elective" surgery that they cancelled because all the doctors wanted to televisit
Then he died.
Think about him please before the next time you start lovin' on 'the system' -
Ah, diseases used to be named by places where they are first discovered (Ebola, Marburg, Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, Lyme, etc.) But when the deplorables started using "Wuhan flu", the left declared it racist because naming anything bad after anything non-Western is clearly white suprematism, so they renamed it to COVID (which is an awful name since it means "coronavirus disease" and there are tons of coronaviruses which can cause all sorts of diseases, but anything not to be racist). They also renamed "monkeypox" to m-pox because mentioning monkeys is somehow racist too (don't ask, I have no idea).
BTW can confirm denial of medical services during the pandemic panic. Fortunately, in my wife's case we were able to find a less insane provider and also the services we needed didn't require a lot of personal attention, most of it could be managed by email, so it ended up well, but the state of utter panic and disarray which was everywhere among people who were supposed to know better and serve as guardians for the masses (I know, way too naive) is something I will never forget.
Okay, I'm with you, Ebola river
Not the same as Ebola, because it wasn't 'discovered' in Germany but rather scientifically categorized. But okay, still with you
No! No God please, no!
Don't worry, I know the story of the Spanish flu. Still, it was named so because people thought it came from Spain, even though later it was found out not to be true. So, again the tradition was supported.
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That's why they renamed it to COVID-19, after the coronavirus identified in the 2019 outbreak.
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That’s a shame to know that your father died due to inability to access medical care
However it’s illustrative that the medical system is obviously important, and of what happens when people cannot access it
That presumes the people who received medical care in lieu of my father would not have been better served by staying home. Which the official corona statistics seem to suggest because the average age of a corona fatality was above the average life expectancy and the survival rate of those who sought treatment was lower than the rate of those who didn't
('Ackshualllyyyy that's what we'd expect since sicker people would be more likely to seek treatment.' Fair enough, but it holds true if you normalize for presenting symptoms)
Also but importantly, it's weird that I have to say it again, but it's not like there was a binary choice between my dad and someone else. This was not triage after a battle. I had multiple zooms with the surgeon while he was on his couch in his sweatpants.
Lastly and not for nothing. I would have gladly paid whatever had I that kind of money but it was 7 figure stuff to bring the surgeon here. Had travel been 'permitted' for him then he'd also still be alive
Well, to me the whole point of this conversation is “if there’s a risk of overloading the medical system, should we alter our behavior to reduce that load?”
Your argument is that it wasn’t justified in that case because the system wasn’t truly overloaded.
Whereas the original comment seems to be about even in the case that the system is overloaded.
No man I just acknowledge a healthy middle-aged man had a near-to-zero-as-makes-no-difference chance at getting seriously ill, much less dying, from corona. And that therefore the surgeon who could have saved my dad's life should have not zoomed in from the couch.
And perhaps more to the point, it is not swift to deny dying people even oddball chances at survival when the official paths have been closed. For whatever reason.
I am the one advocating for more access to 'healthcare.' You are advocating for more compliance to the 'healthcare' system.
I’m sorry about what happened.
But denying someone an elective surgery because of some risk calculation to the patient wasn’t really the point I was talking about here.
I’m saying in an actual triage situation it makes sense to curtail elective surgeries, and also it makes sense for regular people to try and not overburden the system even more.
Whether or not COVID was an actual triage situation or a situation that was mistakenly considered as a triage scenario is beside the point.
I care about the medical “system” inasmuch as it prevents people from dying or having severe health complications, so back to the OPs point, I would totally modify my behavior a bit if my local medical system asked me to during a triage type event.
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