Freedom for some, danger for many

Sunday’s front-page article “More surgeries postponed as hospitals pushed to limits” (Aug. 29) raises some ethical concerns about medical care and how it is rationed during the current pandemic. As the anti-vaxxers shout about their right to “freedom” from having to take the COVID vaccine, literally hundreds of them are clogging up our hospitals and filling over 90% the ICU beds.

Concurrently, people needing care for strokes, heart attacks, serious injuries, cancer surgery and other emergency traumas must wait for ER care and ICU beds which may never materialize. This raises the question of whose rights matter: the non-vaccinated COVID patients or those who got vaccinated but now cannot receive necessary health care.

When ICU beds are the difference between life and death for many, anyone who did not get vaccinated and then ended up in the hospital with COVID should be moved out into a hall or annex to free an ICU bed for someone who needs it for a medical crisis. The anti-vaxxers get to make a choice, but they should not be allowed to force others to suffer the consequences of their “freedom.”

Janet S. Yoder

Spokane