Hospitals Forced To Ration Care As COVID Cases Continue To Spike

Hospitals are being forced to ration their care due to limited space and staff, which means that certain people who seek treatment for COVID will almost certainly die. This is happening right now in Idaho, where they rank 42nd in total vaccinations and hospitals can no longer keep up with demand. The governor is now urgently begging people to get vaccinated, but it may be far too late to save some people's lives. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

The state of Idaho announced yesterday that their hospitals in the Northern part of the state are so overwhelmed with COVID 19 patients that they have now made the harsh decision, the horrible decision, but there's the decision they had to make to ration care

In their hospitals

And their medical system. They're going to ration their

Care. They don't

Have the space for the amount of people that are coming in and they don't have the staff to tend to everyone. They don't have the equipment, the lifesaving equipment to treat all these people. So what they're going to have to do do

Is make

A snap judgment. When people come in, is this person likely to survive?

If we give them the best treatment, if the,

The answer is, yes, you have a good chance, not a guarantee, but a good chance of getting put in an actual hospital room with ventilators and all the other life saving equipment. But if they do not believe due to co-morbidities age, whatever it is, if they don't believe you're likely to survive

With the best care they're going

To have to put you in a bed in a conference room

Where they don't have

All of the equipment, they still promise to give you the best care possible.

But they're essentially

Having to put you in a separate one room to fight it on your own or succumb that's what's happening in Idaho. Like the whole fricking state,

Their, their,

Their department of health and welfare had to come out and make this announcement. Okay, this isn't like one or two hospitals. It's not just the Northern part of the state. This is statewide.

Although the problem is worse in the north and Idaho is not unique here. They're unique.

You can the fact that obviously this is the first time he state government has had to come out and say, listen, uh, we got to put in death panels to decide if you're going to live or die. If you're going to get the good equipment, or if we're putting you in a conference room

In a bed to see how you

Do there, because we simply cannot handle it anymore. Now Idaho ranks 42nd in the country in total vaccination rate. So not doing super great already. The governor had to come out

And beg people to get

Vaccinated, to protect themselves from this virus. But at this point, even if people start running out today or actually yesterday, when they made the announcement and get vaccinated, you're still a good what? Six to eight weeks out from those people being, you know, fully protected as much as possible. And again, it won't even stop them from getting sick from it. It just reduces the likelihood that they're going to have to be put in a hospital because of it.

But that would still

Be six to eight weeks out before they have that full protection. And the hospitals are at capacity. Now, today, people will die because of this decision and the hospital understands. People are going to die because of this decision, but it's a decision that they had to make. And at this point, we have to kind of look introspectively and wonder if these hospitals should they keep treating unvaccinated people, people say, it's my body, my choice, okay. With the bodies of those medical workers who are already stretched thin the ones that have to come to your aid. So, no, it's not just your body, your choice, the cardiac patient that cannot get into that hospital. Now

Your decision

To not get that vaccine could be a death sentence for somebody else that has nothing to do with them getting COVID not to mention the people that you could potentially spread COVID to that you could kill that way. It's not my buddy, my choice. This is a choice by individuals that impacts the health of everyone around them. Even people that aren't around them in the case of hospitals have to turning away a turn away other emergency cases, because they don't have

The ability to treat them.

Imagine that imagine having an appendix that's about to rupture.