David Staples: Unvaccinated are 32 times more likely to end up in ICU, but do they care?

Article content

Unvaccinated Albertans have been 32 times more likely to end up in an Intensive Care Unit for COVID than fully vaccinated Albertans in the past four months.

Article content

In that same time period, 99 per cent of those under the age of 40 in ICU with COVID were unvaccinated.

You might think that such numbers would easily persuade people to get vaccinated.

You would be incorrect.

It’s now clear it’s going to take coercion in the form of government vaccine passports to get much larger numbers of the unvaccinated to budge. That’s now been made clear by protests and uncompromising social media postings from the unvaxxed. It was driven home to me when I reported on the anti-vaccination rally in front of the Royal Alexandra Hospital on Monday.

The most notable moment out of the small, peaceful protest of about 70 people came when a veteran Royal Alex nurse Rebecca Riches came out to have her say, then was confronted by rally organizer Benita Pedersen, a deejay and karaoke hostess from Westlock.

Article content

“It is bad,” Riches said to a group of reporters, then referenced the protesters. “Let them go up to ICU, see all the families up there with their dying patients. It’s sad that we have idiots when there is a pandemic going on. We’re working our asses off to protect these idiots.”

Riches accepted that some nurses don’t want to get vaccinated, a point that Pedersen had been making, but she said, “If that’s the case, they shouldn’t be working here.”

“Great!” Pedersen cut into the media scrum. “Then we’ll go to the underground medical system because we no longer trust the conventional medical system.”

“You know what?” Riches said. “When you get it, don’t come here.”

“Forcing employees to take a vaccine they don’t want is wrong,” Pedersen said. “It’s a form of tyranny.”

Article content

“No, it isn’t wrong. If you see what we’re dealing with in there, you would understand. It is bad.”

“There are not as many COVID patients as you would have us believe. … The COVID beds are not full. You’re misrepresenting the truth.”

“We’ve got floors with outbreaks. Like major floors with outbreaks. Don’t tell me it’s not as bad.”

What are we to make of this spat? Pedersen’s absolute certainty hit me hardest.

She no longer trusts official sources. She’s got her own sources. She doesn’t even trust the eyewitness report of a frontline nurse about the situation on her own ward. If Pedersen won’t believe Riches on this point, what are the chances she’ll believe any positive report on the efficacy of vaccines? Next to none.

Article content

Of course, in normal times it would be no major issue if Pedersen and others refused to believe the official line on this or that issue. In a free world we can believe what we want and lead our lives as we see fit, so long as we don’t greatly harm others.

Unfortunately, right now, the unvaccinated are harming others with their choices. Ill and injured Albertans are having treatment delayed because COVID patients are filling up ICU beds. And how long will it be before all of us are again forced by government order to abide by strict lockdown rules?

Essentially, the refusal of the unvaxxed to get jabbed will mean all of our freedoms will be greatly limited. Is that fair to the vaccinated? Not in the least.

We already see Dr. Paul Boucher, head of the Alberta Medical Association, pushing the government to re-institute more “strict” public health measures: “All options need to be on the table, including vaccine passports.”

Article content

Boucher is correct about needing to study all options, which should mean adopting vaccine passports but also greatly ramping up the number of ICU beds in the province. During the dark days of April 2020, the Alberta government planned to have more than 1,000 such ICU beds. If we can get to half that number, we might weather this huge wave of unvaxxed Albertans in ICU without another crushing lockdown.

We’ve now had strict restrictions for 10 of the pandemic’s 19 months. They’ve had horrendous unintended consequences, with young people dying in unprecedented numbers from opioid and alcohol deaths, with major learning deficits in our students, with jobs lost and businesses broken, and with our elderly brutally isolated at immense cost to their mental and physical health.

Of course, a vaccine passport is a major restriction itself, the most severe one yet.

But does Premier Jason Kenney have any other choice if we still hope to avoid the greater harm of more widespread lockdown? He’s run out of options.