‘Sophie’s choice, over and over’: Death panels are the new phase of the pandemic
Hospitals in northern Idaho are so flooded with COVID-19 patients that the state has declared an emergency, called “crisis standards of care.” It means when you show up to the emergency room, you may get treated based preferentially on who is most likely to live.
“If your mother has a heart attack, someone will have to assign her a point score designating how likely she is to survive,” the Idaho Falls Post Register wrote, describing the scheme last winter when it was first being contemplated. “If it isn’t high enough, she might not get an ICU bed, and a COVID patient will get it instead.
“We will ask the nurses and doctors who’ve broken their backs trying to save us to make that Sophie’s choice over, and over, and over.”
This past week the 200-bed hospital in Coeur d’Alene had 218 “med surge” patients — so many it was treating patients in hallways and running out of oxygen to help them breathe.
“What about the people who need emergency care but, because of the exploding COVID crisis here, can’t get it? Do we just let them die?” The answer to that is: “Yes.” Letting them die is actually the plan. The GOP governor of Idaho said it was “an unprecedented and unwanted point in the history of our state.”
But Idaho is not the only place where the “death panel” concept is creeping into the conversation. The main hospital in Yakima is seeing a record number of COVID-19 patients. They’re raising the specter of rationing care there, too — something the chief medical officer said has never happened at the hospital.