Viewpoint: Health Care System on Verge of Collapse

For over a year and a half, health care workers have been very verbal that they are on the brink of collapse. I don’t know why people aren’t listening. Everyone is ignoring the fact that not every health care worker can take care of COVID-19 patients.

They have to have specific training in intensive care. There are not that many nurses with that training because hospitals have always run lean on staff and relied on staff picking up overtime to cover sick calls and vacations. There is no one left to cover sick calls and vacations now. There are no vacations for nurses and doctors. There are no Christmas celebrations or New Year celebrations for these workers.

Linda Spaulding, RN-BC, CIC, CHEC, CHOP

While the general public go about their daily lives with no mask and those who are not vaccinated, they are telling each and every one of those nurses and doctors: “We don’t know you. We don’t care about you. Just be there to care for me when I get COVID-19 so I don’t die. And if I die, I don’t care if you got COVID-19 from me and die because I don’t know you, so I don’t care if you die.”

This is the message being sent to health care workers. States are calling out the national guard again including states that have never done that in the past. They will not have a Christmas or New Years this year again. But families will gather and celebrate, and many will visit these health care workers after these celebrations. Many people will die from heart attacks and strokes after the holidays because there are no health care workers to care for them when they go to the hospital with no hospital beds because they are taken up by COVID-19 patients.

Many cancer patients will die because there is no one to give them their cancer treatment. Small children will die because their parents did not protect them from getting COVID-19 or MIS-C because they just wanted to go out among people they don’t know who have COVID-19 and their babies got infected.

People need to realize that health care workers are not omnipotent. They are human and mistakes will happen when someone hasn’t slept for days on end and has been pushed to their limit daily. The health care system can collapse. And I’m not sure that would even make people get vaccinated, stay home, and wear masks.

There are too many who are self-centered. “I don’t watch the news people. I don’t want to hear the bad news. I don’t believe anything in the news reports. I just want to do what I want to do when I want to do it.”

I feel disaster coming our way. I think we are about to experience something that will knock the breath out of people very soon. It will be up to the public when enough is enough and if it doesn't happen soon this virus will kill so many more people that it will put fear in people.