Compassion Fatigue

Sick and Tired

The L.A. Time reported that compassionate caregivers are now running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. One such caregiver is Anita Sircar. She is an infectious disease physician and clinical instructor of health sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine. She wrote about watching the deaths of unvaccinated patients for the last 17 months.

“This year, I struggled to find sympathy. It was August 2021, not 2020. The vaccine had been widely available for months in the U.S., free to anyone who wanted it, even offered in drugstores and supermarkets. Cutting-edge, revolutionary, mind-blowing, lifesaving vaccines were available where people shopped for groceries, and they still didn’t want them.”

The only proven lifesaver is the vaccine. More than 353 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the U.S. along with more than 4.7 billion doses worldwide without any overwhelming, catastrophic side effects. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has mutated countless times, adapting to survive. It will continue to mutate until herd immunity.

“Well,” I said, “I can pretty much guarantee we would have never met had you gotten vaccinated because you would have never been hospitalized. All of our COVID units are full and every single patient in them is unvaccinated. Numbers don’t lie. The vaccines work.”

Fortunately, more than one million Americans received a dose of Covid-19 vaccine per day last week. White House Covid-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar announced a 31 percent week-over-week increase in the daily average of those becoming fully vaccinated. Hopefully, this will continue for September.

Limited Empathy

Dr. Jason Valentine works at Northside’s Diagnostic and Medical Clinic in Saraland, Alabama. He posted the following on Facebook:

“Effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.”

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate at only 37%. And football season is here.

“If they asked why, I told them COVID is a miserable way to die and I can’t watch them die like that.”