If health care is a human right, are unvaccinated people not entitled to it?
Is getting injected with some genetically engineered goo now the basis of all human worth?
Jimmy Kimmel stirred a hornets nest in his late-night return from a “weird summer” hiatus by saying Americans who aren’t vaccinated should be left to die without needed health care.
“That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me,” Kimmel said. “Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.”
With all due respect, Mr. Kimmel, shove it up your horse’s behind.
What does taking a medicine that won the 2015 Nobel Prize have to do with being left to die of a heart attack, which has zero to do with COVID-19, except as the I’m-a-hammer-and-everything-is-a-nail policy prescription of a someone who shouldn’t be within five miles of an ethics convention?
I understand that we all want to be protected against COVID-19. We all want to eat healthy. not smoke, not drive drunk, and not do the thousands of various things that are bad for our health. But to deny someone medical care for an unrelated life-threatening condition because they won’t take a vaccine is worse than telling smokers we won’t treat their lung cancer, or their kidney stones either.
This wouldn’t be an issue at all--I mean does anyone really think Jimmy Kimmel determines health policy?--except that Kimmel, in 2017 shoved his nose deep into politics accusing Sen. Bill Cassidy of lying “right to my face” about a GOP health care bill to replace Obamacare.
Cassidy coined the phrase, “the Jimmy Kimmel test” regarding access to health care. So in reality, Jimmy Kimmel did affect health care policy, or at least the politics of policy.
That test dealt with pre-existing conditions, such as the congenital heart disease Kimmel’s son had, and lifetime limits which are banned by Obamacare, which a sick baby would quickly reach. Kimmel said “No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life.”
Kimmel laid in to Cassidy in 2017.
So last week, Bill Cassidy and Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a new bill, the Graham-Cassidy bill. And this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel test. With this one, your child with a preexisting condition will get the care he needs — if, and only if, his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed.
Now, I don’t know what happened to Bill Cassidy. But when he was on this publicity tour, he listed his demands for a health-care bill very clearly. These were his words. He said he wants coverage for all; no discrimination based on preexisting conditions; lower premiums for middle-class families; and no lifetime caps. And guess what? The new bill? Does none of those things.
Coverage for all? No. Fact, it will kick about 30 million Americans off insurance. Preexisting conditions? Nope. If the bill passes, individual states can let insurance companies charge you more if you have a preexisting condition. You’ll find that little loophole later in the document after it says they can’t. They can, and they will.
And now? Kimmel says if you refuse to take a shot, you’re screwed. I wonder if that includes the babies and kids of the unvaccinated? If an unvaccinated Jimmy Kimmel’s baby would get the big “stop” hand at the door until daddy gets a jab?
In 2017, Nancy Pelosi said that “health care is a human right.” Her words:
Over one hundred million people have an existing medical condition. They can be discriminated against in the workplace. You take away the Affordable Care Act, the cost of coverage for them is impossible, is astronomical. She mentioned that, she mentioned the lifetime cap, she mentioned the job less, et cetera. The list goes on. So we’re about results. If they have a proposal, as results, we’re interested in looking at it.
Now, some liberals want us to do exactly what we’re told in order to obtain health care. I understand that ivermectin and hydrochloroquine are not effective as a cure for COVID-19, at least according to the studies out there so far. But so what if a doctor wants to give someone the medicine? If there’s a non-zero chance it could help someone sick, and they have COVID-19 (so taking the vaccine at that point would be, umm, pointless), why not?
There’s no real treatment for COVID-19 other than “stay alive till your body recovers.” If someone thinks a real medicine (not fish tank cleaner, or “horse paste”) will help them, then the positive attitude alone (Placebo effect) is better than giving up.
I think we need to tell people that the vaccines are safe, tell people what’s in them, how they work, and let people make their own decisions.
However, the story isn’t what’s in the vaccine or does it work (it works). The story is really that many unvaccinated people don’t trust or believe either the drug makers or the government. They think--are convinced--they’re being lied to. They’re convinced that the drug companies only want to sell more vaccine to the world, booster shots forever. They are convinced that the vaccines had all kinds of little “I didn’t tell you” stuff in there, shortcuts like the frog DNA used in the fictional “Jurassic Park” movie.
People see “gene editing” and words like these telling us how the J&J vaccine is safe (care of CNNWire):
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses viral vector technology. A common cold virus called adenovirus 26 is genetically engineered so that it can infect cells, but it won't replicate there. It cannot spread in the body, and won't give people a cold. Like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it delivers genetic instructions. (emphasis mine)
Gaaah! I have to trust those white-coated lab people who are editing genes of a common cold virus to inject that stew into my veins. Reading stuff like that makes me rethink getting the J&J/Janssen jab in the first place. It made me sick as a dog, like I got hit by a truck, when I took it. Clearly, the stuff is potent, and I have no idea what genetic information was just put into my body, to remain essentially for the rest of my life.
I have to trust that the vaccine was one using a tried-and-tested method. I have to think about things I never thought about before. I have to think about medicine and what’s in it, and where it’s made, and was the factory contaminated, and was some Chinese gain-of-function researcher part of the vaccine team, and Fauci lie about it?
Most people don’t want to think about the pills they take and the shots they get. But now we have to think about it. That’s scary.
It’s more scary when people who think about as much as any high-school graduate level educated person does, until he has a sick baby (and I’m very compassionate about that!), believe, like Kimmel does, millions of people who don’t like thinking about scary things and don’t trust the people telling us it’s all okay must take the shot or die if they’re sick for any reason.
Health care is either a human right, which means it’s a human right for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, or it’s not a human right at all. Are are we saying that all human rights are okay to deny to unvaccinated people? Are we saying that taking a shot, the contents of which we have no idea and is scary to contemplate, is now the basis for all human worth?
That’s silly.
The best way to get people vaccinated is to get them to trust the people--not the drugs--who are saying we need to get vaccinated. Telling people “get the jab or die” is a very poor way to do that.
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"Health care is either a human right, which means it’s a human right for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, or it’s not a human right at all. Are are we saying that all human rights are okay to deny to unvaccinated people? Are we saying that taking a shot, the contents of which we have no idea and is scary to contemplate, is now the basis for all human worth?"
First of all, it's interesting to see you on the "health care is a human right" train. That wasn't on my bingo card, so thank you for starting off my day in a more novel way than I would have predicted.
If we follow down that line of reasoning, I think it's not a reach to say that anti-vaxxers who catch COVID are entitled to health care. However, a massive gaping hole in this reasoning is to what extent anti-vaxxers who catch COVID can deny *others* their healthcare when they overwhelm the available medical resources, and there are no beds available to the passengers in a horrific bus accident who need medical attention that is being spent on avoidable COVID cases. This is not a hypothetical, but happening now in Idaho:
"The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare on Monday activated its 'crisis standards of care' in 10 northern hospitals hard-hit by staff shortages, hospital bed shortages, and a "massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization," the department announced Tuesday."
"The crisis standards mean that the quality of care in those hospitals will be reduced for all patients. Resources will be rationed, and patients with the best chances of survival may be prioritized."
"In practice, that could mean that: emergency medical services may prioritize which 911 calls they respond to; some people who would normally be admitted to the hospital will instead be turned away; some admitted patients may be sent home earlier than typical or may find their hospital bed in a repurposed area of the hospital, like a conference room; and, in the worst cases, hospital staff might not be able to provide an intensive care unit bed or a ventilator to a patient who has a relatively low chance of survival."[1]
This is Sarah Palin's "death panels" being enacted not by evil technocrats in Washington DC, but hospitals and doctors on the ground who simply do not have the resources to treat everyone coming to them for medical attention. What's happening is that infected anti-vaxxers are executing a healthcare denial-of-service attack that adversely affects the rest of the population.
How do you expect the rest of the population to react? To shrug their shoulders when people in car accidents die due to a lack of resources or attention? To applaud the clot of anti-vaxxers clogging up the healthcare system for their fidelity to misguided values that led them from getting the shot, and keeps them from wasting medical resources in the first place? The people who did the responsible thing and got the shot have just as much of a right to healthcare as the snowflake anti-vaxxers, so is it really that unreasonable (especially for a self-proclaimed conservative) to prioritize and reserve resources for the portion of the population that acted responsibly, and let the irresponsible bear the consequences (reduced access to care, lower prioritization of attention, paying the full costs of an avoidable hospital stay, etc.) of the choice that they that they so proudly made? Healthcare is a very finite resource, so even if everyone has a "right" to it, would communities who shepherd and protect that limited resources by reducing its access to COVID free-riders be acting all that unreasonably?
Everyone gets the best healthcare all the time makes sense in a world where healthcare resources are infinite. Unfortunately, we (and especially northern Idaho) doesn't have the luxury of living in that alternative universe.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/idaho-begins-rationing-care-as-hospitals-crumple-under-covid-load/
I like to think of myself as an average old white guy who tries to pay attention to things that matter to me. After the last two days commentary, i found myself compelled to speak out. I have never in my lifetime used Jimmy Kimmel or the Rollingstone magazine as my go to sources for information, data or news.
I get it; trying to write a column or two a day is a drag and so to make your points you are forced to use obscure and outlandish commentary. I wouldn't even mind all that much if the thrust of what you write wasn't so impactful to those reading it. Nope, you guys don't have that big a following, but i suspect big enough to influence some, especially where you live.
Here's my point: Every freaking time you write about covid19 and or vaccinations you always encourage the shot. That's a good thing. Then you shift to the alternative reality like so many others and throw in, get the shot...BUT. And let me just say, IMHO, that BUTT becomes bigger than Kim K's.
Trump urged get the shot...but. Countless others, get the shot...but. Then you've got that whole feckless bunch like American Frontline Doctors out there telling people not to get the shot. You've got hundreds of people posting horror stories of how the shot disabled them. The nonsense about chips and magnets and idiocy beyond comprehension. The preachers from the pulpit telling them to trust God and not get vaccinated.
Then we can get to the asshats showing up at school board meetings and making a mockery of a system where they are trying to get kids back in school but doing it safely. Or how about the young man who showed up to talk about his grandmother, a teacher who died of Covid19 he claimed she caught from an unmasked student? You know, the one the jackasses in the crowd mocked and laughed at him.
Sorry Steve, the simple reality is we are never going back to normal. People will continue to die in frightening numbers and our health care system is overwhelmed. And the bigger reality is this is because we as a country refused to get the shots that would have stopped it near on dead in its tracks. There's no longer a reason for adding your "but" to the argument. We've lost because for too long, so many have been half-hearted or absolutely foolish in their responses. Be nice you say? Why? Where has it gotten us?
Georgia, your home state is at 42 % vaccinated. That is pathetic. It won't get a hell of a lot better, so now we can all live with the outcomes of the anti-vaxers and anti-maskers and covid deniers who have insured we all will be losers. It's sickening, and while in the beginning you led the charge, your continued "but" has been at least as shameful as the dummies...you understood it from the beginning and somehow could justify their actions or should i say non-actions.
I'm glad i am an old man with no kids. Here's the ugly reality you all will have to face. The children will be the next horrible statistic and then the anti-maskers will be screaming about why they had to die? Here's my answer to them...look in the freaking mirror.