Sleep deprived COVID stupidity hot take
I feel like ER triage should have more of a Darwin factor. Instead of just, "Oh, this person is in worse shape but still salvageable," add on "But they also thought it was a good idea to take a veterinary dose of an antiparasitic for a viral infection while the other guy got shot, so fuck 'em. Save the gunshot victim."
Sleep deprived COVID stupidity hot take
This gives you an easy fix for ERs and ICUs clogging up with ivermectin overdoses. Bam, most of the ivermectin ODs gone, and the rest had no say in taking it.
Might this seem cruel? Sure, but triage is a difficult thing, and, besides, I'm too sleep deprived to have sympathy for these idiots.
Sleep deprived COVID stupidity hot take
And, I mean, it's not like I'm saying turn 'em all away no matter what. Just take their foolishness and lack of regard for their own safety into account when there's no beds left and you have to make difficult decisions about who gets turned away. Triage sucks, but you don't have to let fools like this live while letting accident victims die.
Sleep deprived COVID stupidity hot take
And, let me be clear: Triage. Sucks. In field triage, one common system has 4 levels: green, yellow, red, black. Black are "expectant". This isn't just the obviously dead, but those deemed not worth the effort, even if they could still technically be saved. Having to put a black tag on someone saveable fucking sucks, but that's triage. Sometimes, you can't save everyone.
My thoughts on emergency medicine Re:Sleep deprived COVID stupidity hot take
In the EMT textbook I have, the triage chapter has an example with only one red and two blacks. One black is dead. Decapitated. The other is a teenage boy with no pulse. Could he be saved? Maybe. But given this situation, only having two medics on site, you have to leave him for the red tag. And that fucking haunts me. It's an example and it haunts me. I might have to do that one day. Gods forgive me.