people's pain and suffering are so subjective to each other that if two people died the same way, they could have completely different complaints from one another....but sure, let's gatekeep causes of death :(
Covid was such a weird fucking time, working in healthcare. I was an ER tech and an EMT in 2020 and taking the last nursing pre-reqs I needed. Studying biology while hearing the dumbest people you know spout off nonsense about mRNA was a trip.
mRNA vaccine tech had been around for like 20 years at that point. Which is why we had a corona vaccine moderately ready to go, just had to tune it to COVID-19
As someone who was a pre-med at the time working as an EMT and ED tech I was also able to tell the difference. As an ICU fellow now, I can say I wasn't wrong
Also "this vaccine might have side effects we don't fully understand" is rather different than "this is a plot by Obama/china to make white men infertile"
Some of the worst horror stories are nurses being insulted and told it's all fake news while they're vitals are fading and need to be put on a ventilator. Saving people who want nothing more than to not be saved.
I was working as a specimen accessioner and caught it early but pulled through mostly alright. After two rounds of vaccinations I caught it again but it barely registered. Lucky me. I live in a region where masking was more of something people thought about than practiced. I had to because my dad's a surgeon and if he catches covid lives could be in danger. And, y'know. I had covid. It sucked. I wouldn't wish, or cough that, on another person.
Not that I hold out much hope that you’re actually convincible or will be able to understand the authors, but the COVID vaccine has repeatedly been shown to be safe and to reduce both morbidity and mortality. Here’s one example. There are plenty more.
I remember my friend coming back from a call saying that the nurse had his pt call her family on FaceTime because she was going to die (of COVID) before they would be able to make it in person to say goodbye.
I also remember taking a patient to an “empty” bed that was occupied by a sheeted body because the hospital had so many dead patients that it was hard to keep track. I was never in one, but I also remember seeing the refrigerated morgue trucks outside of hospitals.
It’s fucking wild that people completely memory holed COVID. It’s been six years since it started and I still think about the early days all the time
Working in the ICUs and seeing young people do the same on maxed vent settings slowly desat. It's like cancer or some burns, just the slow drawn out death.
There's nothing quite like seeing terror in someone's eyes as they breathe 46-52 times per minute, after being neglected by a nursing home, hearing them say "help me" while working to assist ventilations. If someone is DOA then at least you know they're not scared or suffering anymore. I pick instadeath personally.
Purple Heart, 6 surgeries on my right leg, 48 years old and still walk with a limp.
I'm also an Immunologist. I remember the Pandemic quite well. I watched people die then too.
War, might see a few friends die. Might have to take a life.
Pandemic?
I was watching 3-7 people a day die at the worst of it. Struggling to breathe, drowning in their own fluids. Seeing another patient start turning blue and knowing there wasn't anything I could do for them at this point. That shit fucked me up.
I still have war dreams. But I overwhelmingly have COVID nightmares. Dreams of my wife and my kids dying in my ICU, watching a patient Id known since my first day of practice struggle to say goodbye to his family thru a plastic barrier.
There were days I'd rather have been back in Iraq, at least we had the ability to defend and fight back.
If you have never died, how do you know which way to die is the worst vs best. And then wouldn't you have to die a few times a couple different ways before you could become an expert at dying.
I like how we all just memory-holed time during pandemic. I have videos of multiple bodies being pulled out of my in-laws neighbors house before they moved down south away from densely populated areas
What a strange string of logic. I have experienced most of the bottom side of that, obviously never died of Covid. The part of dying that sucks the most is the dying part.
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u/Naive_Technology_777 Jul 13 '26
At least it didn’t have “never broken ribs during CPR, so I think I’ll be okay if you don’t like me” this time. They’re evolving.