BOISE, Idaho (AP) – The intensive care units at St. Louis Boise Medical Center Luke is full, each with a flickering jungle of tubes, cables, and mechanical breathing machines. Inpatients are very similar: all unvaccinated, mostly middle-aged, paralyzed and sedated, depend on life support and are locked in a silent fight against COVID-19.
But watch for a moment and see clearly who they were before the coronavirus.
Tattoos with artistic ink cover the tanned forearm of a thirty-year-old man. The slightly swollen belly of a pregnant mother is briefly revealed while a nurse adjusts her position. The young woman is five months pregnant and is stuck in a breathing machine.
In the hallway, another pregnant woman, just 24 years old and hooked to a fan, is lying, above the developing fetus, to introduce more air into her devastated lungs.
This week, Idaho has achieved a sad COVID-19 trifecta, which has achieved a record number of visits to emergency rooms, hospitalizations and ICU patients. Medical experts say the deeply conservative state will likely see 30,000 new infections a week by mid-September.
With a critical shortage of hospital beds and staff and one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, Idaho health care providers are desperate and preparing to follow standards of care in crisis, which call for providing scarce resources to patients most likely to survive.
The St. Luke’s Boise invited the Associated Press to its restricted ICUs this week in the hope that sharing the terrible reality would cause people to change their behavior.
“There is so much loss here, and so much can be avoided. I’m not just talking about the loss of lives. Ultimately, it’s like losing hope, ”said Dr. Jim Souza, chief physician. “When the vaccines came out in December, the health workers said,‘ Oh, my God, it’s like the cavalry is coming up the hill. … To see now what is at stake? Everything is so unnecessary. “
Within the ICU, Kristen Connelly and other nurses often meet to turn each patient around, taking care to avoid disconnecting the tangle of tubes and cables that keep them alive. With breathing tubes, feeding tubes, and half a dozen hanging bags of medications designed to stop a cascade of organ damage, converting a patient is a dangerous but necessary effort that happens twice a day.
When Idaho hospitals last winter were almost overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, Connelly was not surprised, believing it could make a difference. Now, instead of focusing on one patient at a time, take care of several. Many colleagues have quit smoking, exhausted by the relentless demands of the pandemic.
“Right now, I’m overwhelmed. I don’t have much left, ”the 26-year-old veteran of the ICU said on Tuesday.
Connelly’s own life is in triage mode as she tries to maintain her last energy deposits. He no longer eats at home and has cut off all activities except walking his dog. Her deep sense of compassion, which Connelly normally considers a critical skill for the job, has been overshadowed by an anger she can’t shake.
“Last week we had a mother-daughter team at the hospital and the mother died and the daughter was still here,” Connelly said. “At that moment, I was relieved of the anger, because I was overwhelmed by sadness.”
“It’s devastating,” he said. “Where we are now is avoidable. We didn’t have to go here.”
All ICU coronavirus patients were generally healthy people who simply did not get vaccinated, said Dr. Bill Dittrich. Idaho could adopt crisis care standards in a few days, letting it make heartbreaking decisions about who gets life-saving treatment.
“I don’t think anyone is ever prepared to hold the kind of conversations and make the kind of decisions that worries us that we’re going to have to make in the next few weeks. I’m very terrified,” Dittrich said.
Most ICU patients fell prey to artists before they became ill with the virus, said Souza, the chief medical officer. He points to a patient who first tried the antiparasitic drug ivermectin. U.S. health officials have warned that it should not be used to treat COVID-19. The man, who was in his fifties, refused standard medical treatments until he became so ill that he needed to be hospitalized.
“What we have left is an organ support therapy. Misinformation is hurting people and killing people, ”said Souza.
What is clear about science? Vaccines, he said. “We don’t have any vaccinated patients here.”
However, in bright red Idaho, vaccinations, masks, and just about anything related to the coronavirus mark a de facto boundary between more traditional Republicans and the far right.
Republican Gov. Brad Little urged residents this week to show love for their neighbors by getting vaccinated and announced he was using federal programs and mobilizing the Idaho National Guard to attract hundreds of additional health workers. In response, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin called the statement “embarrassing.”
McGeachin, who faces Little in the Republican government primaries and has tried to ban schools and cities from adopting mask rules, said people should make their “own health decisions.”
The fracture also exists locally. Ada County Commissioners voted to appoint a local pathologist to a regional public health board that has referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “needle rape” and “coagulation”. The appointment of Dr. Ryan Cole still depends on the votes of other county leaders.
Even families who have witnessed first-hand COVID-19 trauma are on opposite sides.
Lisa Owens ’48-year-old brother, Jeff Owens, has been in the Boise Hospital ICU since early August.
“My kids call him‘ Candy Man ’because he always carries candy when he comes,” Lisa Owens said. “He really is that kind, kind and jovial person, and I wholeheartedly wish he had been vaccinated.”
She is vaccinated, along with about half of her extended family. But Jeff Owens, his aunt and uncle, Jeff’s daughter and a few others aren’t. Her stepbrother probably took COVID-19 from her aunt and uncle, Lisa Owens said. The aunt was hospitalized (she developed blood clots due to the virus), but has since recovered.
In any case, those experiences rooted other relatives in their beliefs against vaccination, Owens said.
“Sure, they see Jeff in the hospital, but they also see his aunt and uncle, and they’re fine. The last update we’ve had is even if it recovers, it’s looking at eight months of rehab, “he said.” If it gets it, I’ll go to the nearest vaccine clinic. ”
Owens fears his stepbrother may retire if someone with a better chance of survival needs the bed.
“I do not even want to think about it. … I mean, it’s been a month. If it is a question of standards of attention to the crisis, they will say that it does not show enough improvements, because it is not it ”, he said, fighting against the tears. “I hope you get it.”