authorization card. not going to do us a lot of good to say do this if we can t prove that you did it. and i think to make mandates stick, you basically say it s not just a question of being able to go to work. you can t get into a restaurant, a gym, a bar, a sports stadium, a theater without proof of vaccination. i mean i don t want to be talking about this a year from now. we don t really get tough as we roll into the winter with schools open and a lot of kids unable to vaccinate, i worry that the implementation won t get us where we need to be. and a lot of people going people will be in close confines going into the winter. art, what about the ethics of allocating care and resources like icu beds? should someone who needs lifesaving cancer surgery have to postpone it because someone else refused to get vaccinated for covid? how are these decisions being made? well, look, my friend dr. schaffner will know this too.
was? i didn t pay it no attention to be honest, but i do now. and get your shots. reporter: wanda combs manages the nursing staff in the covid icu at appalachian regional health care s largest facility. a nurse for 30 years, the job never tougher. it s been very, very hard, and i get emotional because it is our community. icu nurses work very hard. they work very hard every day. but you can usually see a difference, so you work hard and you see a difference, and that s okay. you don t care that you re tired. you ve made a difference. so with this, they still work just as hard, harder, and it really hurts when you don t see a difference. reporter: just when they thought they were through the worst of the pandemic, it s come roaring back. patients younger, sicker, harder to treat. the family, you know, it s hard for them to realize, oh, you mean this is the end? you really mean this is the end? it is our community. it s people that we know, or we know people they re related to.
so that s what s really hard on the nurses is the emotional part too. reporter: in the covid icu here in hazard, every bed taken by those suffering from severe cases of covid-19. every patient intubated except for one. what is this virus doing to places like hazard, kentucky? it s destroying us. we re i mean, everybody s getting it. everybody s getting sick. everybody s we re just seeing a lot of it now. reporter: appalachian regional health care has 13 facilities across eastern kentucky and west virginia. its entire system now overwhelmed by covid. we have no icu beds available, zero. zero? zero. across 13 facilities? across 13 facilities, we have zero icu beds available. we have 35 patients waiting in
we always teach in medical ethics don t sort out the sinners. don t punish people who wind up sick. you re never quite sure did they not get a vaccine because one wasn t available to them or they had a family situation where they were just overwhelmed. it s tough sometimes for doctors to make the assessment of who s virtuous and who isn t. so i don t want rationing in the e.r., in the icu, by vaccination status. but what i would accept is if you are not vaccinated and that is leading you to die with less chance of rescue because you have other complicating conditions and someone else might do better, then i think vaccination status might be taken into account if it is predictive of outcome. listen, i don t think anyone expects someone to show up at a hospital and a doctor refuses to vaccinate them. what i have been saying is if you don t believe in it, then perhaps you should not yourself go to a hospital or expect treatment when you have not done
it s so hard. i get emotional because it is our community. i see they work very hard. very hard every day. you can usually see a difference. you work hard and see a difference. that s okay. you don t care you re tired. you ve made a difference. so they work just as hard, if not harder, it hurts when you don t see a difference. reporter: just when they thought they were through the worst of the pandemic. it has come roaring back. patients younger and sicker and harder to treat. the family it s hard to realize it s the end? it s our community. . they know people. they know people related to them. it s hard on the nurses is the emotional part, too. reporter: in the covid icu here in hazard, every bed taken by those suffering from severe cases of covid-19. every patient intubated except for one. what is this virus doing to places like hazard, kentucky? it s destroying us.