We have previously noted that the vaccine mandate by Philadelphia’s Acting Commissioner for Health Cheryl Bettigole would have the unintended consequence of exacerbating the already short staffing of health care facilities. Now comes The New York Times:

‘Nursing Is in Crisis’: Staff Shortages Put Patients at Risk

“When hospitals are understaffed, people die,” one expert warned as the U.S. health systems reach a breaking point in the face of the Delta variant.

by Andrew Jacobs | August 21, 2021

Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.

“It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”

The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has stretched the nation’s nurses as never before, testing their skills and stamina as desperately ill patients with a poorly understood malady flooded emergency rooms. They remained steadfast amid a calamitous shortage of personal protective equipment; spurred by a sense of duty, they flocked from across the country to the newest hot zones, sometimes working as volunteers. More than 1,200 of them have died from the virus.

Now, as the highly contagious Delta variant pummels the United States, bedside nurses, the workhorse of a well-oiled hospital, are depleted and traumatized, their ranks thinned by early retirements or career shifts that traded the emergency room for less stressful nursing jobs at schools, summer camps and private doctor’s offices.

“We’re exhausted, both physically and emotionally,” Ms. O’Brien said, choking back tears.

There’s a lot more at the original. For those who do not have a subscription to the Times, you can read it here for free.

The Times article notes that there are a huge number of hospitals which are very short staffed, but one point it ignores is the fact that the #VaccineMandates of do-gooders like Dr Bettigole and President Biden — whose #VaccineMandate applies only to nursing homes, not hospitals, can only reduce the number of registered nurses and certified nursing assistants available. It doesn’t matter what you think of their intentions; the consequences of their decisions can be very different from what they envision.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article from a week ago, which is still on their website’s main page, about hos the health care profession is trying to persuade, rather than force, people who have been resistant, to get vaccinated:

Some people’s minds are changing about the coronavirus vaccine. Here’s how doctors persuade them.

Deeply personal reasons are often why people who are initially reluctant decide to get vaccinated, said several physicians and vaccine providers.

by Erin McCarthy | August 16, 2021

Ritom Bhuyan wasn’t going to get the coronavirus vaccine. But three months ago, the 28-year-old rolled up his sleeve and got immunized.

What changed his mind? The health of his 65-year-old father, who struggled with COVID-19 for a month after the family all caught the virus. Bhuyan realized he wanted to protect his dad by getting vaccinated.

“My mom passed at a young age, so my dad’s all I have,” said Bhuyan, of Plymouth Meeting, “so when I saw him get sick with something potentially deadly, that kind of changed my mind.”

These deeply personal reasons are often why people who are initially reluctant decide to get vaccinated, said several physicians and vaccine providers, and finding those connections may be key to increasing vaccination.

With the delta variant sparking outbreaks in the country’s undervaccinated communities, causing case counts to rise across the Philadelphia region and prompting renewed masking rules, changing minds — and getting people to finally walk into a clinic and get their shot — has new urgency, they said.

Doctors recommend patience. Six months into the vaccine rollout, they say, people who haven’t been vaccinated may require some convincing, and open, fact-based, nonjudgmental conversations with those they trust can help.

Nonjudgmental? That’s sure not what the left have been doing! We have noted how so many on the left have obviously never read Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People, preferring instead to calling the people they (supposedly) want to persuade “selfish or stupid.”

Some people could sell ice to Eskimos, but some of these guys couldn’t sell ice water in Hell.

It’s a fairly long article, and unlike with the Times, I don’t have a work around for those who are not Inquirer subscribers.^[1]Both newspapers allow people a few free articles a month; if you aren’t a subscriber, but haven’t tried to open one of their articles recently, you can probably open the ones I have … Continue reading But it’s an article in which, rather than dripping with contempt and disdain for those who have chosen not to get vaccinated, is one which tries to illustrate that some — certainly not all — people who have been resistant to getting vaccinated can be persuaded.