No, New Brunswick Hospitals Were Not Full of COVID Patients - of Any Vax Status.
We were told that unvaccinated COVID patients were using up hospital beds and resources in New Brunswick, but was it true?
As the real-world data starts to surface in New Brunswick, more and more people are looking to the tin-foil hatters and wondering how they were so right about a lot of stuff including the pending food shortage the experts are now talking about. Hmmm, what else could they have been right about?
Unvaccinated = Selfish
During the height of the narrative that people who chose not to take a COVID-19 vaccine needed to be banished from communities, workplaces, and families, many of our government and health officials as well as 'experts' told us that hospital beds in New Brunswick were filling up and that unvaccinated COVID patients were to blame. But they didn't just tell us, they went into long, emotional and guilt shaming pleas of how your daughter, mother or grandma might not be able to get the life saving medical treatments or surgeries they so desperately needed because unvaccinated people were using up the resources and hospital beds.
New Brunswicker's lapped it up, but was it true?
No.
Yes, hospitals were filling up and workers overwhelmed.
It is true that hospitals in New Brunswick were filling up and that our health care workers were overwhelmed, however, contrary to what you were told to believe, COVID patients - of any vaccination status - were not the lone culprit. Let's be honest, overrun hospitals and a shortage of doctors and nurses would still have been a headline story in 2021 even without COVID, but now government had a new villain to blame it on, anti-vaxxers.
This chart illustrates the daily average number of hospital beds occupied throughout New Brunswick in 2021 (blue) vs. the actual number of beds occupied by COVID patients of all vaccination statuses each day (red). Using the Acute Care Facilities Profile report for 2020-2021 (here) and daily reporting of COVID hospitalizations, you can see that COVID was not the biggest factor in our overwhelmed system.
On October 13, 2021 at the peak of COVID hospitalizations for the reporting period, 68 beds were occupied due to the virus in the entire province. With approximately 2,358 beds in use, what were the other 2,290 beds being used for? My guess is that many other people had made lifestyle choices that affected their health and required healthcare resources? But since they weren't COVID vaccine related, no one wants to talk about that.
Let's not forget that our healthcare system has been mismanaged and underfunded for decades. We don't have nearly enough doctors or nurses and the ones we do have are burning out. In fact, just a month before COVID landed on our shores, Premier Higgs was planning to close some facilities. Fortunately, back then it was socially acceptable to exercise your Charter protected right to protest, and bonus, no one lied about healthcare workers being assaulted in order to deflect, and so the decision was reversed.
And during the worst health crisis of our time, how much money was actually pumped into our healthcare system to shore it up? We didn't hire more doctors, we didn't hire more nurses. No, instead, we shuttered businesses, schools and sports then shamed people for seeing a doctor.
Continuing to state that unvaccinated people continue to be overwhelmingly impacted by COVID is nothing more than a spin. While yes, statistically the rate per 100,000 will show you that, but the actual people being impacted tells a different story. Between May 8 and May 14, 2022, 5 people died in New Brunswick due to COVID, 4 of them were 'protected'. And yes, while those 4 deaths may represent 32.4/100,000, they were actual people with families who loved them. They are not a numbers game to be played.
Anyone who continues to report these numbers at the rate/100,000 is purposely misleading the public and disrespecting those affected.
Words have consequences.
Health and government officials might think the shame-game only affected unvaccinated people, not true. Many people were hesitant to use any resources because they didn't want to bee seen as one of the bad or selfish people. They ignored slight chest pain, lumps they found, they skipped annual check-ups and in general avoided using the healthcare system that was already so overwhelmed, because they were asked to.
I understand that those specific people and conditions were not asked to stay away, but the overall messaging was the same; please protect our healthcare system at all costs, period. The result is that New Brunswick is currently experiencing huge numbers of excess deaths in the province for non-COVID related reasons. Articles can be found here and here.
They didn't just play with the numbers, they out and out lied in order to feed a narrative. They took advantage of New Brunswickers' trust in them as leaders and instead of providing factual information, they played on the fear and emotions of the public. It worked, maybe a little too well and the consequences of that are starting to reveal themselves.
Words matter.
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