Story time:
I'm putting this here so as not to create another thread on covid.
Long story short, I was informed today that someone I was in contact with this past weekend tested positive. Shitty part is, she knew she was ill and hung out anyway, but thats another story...
So, we decide that my whole immediate family needs to get tested, just in case: my wife, my son and I. My wife was in the ER for an unrelated matter and when she informed them that she was exposed, they said they would test her. When she finally saw someone, they gave her a verbal survey and determined that "she probably didn't have it" and sent her on her way.
I called and checked around every pharmacy in town and there are virtually zero tests available on short notice; I did find an appointment for Sept 15th. Finally decided to take my son and myself to urgent care and when we saw the physician she informed us that the CDC recommends waiting another day or two to make sure viral loads are at their highest. Ok, so we schedule for Friday and then chit-chat. She tells me that health care is about to get 200x worse because there is a glut of medical workers who won't get vaccinated, and due to the mandate they will all lose their jobs. At this particular clinic, she said it was about half the staff, which is in line with the national average. I apologized for taking up their resources for a silly thing like getting tested when there are a lot of actual sick people out there, and she acknowledged that resources are stretched thin and that testing is low priority but still important.
So, a couple of things: is the better good served by having unvaxxed health care workers and keeping the system afloat, or by removing them from their jobs in order to... I'm not sure what, but I'm guessing someone somewhere determined that having less nurses and doctors was a good thing.
Another thing: people making policy have no idea what its like for the people with boots on the ground. A lot of this stuff looks good on paper or in someone's head, but the realities are very different and these same people are burying their head in the sand to the realities. The reality is that our health care system only has capacity to serve the severely ill, and if you're not then they simply don't (literally) have the time for you.