An estimated 84% of truckers are vaccinated. 

But they don’t get much airtime.

The other 16% of truckers and their camp-followers - who are getting all the attention - claim the freedom to remain unvaccinated. (Photo Downtown Toronto today)

This morning (5 February 2022) the Ontario Government tells me:

89% of people over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated (at least two doses); 

3% are partially vaccinated and 

8% are unvaccinated.

In the Province’s Intensive Care Units:

174 are fully vaccinated (50.8%)

10 are partially vaccinated (2.9%) and 

158 people are unvaccinated (46.1%)

The official figures are constantly being updated but, as of now, 8% of the population at large is unvaccinated yet they, the unvaccinated, occupy 46% of the beds in Intensive Care.

Prioritising the vaccinated

Clearly, the unvaccinated who get Covid 19 are much more likely to end up in intensive care than the fully vaccinated. They put an additional load on a system already under pressure.

Other things being equal, it seems to me the fully vaccinated should have priority over those who deliberately choose to remain unvaccinated.

Heath care is rationed in all sorts of ways. Waiting lists are the obvious example. But rationing happens in more subtle ways every day, all over the country, in a million medical and administrative decisons, rarely made explicit.

At the moment ICUs appear to be coping. But what if a virulent new strain of Covid emerges?

The truckers won't have the freedom to go elsewhere for treatment. No-one else is gonna let them in. They will be stuck here in Canada.

With the freedom to choose to go to the back of the queue.  

As if.

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Note: There is a time lag between hospital reporting on Covid and the figures appearing on Ontario.ca. Public Health Ontario is reporting 501 patients in Intensive Care today (5 February)

The Provincial Government says of its figures: 

This is a new data collection and the data quality will continue to improve as hospitals continue to submit data. Data on patients in the ICU is collected from two data sources that have different extraction times and public reporting cycles. This may cause discrepancies with other hospitalization numbers that are collected using a different process. 

Update on 8 February 2022: Toronto Public Health data show hospitalization and death are rare for individuals with three doses of Covid 19 Vaccine.