Once again, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) gets it wrong.

On April 27, 2022, the Ayn Rand Institute published an article by Ben Bayer titled "If You're a Doctor or Nurse, Don't Feel Guilty for Quitting."  The author expresses sympathy for the health care workers who have the desire to quit due to stress-related problems during the COVID pandemic.  Staffing shortages and inadequate resources for treatment are mentioned as problems, but the majority of the blame is put on...wait for it...the unvaccinated.

Bayer asks doctors and nurses how much of their stress is due to their anger toward being disrespected by patients.  Which patients?  He says:

These were mostly the unvaccinated patients who were belligerent and uncompliant with doctors' medical instructions. Some demanded treatments with no known basis[.] ... Between their behavior and the fact that they could have avoided hospitalization by getting vaccinated, it must have been hard to feel compassion for them.  

He goes on to reassure them that their anger is justified at the ungrateful, disrespectful, irrational patients because they didn't listen to the expertise of their doctors and nurses. Not only is their anger justified, but they actually have good reason to feel contempt for their unvaccinated patients, who treat them like "chattel."

The organization based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand must have forgotten that knowledge is founded in reality.  Have they not noticed that the so-called "vaccines" do not prevent everyone from getting COVID?  Have they not read about the serious vaccine injuries and/or deaths?  It isn't true that the unvaccinated had no known basis for the alternate treatments they wanted.  Does the ARI know nothing about ivermectin and that it was on the approved list of treatments?  There were staffing shortages way before the vaccine in 2020.  Then the CDC made it worse when they made those who were exposed to the virus stay home for 15 days.  Was that the fault of the unvaccinated, too?  Did the ARI not notice that doctors who questioned the vaccines or used other methods of treatment were threatened with losing their jobs or removal of their licenses?  Are they unaware that government institutions, such as the FDA, CDC, and NIH, are dictating medical treatments?

The medical standards for treatment pushed by the hospitals have been established by the government.  If we had independent doctors who could treat people based on the doctor's own best judgment, instead of one size fits all, it would alleviate all this distress.  And because of the one-size-fits-all recipe, it causes patients to be circumspect and untrusting about the advice they are getting.  This is a complicated issue.  It isn't just "if everyone had gotten the vaccine, all this stress could have been avoided."

What are people supposed to do when navigating through a contradictory system such as socialized medicine?  According to ARI, they shouldn't think for themselves; just do what the experts tell them to do.  Just take what they are told on faith. And those who don't comply are "belligerent," "disrespectful," and "irrational."  They should be shunned.

There is nothing wrong with a patient asking for a treatment, such as ivermectin, that has no negative side-effects.  It is not irrational to refuse to accept something said by an authority just because he is an authority, especially when there are conflicting assertions by other experts.  It is not belligerent to be distrustful of a medical system run by unelected bureaucrats.  It is not showing disrespect to think for yourself.

Ayn Rand  understood that independent thinking is required for man's survival.  "If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking."  Yet the ARI is not supporting people who think.  Instead, it is advocating that people give up their own independent minds to judge for themselves and surrender to the corrupt system of socialized medicine.  This is outrageous. 

The blame needs to be placed where the blame belongs: on government intervention in medicine.  It needs to be explained that the reason why medical people are feeling angry and stressed is because socialism causes shortages and problems.  Yet the ARI blames the unvaccinated.  The institute has no sympathy for the people who are concerned about rushed drugs and the persecution of doctors and nurses who disagree with government protocols.

The ARI's resentment for those who think for themselves is anti–Ayn Rand, anti-individualism, anti-autonomy, and anti-American.  Saying "prove this to me" is an attitude that should be respected, rather than rejected.  Questioning is the American way, and the ARI should know better. 

Image: Julius Jääskeläinen via Flickr (cropped).