Re:Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine approved for use i...
by corin_ on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @09:40AM
(#25582038)
You're right, but there's a difference between "it's not worth spending millions on an operation to slightly improve an unimportant part of someone's little finger" and "I have two people who will die if I can't treat them, and due to limited staff/hospital space one of them isn't being sent for treatment".
So yes, it's not binary between normally being infinate and now not, but it's also a bit too reductive to make that point without also being clear that Covid has caused more and worse triaging than usual. (But someone needed to make your portion of that point and you did it much better than I could have, so thanks!)
Anyway:
> I guess it all depends on your definition of "collapse". I would describe a situation where hospitals are overloaded to the point where they have to choose who gets to live and who has to die a collapse.
Triaging patients and prioritizing them is every day in a hospital, corona or not. If you talk with a Swedish doctor (I do, because that's the health service I use), they often think in terms of which medicines are cost-effective and for which group of patients they should be used (basically - what is the human basis for using this expensive medication on this particular patient). To make it concrete, maybe they will even tell you that you are a "priority" because you have a long working life ahead of you.
Medicine and care can be infinitely expensive and public health care is a finite resource. They always calibrate towards giving patients adequate care, not infinite care.