Re:The Weirdness of Government Variation in Covid-19 Responses
by rsynnott on Monday November 22, 2021 @10:20PM
(#29314249)
> there's a really easy political fix (which is to de-prioritize unvaccinated COVID patients, given that - again - there's a vaccine available, so if you willingly chose not to get it, then your medical care can wait until those who have unpreventable issues are helped).
I mean, in the absence of a few thousand years worth of medical ethics, sure, that's an obvious step.
But it's very much not how things are done. The only place where anything even vaguely like this happens is with organ transplants. In general, hospital triage is based on need; if the unvaccinated person with covid is sicker than the blameless road traffic accident victim, and there's one ICU bed, well, it doesn't matter that they brought it on themselves; the covid patient gets it, and good luck to the road traffic accident victim.
This isn't _just_ a political issue (though it would also be a very difficult political issue); it is how the whole institution works.
Triage based on vaccination status would be a very extreme move, much more so than mandatory vaccinations to work or than unvaccinated-only lockdowns.
I mean, in the absence of a few thousand years worth of medical ethics, sure, that's an obvious step.
But it's very much not how things are done. The only place where anything even vaguely like this happens is with organ transplants. In general, hospital triage is based on need; if the unvaccinated person with covid is sicker than the blameless road traffic accident victim, and there's one ICU bed, well, it doesn't matter that they brought it on themselves; the covid patient gets it, and good luck to the road traffic accident victim.
This isn't _just_ a political issue (though it would also be a very difficult political issue); it is how the whole institution works.
Triage based on vaccination status would be a very extreme move, much more so than mandatory vaccinations to work or than unvaccinated-only lockdowns.