Those Who Author Their Own Misfortune Should Accept Consequences


Triage for everyone. Where medical resources are inadequate, triage is the time-honoured way to sort out those who will be treated and those who will not.

In Canada, Covid has had us doing a form of triage almost since the first wave.  Special resources were allocated to trying to keep some control over the pandemic.  ICU beds, nursing and testing resources were diverted to the fight against Covid.

Many people paid a price to give priority to Covid patients. Ask any cardiologist or oncologist.  Those in need of cancer therapy or heart procedures found longer waiting lines for testing and treatment and, according to the head of the CMA, Katharine Smart, it cost thousands of them their lives.

Now we have a fast spreading Covid variant in Omicron. Not as deadly, perhaps, at least for the vaccinated, but the rate of spread eclipses its lethality. Hospitals again are getting overwhelmed. The army has been called out to help in Quebec. Now Ontario also wants military assistance.  In some hospitals caseloads have doubled in two days.

Every bed in the Covid ward is a tale of some misfortune. It can be as innocent as your child bringing it home from school. That's a real problem for multi-generational households. Or it could be a gaggle of drunken idiots, many unvaccinated, breaking all the rules to party on a flight to Cancun, Mexico. There is no equivalency in that. It's innocent misfortune on one hand, engineered misfortune on the other.

Those who author their own misfortune should not interrupt treatment of other patients, those who played by the rules, those who accepted vaccination.  The anti-vaxxers whom, in the name of their freedom, have placed both themselves and the larger community at risk, do not deserve the same consideration.

We need a clear policy, announced sooner rather than later, that anti-vaxxers may not be treated for the virus when there are insufficient resources to serve demand.  If there are ample resources, denying treatment to the unvaccinated would be punitive. However, when there is no surplus capacity, the overtaxed resources must be allocated to the vaccinated.

Comments

  1. TrailblazerJanuary 7, 2022 at 9:33 PM

    I was talking to a Jehovah witness Friend/acquaintance couple of weeks back.
    He was upset that a member of his religion/cult was upset that the local hospital was not very considerate when she refused a blood transfer to help in her recommended treatment.
    On the other hand he decries those that refuse covid vaccinations!

    You cannot fix stupid.

    TB

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Disaffected LibJanuary 8, 2022 at 10:30 AM

    JWs are renowned for the purity of their vision. Like so many extreme faiths, theirs and theirs alone will fix what ails your soul. If you're really good, you'll get to Heaven, but the competition for those slots is fierce and many, if not all, have already been claimed. The others, as I understand it, just get to keep going in a nicer version of Earth.

    ReplyDelete

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