08-31-2021, 07:12 PM
(08-31-2021, 01:14 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(08-31-2021, 12:32 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Anyway, depending on how the numbers go, it might be necessary to de-prioritize treatment of unvaccinated Covid patients. Somebody with a severe condition that they didn’t mostly cause themselves needs to have precedence.
As much as I am frankly angry at unvaxxinated people right now, I see this as a problematic slippery slope (much more IMO than vaccine passports). I really WANT to like this idea, but at the same time, do we also depriorize smokers? Overweight individuals? Drunk drivers who are in collisions? All these individuals have...to varying extents (please don't @ me with exceptions as I recognize that it is to varying extents)....made choices which impacted their need for care. Medicine should...unfortunately, probably be focused on outcomes. And again, I really hate this, because I am angry at the people who are not getting vaccinated, I want to support this policy, but, like I said, I see it as much more dangerous than vaccine passports.
I agree this is problematic, and in general I agree that we don’t want to go very far at all in this general direction. I understand we already have some of this — for example, try getting a liver transplant as a heavy drinker — but the extreme version of this policy would be truly horrifying.
That being said, in an emergency, sometimes things have to be done differently than in normal times. So while I think we just have to accept that OHIP will cost all of us more than it should due to the behaviour of smokers (for example), I don’t think we have to accept that people with severe non-Covid illnesses can’t get the care they need because the ICUs are full of involuntary suicide attempts.