Is it really OK for an unvaccinated person to die because he or she was downgraded for treatment?
With a new coronavirus “variant of concern” identified, we’re all back on the carousel that we’re so desperate to get off of.
What every new wave of this virus should do is to generate a reexamination of the tools we’ve been using and our capabilities to deliver healthcare. The arrival of Omicron, however, is generating the opposite.
Every time hospital capacity is on the edge of being overburdened, the argument that unvaccinated people should be refused service or charged more is trotted out.
This is morally dangerous. If a person’s behavior becomes the benchmark for which healthcare or social services a person is entitled to, we are entering a brave new world of divisive policy that reflects the execrable morality of Animal Farm.
What about overweight people?
What about smokers? Addicts? People with large families?
All of these people tax the healthcare system at a higher rate.
Should they be refused healthcare?
Or be forced to pay higher premiums?
The idea that people with pre-existing conditions must pay more or be denied treatment altogether was done away with in the Affordable Care Act. Policy based on preexisting conditions was deemed discriminatory and fundamentally unfair. Keep in mind, preexisting conditions are not necessarily the consequence of fate; they often reflect bad choices that complicate a person’s health.
To discriminate against unvaccinated people would let in the the back door what the Affordable Care Act closed out from the front door.
Murky waters await those who seek to make a judgement call on which people with COVID-19 deserve treatment. According to data from Public Health England, a healthy unvaccinated person with no co-morbidities has a lower chance of being hospitalized for COVID-19 than an obese vaccinated person. So, if one is inclined to say that a person’s preexisting condition should be taken into account, which factor should be the determining factor in deciding whether the person is entitled to COVID-19 treatment — obesity or the lack of vaccine?
We believe in vaccines and we are vaccinated. But the fact is that vaccination is not the only way to gain immunity. There is natural immunity, which is being used as a standard across Europe, but not, for unknown reasons, in the US. Here, vaccination has been settled on by the health care profession as the singular tool to address the pandemic. In the much-talked about case at UC Health earlier this fall, where a woman was set to be refused a kidney transplant because she was unvaccinated, the woman in question had natural immunity and antibodies for COVID. In most of the rest of the world, there would have been no controversy, no hint of her being refused medical treatment.
Either a society believes that healthcare is a human right, or it believes it is a commodity, subject to the rules of the market. If one believes in the former, one cannot justify denying a person the standard care for illness.
The concept of paying only for what one uses is a classic libertarian position. When this can be done at no great expense to society as a whole, it is sound policy. Fees for maintaining roads come in large part through those who use them — through vehicle registration or gasoline fees. But when it comes to public services, it’s trickier. For example, it would be absurd for a person to tap his own well in his backyard to avoid using the municipal water system, and then claim a tax exemption.
The truth is that there is no society on earth in which people pay only for what they use. Think of government subsidized childcare. Every taxpayer contributes, regardless of whether they have children or use the service. The same can be said about public education. Parents who send their children to day schools, be they Jewish or Catholic, and parents who do home schooling, are more than aware of the mill levy they pay for public education. It’s all part of living in a diverse society with people of different lifestyles.
Paying for only what one needs would promote a selfish, rather than an inclusive, society.
In a pinch, the benchmark for delivering healthcare should be patient outcome, not the choices of the patient prior to becoming ill, whatever the choices were. As Dr. Matt Wynia, director of CU’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities, recently explained, healthcare providers facing a lack of resources look at who has the best chance of recovering. That’s the goal. More healthy lives being lived. More lives saved. If we undermine that standard for one disease, such as COVID, a very slippery slope awaits.
Again, we believe in vaccines, but a dispassionate analysis of this issue reveals that there are understandable reasons why some people have opted not to get vaccinated. One is the concern that a teenage boy may develop myocarditis or pericarditis, the effects of which are just starting to be more thoroughly investigated due to mere three-month-plus data that is now available.
Another reason is that a given member of a minority may have deep distrust of government due to prior forced vaccine experimentation. Don’t be surprised when a blanket condemnation of law enforcement on the grounds that it is racist leaves in its wake some members of a minority whose distrust of other arms of government is just as strong.
Another reason why people opt not to get vaccinated is the biased way in which some healthcare experts address the issue. Case in point: Recently on NPR a healthcare professor from Brown University said that the current treatments for the coronavirus will work on Omicron, and also said that the data as to whether this is true is not yet in. Well, if the data is not yet in, how can the professor urge vaccination on the grounds that it will protect against Omicron? It is this kind of politicized advocacy of vaccination that generates skepticism about public health pronouncements by government authorities.
We strongly support broad vaccination as a key tool for dealing with this pandemic. At the same time, we understand certain hesitations. Merely to denounce them, not to mention to threaten different levels of treatment, is exactly how not to promote more extensive vaccination.
As a society, are we really OK with an unvaccinated person dying because he or she was refused treatment due to their vaccine status?
Empathy is a soft skill that is heavily emphasized in today’s social-emotional approach to children’s education. Maybe it’s not only children who need to be reminded of essential human kindness.
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