Should we deny medical aid to those who are ruining our cities?
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The Washington Post is raaaacist!!
Tent cities are now a permanent part of the U.S. landscape. Which, in view of the Washington Post’s view on individual responsibility and the “right” to receive medical treatment, raises the question of what other irresponsible behavior should disqualify a person from treatment.
I’m going to come right out and say it: In situations where hospitals are overwhelmed and resources such as intensive care beds or ventilators are scarce, vaccinated patients should be given priority over those who have refused vaccination without a legitimate medical or religious reason.
This conflicts radically with accepted medical ethics, I recognize. And under ordinary circumstances, I agree with those rules. The lung cancer patient who’s been smoking two packs a day for decades is entitled to the same treatment as the one who never took a puff. The drunk driver who kills a family gets a team doing its utmost to save him — although, not perhaps, a liver transplant if he needs one. [Sounds like rationing health care on “moral” grounds, to me, NTTAWWT]
Those who insist on refusing the vaccine for no reason are not in the same moral position of the smoker with lung cancer or the drunk driver. In situations where resources are scarce and hard choices must be made, they are not entitled to the same no-questions-asked, no-holds-barred medical care as others who behaved more responsibly.
To decline to be vaccinated is to fail to live up to your duty to your community. And it should mean that you forfeit — if necessary — your claim to equal medical treatment.
Yet here are the people the WaPo thinks we do owe free medical treatment to:
