CDC guidelines give unvaccinated preference over vaccinated for lifesaving treatments
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Anybody want to defend this on the grounds of “medical ethics?”
Paradoxically, of the hundreds of unvaccinated patients treated in my hospital over the course of this pandemic, I have yet to see one refuse therapies such as monoclonal antibodies, all of which carry many more side effects than the vaccines they have declined.
Why we don’t require these people to live or preferably die their individual truth in a consistent way is beyond me.
As COVID-19 cases surge, there is a corresponding increase in the demand for treatments.
Current therapies such as Sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody with activity against omicron, and the oral agents, Paxlovid, and Molnupiravir, exist in very short supply. Already the demand has far outstripped our capacities raising the specter of rationing and a host of medical, social and ethical issues.
The use and administration of these therapies — funded by the federal government without cost to the end user — are governed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state prioritizations. Although immunosuppressed patients are appropriately atop the list, most unvaccinated patients will be granted the next highest level of priority.
For example, a 35-year-old unvaccinated former smoker with asthma gains priority over a 66-year-old vaccinated cancer patient. Similarly, an unvaccinated 25-year-old smoker with depression takes precedence over a 64-year-old vaccinated patient with chronic pulmonary disease. Indeed, the highest priority on the CDC list does not include a single profile of vaccinated patients other than the immunosuppressed, regardless of other comorbidities. Based on current supplies, unvaccinated patients will receive most of these lifesaving medications.
This is obscene. Anybody who is unvaccinated by choice should be at the bottom of the triage hierarchy for scarce COVID treatments, and it’s a sign of the complete lack of political will to actually deal with the right wing in this country that they’re not.
I realize there are some anti-vaxxers who are not part of the right wing, but they too have made their bed and should sleep in it. In any event, COVID anti-vax ideology is on a structural level a pure creation of Fox News etc.
Every vaccinated person who dies because they were denied life saving treatment that went to an unvaccinated person has been murdered by the Republican party.
. . . lots of vague handwaving in the comments about how apparently all medical care rationing decisions are somehow a form of eugenics. If you think vaccination status should play no role in the allocation of SCARCE lifesaving COVID treatments you should defend that view straightforwardly.
. . . OK I see a few recent comments are actually doing this. That’s a debate worth having.