I haven’t seen the original report, but it seems to be these were their recommendations in a “worst case scenario” where there was not enough vaccine and only a limited ability to treat people who contract the disease. It’s tough, but if a doctor has to choose between using the last of her resources to save a 15 year old and a 90 year old, who should she save?
The families of the first victims will do best in court. The next 20 million cases will be dismissed.
They already do this when considering someone for a transplant.
I think that if a real pandemic like the 1918 flu hit us, we would have to make these chocies, and Flash’s point about the 1918 flu is quite valid. But Appleby’s mention of lifeboat ethics should give us all pause. The lifeboat and bomb shelter scenarios some of us were fed at school are designed to do what all relativists do to break down the idea of clear and immmutable moral precepts: present a “hard case” that makes them seem unworkable. That’s the camel’s nose under the tent.
Look what the pro-aborts bring out when they are trying to argue their point: What about rape, what about incest, what about a mother who is going to die or be disabled? This is the nature of relativist evil: Put the extreme case in place as an exception, and then move to normalizing it. Keep abortion legal using sympathy for rape victims, and kill a few thousand kids a day who were fathered in consensual sex.
So yes, if I’m a doctor, I can only save one patient and my two patients are a 15 year old and an 85 year old, I’m saving the 15 year old. But let’s be very wary of what the agenda is here.