Triage should not be a common thing. We should not regularly be short on resources. You should only see triage in a mass tragedy like a war or major accident or disaster. Triage based on who is more likely to survive makes sense. Based solely on a person’s age is just discrimination.
Should not is one thing, but it does not reflect reality. Resources are finite; check into most urban hospital emergency rooms and watch what happens on a bad Saturday night.
Unfortunately, age *is* one of the factors going into calculating someone’s likelihood to survive. It isn’t the only one in most cases, but it is actually a factor. To use the example I used before, simply being 79 years old isn’t the only factor in the hypothetical grandma being forced to wait for a ventilator (and possibly dying). She’s a smoker (reduced cardiovascular function and reduced chances of even surviving the ventilator to start) and has heart arrhythmia, two big risk factors alongside her age. The 28 year old competing with her for the ventilator has no pre-existing conditions and is far more likely to survive the ventilator even if you leave age out of it. In this situation, age isn’t the only factor, but it calculates out to the 79 year old having far worse chances of surviving even if she does get the ventilator. The only choice to save the most amount of people with limited resources is to give the ventilator to the 28 year old woman and hope something opens up for the 79 year old and that more patients don’t come in. If the situation was reversed, where the 28 year old had major pre-existing conditions, was asthmatic, smoked several packs a day, was frail, etc., and the 79 year old was in relatively robust shape (yes, that is a thing!) with no serious applicable pre-existing conditions, then the 79 year old should get the ventilator.
Speaking as a motorcyclist who has spent quite a bit more time in ERs, being triaged, and observing triage in process more than he would really like to, it happens every day even *before* the current pandemic. Every single crash I’ve had in the last 25 years, I’ve run through triage at the ER with the triage nurse - yes, this is a position in the modern ER, guess what his or her job is.
Perfectly stated. Totally agree. There is a qualitative difference between triage built into a healthcare system for the purpose of eliminating costly elderly or disabled people, and triage in the event of disaster or war.
This particular pandemic bears many markers of an act of war, certainly including its concealment by a nation that was "researching" the virus and stockpiling medical supplies while engaging in trade negotiations with us, and then threatening to withhold medical components on a supply chain paid for by us, or even to set loose more infection into our nation.