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If any country faces an epedimic with only limited amounts of vaccine or anti-virals, who should get treated?
Most guidelines (national) - and conventional wisdom - give priority to health-care workers, the youngest, the frail and the elderly.
But in the USA, Minnesota to be exact, they are re-writing the rules. A panel including government officials, doctors and ethicists concluded that inoculations should be given first to key workers like police and nurses, then to those who respond best to treatment - healthy 15-to40-year olds, not infants or seniors.
Time Magazine quotes, “A worst-case scenario poses the hardest questions,” says panelist Karen Gervais, a health-care ethicist. This strategy “is intended to protect the most people in the most vital ways.” But the panel also decided that society’s weakest could and should be helped in other ways, such as quarantine.
- By Clayton Neuman, Time, 11.06 (See more about the morals and ethics on this issue on our Ethics Issues During a Pandemic section.)
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