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Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

Sure and while you are at it, add smokers, morbidly obese, drunk drivers, gang bangers etc etc to the list ok?

I think it's important to note that these are not currently clogging the medical system like unvaccinated COVID cases.

Edit: spelling

If the risk of say 'gang banging' is higher but it's not a problem because the number of people involved in the activity is lower then I think that is a bad argument for treating 'gang banging' differently.

For example what if I was to claim there are really two distinct groups of 'unvaccinated' Covid people. Group A and Group B unvaccinated. Group A only contains 1 person and very clearly is not clogging up the hospitals. Someone claims to be 'Group A' unvaccinated and asserts their actions are not a problem because they are not clogging up the system.

A more realistic example is there are 20 smaller groups of people that in total are the same size as the Covid unvaccinated group but these groups have twice the risk as the unvaccinated group. If we make decisions based on group_size * risk then these groups are fine but we see that combined they have a much worse effect on capacity than the unvaccinated group. If we make decisions based solely on risk and not risk * group_size then the 'triage' protocol is going to make more sense.

Practically, you might have to treat groups differently because it's impossible to make efficient rules for a lot of small groups but ignoring the practical costs of rule making it is risk that is important not the size of the groups.

Hospitals in cities like Chicago with large gang populations sometimes have to go on diversion due to being overwhelmed by gunshot wounds.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/04/us/chicago-mount-sinai-hospit...

I don't see this as being about group size or risk. Rather, I see it as being about resources.

There is one group who are consuming medical resources in such a way that it is limiting access for others. And the reason for this consumption is largely a personal decision to not take precautions that would prevent such consumption.

If 'gang banging' or any other elective activity (or lack thereof) were resulting in a similar situation, I think it would be right to explore the idea of limiting access for those making such decisions to ensure access for others.

It's more nuanced though. A healthy young person with no comorbidities is probably better off getting infected and developing natural immunity. Perhaps relying on monoclonal treatments and even ivermectin if it gets too severe. Vaccinating everyone is a recipe for endless boosters and a societal factory of increasingly more severe variants.

They do exactly that for transplants.

edit: but as I understand it, this isn't meant to be a moral judgement, just giving the organ to someone who will get the most life from it. Maybe a distinction vs anti-vaxxers is that hospital staff don't expect choosing a vaccination or not to be a pattern that extends beyond this pandemic? or just that they haven't established a process? I don't know.

No they don't. They assign donors based on most likely to have a successful outcome and longevity afterward.

I just was editing my comment to add exactly that, but nonetheless I think the list you gave matches their criteria pretty accurately...

My father was on a kidney waiting list for a little over a year. His physician told him that if they were to learn that he had even one alcoholic drink while he was on the list, he'd be moved to the end (he had no history of alcohol misuse, this was just kidney donor boilerplate). So it would appear that lifestyle factors can figure into these medical decisions, although it's not a moral judgment.

Alcohol drinking affects the liver. So this is relevant for the success of kidney transplants and not a "drinking alcohol is bad" reason.

My understanding is that transplants are triaged as organs become available, and there's no situation where available organs would be held in reserve to wait for someone who can use them better.

Doctors and medical personnel don't have unlimited amounts of specialized equipment, facilities, and personnel. They have to be able to perform triage and make decisions about how best to allocate those resources. Medical personnel at mass casualty events, for example, may 'Black Tag' [0] people whose injuries are so severe that they will not survive, and it would be a misuse of resources to provide more than cursory pain management for them. And those people are arguably less 'at fault' than those who chose not to get vaccinated against a pandemic.

[0] https://www.medicinenet.com/medical_triage_code_tags_and_tri...

None of these is something that can be fixed in ten minutes. Being unvaccinated can, though.

Do these groups cause strain on emergency medical services to the same degree as COVID patients? I have literally never heard of hospitals being full except in natural disaster situations, and this pandemic.

Are you looking? They get full fairly often:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/28/hospitals-da...

https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

That's just 5m of naive searching.

If someone _has_ to be turned away, why not those that chose their fate? I do have some sympathy for those suffering under an addiction, so I'd make some adjustments to your list, I suppose.

Drunk drivers already get lots of sanctions, even if they get treated in the hospital. So do gang bangers.

If I get what you are suggesting with your clever analogies, I'm actually OK with arresting the unvaccinated after they get treatment in a hospital. It would still act as a deterrent to not being vaccinated.

Never mind the evidence for natural immunity and brush aside those that have had bad or severe reactions to the first shot?

Natural immunity is wildly inconsistent and only lasts a few months. Vaccines are much more consistent (in the directly of better) and should last a year or so.

I find that the natural immunity crowd doesn't really understand natural immunity, they think it is the same as a vaccine and are surprised when re-infections occur so easily.

> gang bangers

Perhaps you meant "gang members".

He meant Blacks and Hispanics.

Already covered in the non vaccinated criteria?

It confused me for a long time, a gang bang means something quite different in the UK to the US.

I meant people with gang affiliations that end up in the hospital as a result of gang activities.

Right. It means something very different to me, didn't know it had that other meaning for some people.

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