The Hippocratic Oath and the no vax- breaking latest news

Triage in French means to choose, to select. The term entered hospital practice in emergency situations. Who has the best chance of survival is treated first. At the time of the vaccine-free pandemic, many doctors – well known – had to choose, a bit like in war, when triage is an unwritten rule. In many healthcare settings, the dilemma recurs at the time of mass vaccination, with lacerating ethical implications, amplified by debates in the European media, from France to Belgium, from Switzerland to Germany.

The fact that everywhere the vast majority of intensive care places are occupied by unvaccinated distorts the terms of the problem, since the unvaccinated, often hospitalized in very serious conditions, in fact, they require priority treatment compared to many other patients who are also in need of urgent care or who are forced to postpone interventions due to lack of posts and staff in overloaded departments. In some cases we arrive at the paradox that a severe no vax has priority over an immunosuppressed vaccine.

It is clear that the doctor – according to the Hippocratic principle – cannot choose, much less do triage on the contrary (first the vaccinated, then the no vax), since attitude and responsibility are imposed by the progress of hospitalizations and by the conditions of the patient, regardless of whether he is vaccinated or not. An objective situation that should instead call into question the galaxy of no vaxes, both as citizens who refuse the vaccine, and especially when they become patients in need of treatment.

In a democratic state, the citizen no vax invokes the individual right not to be vaccinated and denounces discrimination as a result of the rules on green passes. But when he invokes the right to health, it doesn’t add up. In ICUs clogged with unvaccinated, the Hippocratic Oath raped: to their advantage.

mnava@breaking latest news