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 Originally Posted by boost
We need to allocate resources. Surely you understand triage. Typically that's done in a much more ad hoc way, which is better than not at all, but don't you think it would be better if, for example, combat medics had triage training based on the work of some egg heads whose goal is to save as many lives as possible?
In triage, you try to tend to the most urgent cases first. Afaik, it doesn't go much deeper than that. I suppose if they figure there's only a 10% chance this guy will live even if we give him our last three pints of blood, versus give it to three other guys who each have a 50% chance of living if they get one pint each, yeah ldo you do the latter. They probably do similar kinds of calculations in hospitals as a matter of routine - short on antibiotics? well fuck let's use it to save the mother of three in her twenties instead of the 80 year old guy.
What I'm talking about is related to the current situation - we're not crawling around trying to find enough to eat because of social distancing, we're short on toilet paper. Even if there is ultimately a global depression resulting from measures to combat an epidemic, hardly any of us will die from it. So it's not a choice of sacrificing a few million lives now to save several million later. Its a choice between saving lives versus giving people a higher standard of living (still probably better than their parents' had, for that matter), after having them watch loved ones die.
If we didn't take measures to manage a pandemic, I think the population would be much more pissed than they might be now (I mean the population in general, not the CEO of Boeing).
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