COVID-19 crisis: In a pandemic, the philosophy of death is suddenly top of mind
The philosophy of saving the most lives possible in swamped hospital emergency rooms is suddenly a matter of universal concern and confusion

“Patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority,” read the public letter from Henry Ford Health System.

Soon after, the Toronto Star reported details of a similar triage protocol for Ontario, a last resort system with several escalating levels, in which patients could be disqualified from ICU based on their likelihood of dying anyway, either of COVID-19 or their other illnesses.

The philosophy of saving the most lives possible in swamped hospital emergency rooms is suddenly a matter of universal concern and confusion.

If hospitals are overrun, will they operate on a first-come first-served basis, offering each patient a medical fight to the bitter end?

Or will doctors face more panicked and utilitarian considerations about who is most likely to benefit from their intervention, as in Italy, where a coldly neutral age cutoff for life support was put in place, based partly on battlefield strategies from military experience.

Canadians are bracing for that sort of scenario, even as they desperately try to avoid it.

All this has the effect of revealing societal attitudes toward death and its risk, and in some cases changing them.

Two leading academic bioethicists consulted by the National Post, for example, offered vastly different views about the risk of death in pandemic medicine as it applies to emergency physicians facing another day in an overrun hospital.

Udo Schuklenk of Queen’s University said doctors are under no moral obligation to continue serving in an hospital system so underfunded and ill-equipped that doing so puts their lives at risk.

Eike-Henner Kluge of the University of Victoria said they are obliged, in a country where health care is a monopoly for the sake of society, because serving in an emergency “is where you pay the price for joining the medical profession.”