Supposing there is a pandemic where for whatever reason, shortage of vaccine, the sheer volume of victims and a short treatment window, or whatever, a significant number of people who could be saved if there were enough of whatever, simply can’t be treated and will die.
Who decides and how?
I suppose who should die is the wrong question. That implies that someone is deserving of death. Everyone that presents for treatment deserves to live but the simple fact is that some won’t.
Just take everyone on a first come, first served basis?
Does anyone get preferential treatment? Law enforcement and emergency service providers for instance? This pandemic will not end well and we’ll need people to restore order and provide help during and after the situation. Obviously an SDMB membership moves you to the front of the line.
Draw straws?
My thoughts run along the draw straws theme. Make up enough placebo treatments to make up the difference and mix them in with the real ones. (Assuming a single injection constitutes a cure.) Everyone takes their chances and only time will tell who gets to go home.
Does any group specifically NOT get treated? Death row or lifer inmates? Someone else?
If inmates are on death row or life in prison - do they really benefit society?
The richer folks will probably be able to buy their treatments. This is probably what it will boil down to - with the exception of medical personnel & law enforcement getting priority.
If something like the OP describes - ultra-deadly disease, yet curable by a single shot- were to exist, the most rational thing to do would be to give the cure to the people necessary for society’s continuance, rather than base actions on chance or emotional appeal. That means excluding the people the memo made note of, probably those death row inmates, and if the disaster is bad enough and we’re really rational instead of emotional, very small children (assuming that the people treated for the disease are not left sterile).
Society needs people who can a. work to support themselves and others b. bear children to keep society from collapsing. People of an age to do both should be given priority, one or the other and older children next, *then * save as many as possible who can do neither, beginning with those very small children who will potentially grow up to do a and b both themselves once someone raises them.
The answer seems so obvious to me that it makes no sense. Young people take priority over the old especially when someone is over the statical life expectancy. Everyone dies anyway. Parents with small children get first priority because they are necessary for the life of others. People with critical conditions move to the back of the line and are allowed to most likely die.
If you really want to get controversial, middle class people should be chosen above the poor because the later are a drain upon society, We are talking about drastic, pragmatic circumstances here.
The problem is basically looking at who is a net drain and who is a net contributor to society as a whole. The old, the unemployed, homeless people, drug abusers, and the severely handicapped have to be left to die under these conditions. Hippies also need to go because they disrupt the producers of society through flawed, uneducated, illogical uneducated thinking without the benefit of soap.
I don’t know. This hypothetical is made under the assumption that the traditional support system of society (and thus, the poor’s perceived drain on that society) would remain intact in the event of a catastrophic pandemic. It would seem to me that if society were experiencing a massive loss of life, then that would open up opportunities for the lower class/unemployed to contribute in ways that they didn’t have the chance to before. This is discounting homeless/unemployed who might be in their positions due to drug addiction and whatnot.
IMO, socioeconomic position should not be a deciding factor in who lives or dies - although I do agree that, sadly, in reality the highest-positioned in society would probably find some way to get their names to the top of the vaccine list anyway, regardless of physical condition or age. So it wouldn’t necessarily be a case of ditching the poor altogether, but rather, saving the richest first.