[ExI] Fan of Sci-Fi? Psychologists Have You in Their Sights

[William Flynn Wallace]

It's called triage, isn't it? Deciding on who gets first treatment.  How
about some 80 something year old who is going to die soon anyway versus a
much younger person who, if treated, could have many years left.  I know
who I would treat.  I remember a chart showing how much is spent on health
care as a function of age, and it's very positively accelerated.  Most of
the money is spent in the last couple of years of one's life.  Well, I want
my treatment too, but not at the cost of not treating a younger person.  In
fact (I think now - who knows what I will think later) I will turn down
expensive treatments which will only keep me alive for a few months
longer.

bill w

I think we need Rafal in on this one.  Where did he go?

On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 1:18 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 5:00 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > What happened to tough love?
>
> Tough love is more a battle cry of conservatives when they want to
> ignore some problem, no?
>
> > OK, so some people are not happy. Too damned bad.  It will cost
> > lives if we loosen a lot.  There are times when we should ignore
> > our empathy and do the right thing, and this is one of them.   bill w
>
> But Bill K is saying some of the shift in attention to COVID is
> costing lives. One would have to decide here what's more important:
> reducing deaths from COVID versus reducing deaths from these other
> causes. Utilitarians might argue whichever saves more lives is the
> better policy.
>
> This reminds me of a scenario once laid out by a Navy psychiatrist in
> a debate here in Seattle. He said some healthcare workers argued
> against taking alcoholics into the ER (A&E) because, after all, they
> (the alcoholics) did it to themselves, so it's their own fault if
> they're sick. That sounds like 'tough love.' The psychiatrist pointed
> out that the same argument might be made for many patients in the ER.
> the guy with the heart attack probably brought it on through a
> sedentary lifestyle and poor diet. The kid with the compound fracture
> from rock-climbing shouldn't have been taking those risks. Etc. They
> did it to themselves, in a manner of speaking: their life choices
> helped put them in the ER. But would you argue they're taking up
> valuable healthcare resources that might be better used for patients
> who didn't do it to themselves? (And who would those be? The list
> would be fairly short, I think.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>   Sample my Kindle books via:
> http://author.to/DanUst
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