Last night, if you watched German public TV news (either ZDF or ARD).....you got a strong dose of news chatter over triage-talk.
For those curious....the German medical system in the past month....worrying over Omikron coming and wrecking their health system...advocated how they'd allow triage (prioritizing) to occur at the front door of the hospital. The triage angle goes along two lines.
First line: if you have someone who is dragged into the hospital with serious Covid, and the doctor doesn't think they will make it.....they will just deny them 'service' (not real help).
Second line: if you are non-vaxed, you'd be graded at a lesser scale over the vaxed person.
No one in the German health system has ever advocated triage, so to the majority of Germans.....this is a puzzling trend to suddenly pick up and push.
Challenged in court? Yes, and yesterday....the Constitutional Court had a case where a disabled person said it was unfair to put them onto this prioritizing situation. The Court agreed, but then said.....there is no law to define this. So they turned to the Bundestag and basically said...over the next year, you need to write this law that gives disabled people another right that non-disabled can't have.
Likely to be challenged again in court? I would suggest this isn't over and it'll get more messy.
But here's the thing.....the more you think about triage being accepted....why stop at just medical stuff?
Why can't you triage public TV and just say there's necessity for one public TV network....not two? Or maybe suggest one public TV network of the two offer news while the offer curtails news production?
Why can't you triage immigration/migration, and just say there's a priority of who you accept?
Why can't you triage alcohol, and say there is a limit to how much wine, beer or hard booze that can be sold/served to you?
Why can't you triage living spaces in urbanized areas with housing shortages? If you are permanently unemployed or at retirement.....maybe you should be triaged-out of the urban zone, to some rural district?
All of this leading to more regulation, and more management over your common lifestyle? More or less.
If you don't like triage? Well....then living in Germany probably isn't a long-term thing and you might as well start planning some exit. This whole discussion, I suspect, is going to get more intense....with various questions leading onto more questions.
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