Imagine an asteroid flying towards earth. Is this a political event?
The asteroid might burn up before impact. If it hits the earth, many will die. If it burns up, we see lights in the sky but not much else.
As Prime Minister, what would you do?
Once impact is obvious, who do you save first: the old and frail? White collar workers or blue? How about first responders?
Whom do you let die, when aid runs out? Whom do you send out of the ICU?
Ethicists finally have a new debate. We can forget about runaway trains killing people on track A versus those on track B. Now, we can debate about all the patients killed from treatment denied, for boring things such as cancer, versus those saved from new and exciting things such as COVID-19.
Political Events
Pandemics need public health for populations, medicine for sick patients, and for politics to stand down.
Canada took the opposite approach. PM Trudeau made the pandemic all about politics. If we were in his political shoes, we may have done the same.
The point is not about bad decisions. It was that Trudeau tried to make decisions. He politicized the pandemic and tried to put his party on the right side of it.
Infections and outbreaks are not political events.
Having politicized a response to the threat, politicians cannot depoliticize the outcome. Now, they work to spin the outcome in their favour. Continue reading “COVID-19: A Political Event?”
