MSNBC Medical Analyst Dr. Gupta: Time to Place Lower Priority on Unvaccinated Patients

MSNBC medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta said Wednesday on “The ReidOut” that it was time for the medical profession to begin looking at the bioethics of placing a lower priority on unvaccinated COVID patients.

Anchor Joy Reid said, “Dr. Gupta, you know, I’m sort of reaching my kind of peek fatigue mentally, and I’m not even dealing with the doctor and what you guys are dealing with in real life. I know on the top of my head a half dozen people that got COVID — they are vaccinated but got it in settings of mixed group with people that were not necessarily vaccinated. So the unvaccinated are spreading this thing, and it’s mutating, let’s be frank, because of the unvaccinated. Okay? I’m running out of ideas what to do if people are refusing to protect themselves and other people?”

Gupta said, “We have to move away from this paradigm of even thinking about caseloads day over the day because it’s overwhelming. It’s psychologically depressing. It’s discouraging.”

He added, “This is where it’s controversial, but we need to talk about this, the bioethics of it broadly because this is not the last respiratory pandemic we’re going to face, Joy. What do we do with somebody who is unvaccinated who is taking advanced ICU therapies from somebody who is vaccinated in the hospital? How do we rank order that priority? We do it for organs, kidneys, livers, lungs. We say, ‘Did you smoke, did you drink recently?’ If you did, you’re lower on the list, even if you need it. We need to start thinking of that model. Have bioethics around it.”

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