Should vaccination status be a consideration during secondary triage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21514596 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Isaac Jarratt Barnham (0000-0002-3875-0881, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 642-646 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Medical Ethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0306-6800 • E-ISSN: 1473-4257 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/jme-2023-109386 |
| PMID | 38050108 |
| OpenAlex | W4389133264 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
The rapid development of widely available and effective vaccines has been integral to the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a significant minority of those offered vaccination have refused, often due to their adherence to ‘anti-vax’ beliefs. These beliefs include that vaccines are dangerous, render the recipient magnetic or contain government microchips. During the pandemic, numerous calls were made for those voluntarily refusing vaccination to be deprioritised when allocating scarce healthcare resources. While these calls were rejected, the likelihood of the same calls being made during future pandemics necessitates a thorough examination of the ethical implications entailed by such a policy. Here, I consider an intuitive argument for the use of vaccination status when allocating healthcare resources. This argument claims that, by avoiding vaccination, vaccine refusers are failing to fulfil a social obligation to protect those around them from harm by facilitating herd immunity. They are, therefore, less deserving of healthcare than their vaccinated peers. I explore three objections to this argument. While a first objection, asserting that no individual can be held responsible for a failure to develop herd immunity, fails, I find two further responses, respectively asserting the primacy of patient autonomy and highlighting the harms deprioritising vaccine refusers would cause to disadvantaged minorities, compelling. I, therefore, conclude that vaccination status should not be considered during healthcare resource allocation, as such discrimination would disproportionately harm marginalised communities
Disadvantaged · Harm · Health care · Herd immunity · Medical emergency · Pandemic · Political science · Public relations · Triage · Vaccination · Disaster Response and Management · Law · Medicine · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research · Immunology
Mistrust of Health Care Organizations Is Associated with Underutilization of Health Services
Global impact of the first year of Covid-19 vaccination
Epistemological Duties
Clinicians and AI use
Triage of critical care resources in Covid-19
The ethics of firing unvaccinated employees
Ethics of vaccine refusal
Political Obligations
Identifying the prevalence, correlates, and policy consequences of anti-vaccine social identity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |