WE'VE FINALLY GOT THOSE DEATH PANELS!:

At some point after he became chief surgeon in Napoleon's army, Dominique Jean Larrey started walking across blood-soaked battlefields to pick out those among the wounded who could still be saved, usually by instant amputation of limbs. In time, he developed a system of sorting and separating -- trier in French -- the casualties. Ignoring rank and nationality, he considered only those who had the greatest chance of surviving. His method became known as triage.

In worst-case scenarios, triage is nowadays accepted almost universally as necessary and justified. And yet, the idea still rests on an act of cruelty -- cruel both to a victim and to the doctor having to make the decision. It often necessitates allowing one human being to die in order to ration the care that might let another live. 

The current pandemic is a worst-case scenario. On-and-off for almost two years, doctors and nurses in some places have had to make traumatizing choices about life and death. Sometimes they had too many Covid patients for too few ventilators; other times too many with SARS-CoV-2 to be able to treat those dying from cancer or other diseases. Now the omicron variant -- which appears to be somewhat milder but much more infectious -- threatens to overwhelm hospitals yet again.

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