Should we treat the SARS-CoV-2 unvaccinated

I'm consciously and directly challenging one leading school of medical ethics, yes. Specifically, the local-focused physician ethics that has you 'treat the patient in front of you without consideration of outside factors', which is a strong candidate for an ethical system.

However, there are other ethical systems, most relevantly in this context would be a public health/triage model that recognizes the health systems are extremely overloaded due to the willful ignorance (as the default case) of patients who are actively resisting the time and medical resources of the treating medical staff. From a straightforward application of utilitarianism, it would seem reasonably undesirable to try especially hard to treat such folk. Finally, there is the most natural ethical system, likely, in social Earthlings, which physician-local ethical systems is probably trying to improve upon, which is cause and effect and more direct social justice, i.e. "you did the crime (not taking COVID seriously) and so now you do the time". As a vegan philosopher, I am highly interested in moving beyond our base nature when that is possible. However, a notion from philosophers underlying contemporary republicanism, i.e. the state of nature concept from Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, would say that we are only able to perform these higher natures when we have sufficient resources, and that when that sufficiency is not present we are justified/mandated to return to more ancestral systems, like the 'harsh justice' of 'you did the crime, you do the time'.

An example of this would be something like, it's unjustified to shoot random Nazis in Germany in 1947, because of the presence of a defensibly functional military/state, but that it would be highly justified to randomly shoot Nazis in Germany in 1943, given there is no more civilized system of justice available for Nazis. As a leftist, I think there is a widespread, deep, and pernicious delusion present among moderates/liberals that wish to continue to dream in the Enlightenment ideals of our republic that we were taught about as children without really updating their views for the actual reality we're currently living in, which, in the present context looks something like this: "Our entire system is predicated on deep notions of liberty and self-ownership, which reduces the amount of control individuals or organizations can wield over others in the generic case. Instead, we have tried to develop Enlightenment-derived educational systems that have spent thousands of hours in the last 18 months attempting to educate members of our society to the risk of COVID-19 and the relative benefits of various interventions like distancing, masking, and vaccines. However, a large and powerful faction is reasonably knowingly rejecting Enlightenment notions of 'knowledge should be the basis of governance' and is instead wielding weaponized factionalism to re-assert primitive notions of 'might makes right'. Your blind adherence to your highest ideals is being used as a weapon by the worst people in our society to kill you and many -- often innocent -- members of our community." This is not noble, in my view, but is rather the height of foolishness.

Now, is there any place for the nurse who, *knowing all of the above*, choose to still just treat the patient in front of them, asserting that they will uphold their higher ideals in the face of weaponized ignorance? Yes, it could be reasonably defended as a kind of tragic heroism, but the minimum pre-requisite for this claim, in my view, is acknowledgement of the above reality rather than the reflexive, "Well, man, you gotta treat 'em 'cause they're sick" that I feel moderates/liberals are in love with spouting.

Personally, I would probably still treat them using a triage model, but I would place them extremely low in the triage, with COVID illnesses in the vaccinated, non-COVID illnesses, *and the physical and mental well-being of health practitioners* all ranking higher (lest they burn out, reducing overall medical capacity in a region). I think with the current levels of COVID-19 infection in a number of areas in the United States, that likely results in non-treatment of substantial amounts of COVID-19 denying infected people.