Do I stay in my house or do I go out to put out the fire?

I just asked a firefighter a question: « Suppose you get an order to stay in your firehouse when there is a fire. What do you do? Do you stay in your firehouse or do you go out and put out the fire? »

He replied,  » There are two types of firefighters: there are those who blindly follow orders and stay in their firehouse. Others will go out « anyway » ignoring the stupid order and maybe even go out with the fear in the belly ».

I replied:  » It’s strange. In medicine, the same thing happened during the COVID-19 epidemic: some doctors stayed in their caves, while others saw patients with COVID-19 and treated them.  »

The first attitude corresponds to an attitude of non-assistance to persons in danger. If the firefighter (or doctor) is afraid to put out the fire (or treat the patient), the best advice one could give is « change jobs ».

There is a film, The Yangtze River Gunboat, which illustrates this non-assistance to persons in danger. This film was directed by Robert Wise in 1966, in the middle of the Vietnam War, with Steve McQueen as the main actor. The film tells the following story: in 1926, a gunboat sails on a river in China, the Yangtze, while there is a civil war on the mainland. In front of the scenes of killings on land, most of the characters on the gunboat are indifferent to the fate and the massacre of people and show a non-assistance to person in danger.

In the epidemic of COVID-19, we see the same phenomenon of indifference: by confining the population, to save lives, we see people committing suicide in total indifference. We see people falling into depression, into total despair, children dropping out of school… Where are the life jackets in the gunboat?

In the COVID-19 epidemic, we are witnessing the same phenomenon of non-assistance to persons in danger. Some doctors propose the « 4 D’s » as treatment for COVID-19: sleep, home, Dafalgan, death. Not a very effective therapeutic approach…

Other (minority) physicians travel or send prescriptions to treat patients with COVID-19 (with azithromycin and doxycycline, ivermectin, etc). And unfortunately, when these doctors propose this effective treatment to other colleagues, they are turned down. The latter want to see the studies that exist and that they ignore… Meanwhile, patients die without having the potentially effective treatment… This is also called non-assistance to a person in danger…

When there is a fire (an epidemic), you don’t ask a firefighter (a doctor) to do a double-blind study to see how to put out the fire (treat the epidemic). We do our job with the means at hand! Physicians have an obligation of means, not results. Not giving oneself the means — and perhaps without knowing if the result will be convincing during a fire (epidemic) — becomes non-assistance to a person in danger.

When the boomerang of the conscience of their non-assistance to a person in danger comes back in their face, I don’t know if the doctors — who stayed in their caves — will still be doctors in the near future… They will more than likely have to negotiate with their consciences… Or reread biographies on Dr Ignatius Semmelweis⁽¹⁾…