Some Aspenites are siding with the owners of a COVID-19 testing lab that refused service to conservative commentator Candace Owens because of her beliefs on vaccine and mask mandates.
Letters to the editor in the Aspen news rags believe Owens irresponsible because she’s not vaccinated, and a columnist is double-miffed because the pundit is also opposed to abortion.
One letter writer to the Aspen Times said Owens isn’t even worth having a civil discussion with about the virus because of “her undeniable history of continually putting many others at risk.”
Owens obviously understands the risk, which is why she gets tested regularly. Persons vaccinated and unvaccinated risk spreading the virus.
But also irresponsible is denying someone a test because you don’t like their politics, which would also put the community at risk if Owens turned out to be positive.
Aspen Laboratories co-owners Suzanna Lee and Isaac Flanagan posted a note on their website thanking the community for “the enormous outreach and support we’ve received these past twenty-four hours.”
“We know for certain that wide-scale testing, vaccinations and masking are the critical path out of this Covid-19 pandemic. As a privately funded and operated business, with no public financing, we are under no obligation to provide our services to anyone who leverages their sizable public platform to undermine basic containment measures aimed at reducing the effects of this pandemic.”
What if Owens did have COVID and she sought medical treatment in Aspen?
Do Lee and Flanagan and their liberal, left wing buddies think Owens should also be denied medication, a doctor’s appointment, or hospitalization because she has not been vaccinated?
It’s not such a far-fetched question.
Colorado established a Crisis Standards of Care in 2018 to ration emergency health care if intensive care units are overrun with patients combined with a shortage of staff and medical supplies.
Idaho activated its crisis care on Tuesday in response to a massive surge of the virus there.
It’s a triage system that basically judges which patients to treat based on which patients are most likely to survive.
Here’s Colorado’s triage worksheet that will determine a patient’s likelihood of surviving days/weeks versus a year if given critical care resources when the system is activated.
Whether a patient has been vaccinated is not on the checklist, yet we can’t help but wonder whether the Polis administration is already considering adding vaccination as a factor in determining a patient’s likelihood of survival, and whether they could be denied medical care.
An enterprising reporter might check into that.