NYU medical ethics director says ‘we can penalize’ unvaxxed more: ‘I’ll condemn them. I’ll shame them’

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(Video: CNN)

There were several servings of COVID blame pie on CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday in a segment featuring the medical ethics director for the New York University School of Medicine who admitted he wanted to “shame” and “penalize” unvaccinated Americans, but doesn’t want to exclude them.

Co-host John Berman began the segment by lamenting that after two years of the pandemic, just 62 percent of Americans are unvaccinated as COVID infections are “shattering even more records” with the Omicron variant.

He then teed up the segment for NYU Professor Arthur Caplan by asking why triple-jabbed persons like himself continue to make “sacrifices” for the unvaccinated, especially since, according to Berman, most of the COVID hospitalizations are from the unvaccinated cohort.

You can watch the entire segment embedded above, with Caplan talking about “shifting the moral ground” yet seemingly describing those who have declined to get the vaccine as “jerks,” and draw your own conclusions.

This discussion comes, however, as increasing numbers of tripled-jabbed individuals around the country, including those in high-profile positions, are nonetheless testing positive for the virus, or at least perhaps the Omicron variant.

“I think you’ve got to then say we’re going to make life easier for those who vaccinate and tougher for those who won’t do it,” Caplan asserted. “More rewards, more freedom, more ability to go restaurants, go to social events, go to athletic events. Why we continue to say, ‘well, you vaccinate, you don’t vaccinate, it’s up to you if you want to come to this game.’ That isn’t the right stance.”

Berman, a self-described fan of being judgmental, and a Harvard University graduate, chimed in, in part, that “By and large, if you’re vaccinated and boosted, even if you get infected, you’re gonna be fine…Why should anyone who is boosted bother at this point to do anything that makes the unvaccinated more safe?”

That’s when the discussion got a bit more interesting from an ethics standpoint, particularly for many Americans who are pro-vaccine but anti-mandate.

In first indicating that everyone should work together as a community, Prof. Caplan went on to say that “I don’t want reject those who still haven’t done the right thing. I’ll condemn them. I’ll shame them. I’ll blame them, but I don’t want to exclude them…so we can’t write them off. We can penalize them more; we can say ‘you’re gonna pay more on your hospital bill if you weren’t vaccinated. You can’t get life insurance or disability insurance at affordable rates if you aren’t vaccinated.’ Those companies should not treat us as equals in terms of what the financial burdens are for that disease imposes. So I can think of a number of ways in which we should say ‘here’s the stick; get on board.'”

Following Caplan’s logic, or ethical basis, overweight people should probably also pay more for insurance coverage since the CDC, through several studies, has reported that obesity is a key risk factor for COVID hospitalization. Or smoking.

Berman punctuated the discussion by claiming, without evidence, that “by and large, it’s the unvaccinated who aren’t wearing masks, it’s the unvaccinated who aren’t social distancing, it’s the unvaccinated going to crowded indoor events there, so there’s this bizarre irony here that the ones who are behaving are being told to behave 10 times more,” as Caplan nodded approvingly.

The CNN anchor also seems to be unaware the inclusive Democrats from Joe Biden on down have been spotted in public violating mask or distancing requirements that they have imposed on everyone else.

As many have noticed, the universal healthcare-championing left has totally abandoned its traditional support for body autonomy during the pandemic.

According is NYU bio, Caplan is apparently not a medical doctor. He received a PhD from Columbia University.

Here is a sample of the reaction on Twitter to this segment:

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