Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine and a practicing internist at NYU Langone Medical Center, recently told the "Fox & Friends" program that New York City prioritizing COVID treatment based on ethnicity is a "big embarrassment to the New York City Health Department and New York state."
"One thing we're taught from the beginning of medical school is not to favor one group over another," Dr. Siegel said. "We look at risk, not race. We look at the issue of what makes it more important that somebody get a treatment early."
Dr. Siegel went on to say that none of this would be necessary if the Biden administration had actually gotten treatments out.
"Instead we have this incredible scarcity of this brand-new drug from Pfizer that's life-saving or the monoclonal antibodies that are specific for omicron, and … we can't get any!" said Siegel. "So they're scrambling and trying to ration -- just the thing that we don't want to do. And we don't want providers told 'only give it to black people; don't give it to white people.'"
Siegel said treatment should be based on whether a patient is a frontline worker, is obese, and whether he or she has diabetes or underlying health conditions.
He added that if there are more minorities in those positions, then that is one thing. "But you don't say, 'Well, this person can't get care, so I'm going to compensate by putting them at the front of the line.'"
Dr. Siegel also shared that he was taught in medical school not to differentiate based on gender, race, or on anything whatsoever.
"We look at all humans the same," he told "Fox & Friends." "That's the therapeutic approach. We need to do that, and we don't need to be told anything differently by the city."
