Ex ante and ex post inequality and uncertainty in resource allocation during the pandemic

Abstract

We intend to show how medical triage models for prioritizing patients during a pandemic cannot be limited to the evaluation and prediction of total results associated only with risk and the prospect of benefits, both for reasons of predictive uncertainty and for equity reasons. It begins by distinguishing two uses of ex ante and ex post triage, then shows how these terms are associated with a pluralism of values ​​in the claims of equal treatment, how the importance of reducing inequality is associated with that of reducing uncertainty and, finally, how these values ​​are framed and not reduced to evaluations centered on expected ex ante or ex post values.