“I got my sister drunk next to my dead parents”: the tragedy in Yekaterinburg showed the wounds of society

In Yekaterinburg, the bodies of a husband and wife were found in a closed apartment. They had two still living children with them. A two-year-old boy and a very tiny eight-month-old girl. The babies lived next to the dead parents for at least a few days. Brother guessed to open the tap in the shower, drank himself and watered his sister. It is terrible to imagine what they experienced until they were accidentally found – the neighbors from below began to flood. But there was a sequel…

It so happened that when the children (almost dehydrated, the girl no longer showed signs of life) were found, an ambulance was called, while they were waiting, another team came to the next apartment to call – the child fell ill there.

Naturally, they jumped to the doctor and his assistant when they were already leaving: “Help! Look!” Further, the story of the neighbor: “To which the doctor calls the elevator and says:“ No! I went to him: “The parents died, the children need medical help!” He tells me: “I don’t deal with corpses.” They enter the elevator, and they … leave.

When I was told this story in anticipation of a shocking reaction, for some reason I was not surprised. In fact, this is all in the order of things today. And it’s not even that the ambulance team probably acted according to the instructions – one call, one patient, and if they were delayed somewhere, they would also have flown in (remember, there was such an episode in the famous film “Arrhythmia”, when ambulance workers are punished precisely because they saved another person on the way to the call).

And yes, just don’t talk about the Hippocratic oath, which future doctors take. Google it, no one gives it for a long time. Until 1999, there was the “Oath of the Russian Doctor”, which was read by graduates of medical universities and faculties. After that, it was replaced by the Doctor’s Oath. But in this text there is not even the word “sick”. And graduates of medical universities do not bear any legal responsibility for non-fulfillment of the moral and ethical part, as it were, of an oath. These are just words.

And it is vain to think that this has never happened before. That everyone was so holy and sympathetic. Were not. It’s just that earlier it was considered beyond the bounds, not to help the patient, but now it’s in the order of things, and even encouraged.

Many, many years ago, when I was little, a young couple of doctors lived in the next apartment. And once they came from the hospital for them on a holiday – a small quiet provincial town, few specialists, there was some kind of difficult situation, they could not get through. Knocked, shouted – no one opened. Turns out they’ve been at home the whole time. They just noted something and did not want to be distracted. Not their duty, after all

I don’t know what happened to the medical neighbors for this, whether they were punished somehow, but the fact that for me, a first-grader, it was a shock – and what, it was possible, just not to open the door when a person dies somewhere and does he need you? – proves that in those days, after all, it was rather an exception to the rule. And children were brought up all the same a little differently. And people tried to remain people, although it did not always work out. Good and evil did not change places.

What was not previously given a hand is now considered in the order of things. Professionalism has been replaced by instructions and scripts.

How many patients died in the same pandemic, not because they could not be saved, but because they were treated according to protocols written by those who did not even see these people and their condition. It is forbidden to act as you feel, you do not need to demonstrate your personal opinion, skill, initiative – do as ordered from above. And then, even if something goes wrong, you will not be held responsible.

In our world, which has completely lost empathy and, to some extent, professionalism, these qualities have become superfluous, they do not help to survive, from the point of view of the short term, they are an evolutionary dead end.

But this is in the short term. Did not help the child, because it was not your challenge – he received an award. Helped – reprimand. What is more beneficial?

And in a more distant one, a society where moral and ethical principles are thrown aside becomes unviable. Because one day they will not help those who themselves did not help others.

Now everyone is afraid of artificial intelligence, which will develop so much that it will destroy humanity. And, in my opinion, you need to be afraid not of artificial intelligence, but of yourself.

For what we have become, no artificial intelligence is needed. We will destroy ourselves. Natural selection.

And yet I want to believe that not everything is so hopeless in our world. If a two-year-old boy, left alone with his dead parents, realized that he needed not only to drink himself, but also to give water to his little dehydrated sister …