“Imagine a military doctor who comes across a battlefield laden with hundreds of injured soldiers in severe pain. The doctor calls for assistance, but the additional medical units will not arrive for thirty minutes. However, the doctor happens to have with him a bag of pain medicine that he can use to palliate the suffering around him. Would it be acceptable for him to treat five of the soldiers and then stop to read a comic book, arguing that he has produced some positive change in aggregated welfare and he needn’t spend all of his effort helping others? Similarly, would we countenance his decision to spend most of his limited supply of pain killer on the mildly injured patients nearest to him, even though many of those a bit farther away are in absolute agony? I believe that the answers ought to be ‘no’. Rather, triage – giving greatest medical attention to those who can be helped most in the least amount of time – represents the ethical imperative under these circumstances.”

— Brian Tomasik, On triage (Essays on Reducing Suffering / 80,000 Hours)