When is it morally acceptable for one person to subject another to risk? Is it okay to walk into a bar if you might sicken someone who might need hospital care? Each society settles the risk contract its own way, and that contract evolves over time. Right now, it’s evolving about as fast as the virus.
The argument that one should never subject another to risk, at least without that person’s consent, is a nonstarter. In driving to work, I’m spreading risk far and wide, even if I complete my journey safely. Not even walking exempts me. I might slip and fall and push a stranger into the path of a passing car. And on it goes.
In this pandemic we’ve been making it up as we go: new public-health measures, new vaccines, new medicines. Lagging a bit behind is the new ethics for this new world, by which I mean a revised moral social contract dealing with risk for infectious disease…. Even if we could identify who caused harm, just think of the effect of punishing people who already distrust the system. We need to devise ways of drawing more people voluntarily into the risk social contract, rather than pushing them ever further away.
