An Argument In Favor Of Persepective

I am going to wade again into the ethical and moral arguments associated with Covid-19 event following on from my post of March 15.

And before I go on and earn the approbation of being insensitive and uncaring, I'd like to state, without reservations, that yes, I do think this is a particularly nasty and insidious disease. I am following the guidelines set by my government for restrictions on movement. I am quite aware that I am in one of the highest risk groups and am being careful.

That being said, one cannot just ignore the social and ethical consequences of our decisions concerning containing this contagion. Where we are now, is not balanced and is not sustainable. It can be maintained for some period (not too long). But after that, there are going to be serious repercussions for the very fabric of our way of life.

I am not pretending that I have an answer. I just know that the current attitude and decisions are not sustainable. So without pretending to have an answer, I do want to frame the discussion in different terms. I want to give a different perspective on what we are experiencing in hopes of promoting difficult but rational conversation and decision-making.

First Point - Disease and Contagion have always been a part of human life

Cholera, Typhoid Fever, Typhus, Scarlet Fever, Bubonic Plague, Polio...up until the Polio vaccine in the 1950s, significant contagions where a part of human life. No one liked them. The pain of loss was horrible. And a lot of people died year-after-year-after-year. But life went on. Society went on. Since the Polio vaccine, we've enjoyed a 60-year window without such a contagion. Maybe that is a fluke. Maybe it is just not realistic that we can live in a world without a higher level of disease driven mortality rate.

Second Point - How Much Death Are We Really Dealing With?

Yes, yes, yes. I know. If you are the one that dies, or one of your loved ones dies, the effect is devastating. But when dealing with an entire species, that thinking is irrational. We have to think about the whole...that the good of the many is more important than the good of the few. As of today, the reported death toll from Covid-19 was 74,595. Let's assume through the rest of 2020 that number grows by 10 times and around 750 thousand dies! OMG.! That's horrible right?

But...Oh, Wait...did you know that 1.35 million people die each year in automobile accidents worldwide. Each year! But I haven't heard anyone suggest that we should shut down our world economy until such time as car makers stop supplying these tools of death.

Another data point - in 2004, the genocide in Rwanda killed over a million in a single year. The international community did virtually nothing. They certainly did not stop the whole international economy to bring an end to the killing. In 1984 the Ethiopian famine killed off another million in a year. We got Live Aid concerts. But no stop to our world economic order. Since 2014 450 thousand have died in Syria...no call for everyone to stop all economic activity.

I can point out example after example after example of similar situations in our world history where we accepted a mortality rate much higher than we do today.

There are those who talk about how this disease will rebound and how it will be around for a long time. keeping on killing people Well if that is the case, maybe what we must do is just accept a level of mortality that is more in keeping with what we as a species have experienced over the total of our existence?

Maybe we just need to keep it in perspective and realize that a higher mortality rate is the price we are going to have to pay to maintain our civilization.