[markdown]

> or any move that trades the economy for lives is inherently immoral.

I'd love to see some rich people forced to work in meat packing plants alongside men and women infected with this coronavirus.

It's inherently immoral to force people to work at great risk to themselves and their families just because "the economy", as would be the case in states where the abhorrent practice of at-will employment is law.

[mlyle]

Of course, this raises the question-- what's an unacceptable level of risk?

We obviously don't shut everything down because of 1 in 1,000,000 risks. We don't shut everything down for 250 in 1M risks (the flu).

Here we have what's likely to be a 1,800 in 1M risk, based on the latest infection fatality rate numbers and the estimate of how many people would be infected before herd immunity. It's 7x worse than the flu. It's also not a risk that it's clear we'll be able to avoid. So here it gets hard to reason about what's right to do.

And, of course, we obviously can't act to protect people at a level that will result in worse outcomes, like starvation or famine or collapse of public order.

[markdown]

Which is why shutting down non-essential services is a good half-measure.

Meat-packing plants are an essential service, so they are allowed to remain open, but they are temporarily shut down once it becomes evident that a few workers have been infected and the risk of infection for the other workers rises to... as you put it "unacceptable".

Sadly, in at-will employment states, only the rich get to decide what is an acceptable level of risk.

[mlyle]

In most at-will states, public health officials have been making the decision about "acceptable level of risk".

And, of course, any at-will employee is free to choose to not work in an environment that they personally consider to be too high of a level of risk, even if their employer and local public health officials disagree.

I'm in an at-will jurisdiction-- there's a whole bunch of people here who want to work but have been precluded from doing so because of public health orders.