| I sympathize with your argument, but I disagree. Here's why. If you choose to raise your risk of catching COVID, a few things can happen: (1) You don't catch COVID (2) You catch COVID, and recover safely in the privacy of your own home (3) You catch COVID, and accidentally spread it someone else while pre-symptomatic (4) You catch COVID, get very unlucky and have to be hospitalized. The hospital's ICU beds are full, and they prioritize your young life over someone else's old life, and that old person dies. If the only possible outcomes were (1) or (2), I would agree with you that it's a private decision that no one should scold you for. But as the likelihood of (3) and (4) rise, your actions increasingly impact others. At a low likelihood, it's not a big deal and we can probably round down to zero in our moral calculus, just for convenience. But when R is above 1, and the average person is likely to pass on the disease, it's very possible that your infection on average leads to dozens or hundreds of infections over the next year. The expected value of quality adjusted life years lost at this point is not negligible. Tens of thousands of people are dying every day, and it's only going up[1]. ICUs are full in a non-negligible fraction of US hospitals [2]. I get that all of our actions impact other people, and it would be hassle to constrain your freedoms by that fact alone. But when it comes to COVID, your actions affect others by a much larger degree than other everyday choices. Incidentally, this is why we as a society have made speeding a crime and not a 'personal choice.' Driving very fast is usually safe but occasionally hurts others, and we've decided that that risk is large enough to be worth restricting your freedoms over. Not all externalities meet that threshold, but some do. So if one unnecessarily risks catching COVID and passing it along, then scolding seems ok to me. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying. Countries with much better adherence have much lower death tolls. I personally have curtailed my dating life this year to try and save lives. I encourage others to do so as well. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=~USA [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-... |
Likewise, how far do you extend this logic? I can catch and spread Covid literally any time I go outside. Do I have to avoid all other human contact, or is it just the things that a tribunal of strangers on the internet thinks is unnecessary?
> So if you take dumb risks and raise your odds of catching COVID and passing it along, then I am happy to scold you. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying.
I made a comment about two consenting adults, who live alone, taking a calculated personal risk. I am not sure who is being reckless here, but at the least this is an exaggeration.