logicp_writings/covidism/Coronavirus.md

What is the real threat?

The real threat could be several. The most obvious is the threat to health and wellness due to potential of interacting with materials to which a dangerous biological reaction could result.

The next most obvious threat would be that an increased limit or reduction of freedom. What sort of reduction of freedom? Freedom of movement. Being quarantined could be serving a form of communication in which the populace is having the global system demonstrated to them. That is to say, as the current event in question is one of a global nature, and as the methods of reacting to it are being evaluated and discussed in a global context, with the standards and idioms of each nation being contrasted with one another such as to produce rhetorical argumentation describing the best mode of action towards reducing or eliminating the threat, it is, at the very least, an implicitly global communication. The expectation is that the messages are being understood at a broader scope than a median or average message.

We are reasonably interpreting these messages and inferring suggestions as to what our ideal behaviour should be in a manner which assumes that individual freedom, such as freedom of movement as a person, should be limited for the benefit of the community, that the local community affects larger metropolitan areas, and that movement between areas creates a greater surface upon which the threat can potentiate and intensify the number of risk factors and the overall rate of detriment.

It might not be necessary to entertain ideas which, due to complexity and lack of evidence, cannot easily be proven. That is to say, the implications brought on by our reaction to the event are enough, in their own rite, to warrant a serious discussion about whether it's possible that response measures might.

What are the different types of Fear?

What of Ethics?

It was postulated that, given the circumstances of Italy, it might be desirable and preferable that, in the event that the strain on the medical system is reaching the point of saturation, individuals over a certain age be denied health services, particularly if they are exhibiting symptoms of a disease which has currently proliferated to the point of being an epidemic or a pandemic.

There are good reasons to make this case. The most simple of which is to compare them with any younger individual and state that, by sheer measure of time, they have enjoyed more life and, as such, it would be less of a tragedy for them to die in place of the younger person.

Let's look at some other advantages:

• Reduce the burden on the rest of society.
• A measure for determining if one's life worth or standard of a good life has been achieved - by temporal measure.
• Strain on society is reduced, allowing for prioritization of more desirable uses.
  • Younger are more likely to survive
  • Better able to enact initiatives which result in greater similarity in certain citizen life-metrics, such as length of life lived.
  • Less costly for society due to not having to treat as many individuals who have recurring health issues.
• It is immoral to take services away from society which could have otherwise best benefitted society by allowing higher proportion of "superior" humans to survive

If such circumstances were playing out in a closed system, with the values of all possible variables being presented to us, then perhaps an even stronger argument could be made as many possible invalidating factors could be examined and used to exclude outliers and comparisons where it is not correct to assume that the older individual would have less of a chance to live, or would even live less time, than the younger person.

Of course, we do not live in such a world where the biological health and chronological expectations can be known ahead of time. We can, of course, compromise (if that's the correct term to be using) and assert that generalities are statistically reliable and that, in particular cases, the expectations are unignorable.

Could it be considered ethical to assume that, for the purpose of curbing the potential tragedies brought on by a tragic black swan event of lethal and even cataclysmic proportions, or even just in the particular case where the assessment is being made on cases of infected individuals in the circumstance of a serious pandemic, it would be preferable to make preemptive decisions ensuring that the older individual would be denied medical assistance in order to increase the assurance that care is available for a younger individual?

My feeling is quite firmly and thoroughly a resounding NO, as this could never be ethical.

Let's look at some of the counter-arguments:

• Creates a new standard of virtue based on a few categorical evaluations:
  • Age
  • Amount of burden placed on society
  • Ability to assure longer contribution to society
• Creates an implicit expectation that we can judge selfishness, through computation of morality using health variables with an age coefficient.
• Ignores the other negative characteristics of individuals which, all else considered equal, are forgiven so long as you are of the right age.
• Removes people who do not contribute:
  • In real time
  • Enough tax revenue
  • Political opinions congruent to the current trends
  • Unproductive / combatitive
  • Unable to integrate into society
• Creates new standards which might beg new questions:
  • Why stop evaluating life's worth by age, as this surely is not a complete measure, and such can be argued easily. Here are other measures:
  • Discordant speech
  • Criminal behaviour
  • Height
  • Breathing capacity
  • Presence of disease
  • Lack of symmetry
  • Bodyfat percentage
  • Physical strength
  • IQ
  • Visual acuity
  • Auditory acuity
  • Allergen reactivity

Perhaps to really understand if it's necessary to fear the COVID-19, we must examine some of raw statistics which:

• Are available to us now