SafetyRights.md 10 KB
The right to Safety
Many have looked at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and concluded that the state guarantees them the legal right to safety. There are obviously some questions with arise from this, and we need to investigate them further, but first we should ask if anyone who interprets the Charter, or similar declarations, in this manner has ever asked the question:
What is safety? How can it be guaranteed? Can actions which are performed to improve safety for one individual liable to reduce safety for another? Is it morally justified to improve safety for some, if it reduces safety for others?
1. What is Safety?
Safety would be the state of being free from harm. From the standpoint of a human being, harm could be any of the following:
- death
- injury
- stress
- reduction of metabolic capacity
- reduction of structural capacity
- reduction of immune capacity
- reduction of cognitive capacity
The last one has become particularly pronounced in recent years, as there have been neverending political movements which insist that what we previously considered as being "harm" no longer sufficiently encompasses the range of possible harms which humans endure, and that this failure to identify all the forms of harm is itself a form of violence.
I bring this up particularly because, though we might all begin with an implied definition appropriate to recent declarations of public safety, we must be cognizant that the range of definitions is quite varied, and that the ability to consolidate such a range is virtually impossible - at least, insofar that it can be done to a degree which satisfies everyone's particular concerns and needs.
If we proceed with a strategy which increasingly permits various forms of harm as being sufficiently harmful to be enumerated, then it stands to reason that existence is itself a form of harm, as we cannot proceed temporally through our mutually understood operating environment (field theory). We cannot have it both ways - either harm is something so substantial that we choose terms which no cognitively capable human would deny, or we choose to accept that the concept of harm is something so wide and vast that it cannot be utilized in any sort of political sense, without committing ourselves to unreasonable expectations which are doomed to create an unforeseen set of problems.
Nevertheless, let's look at these and aim to understand whether or not they can be addressed.
Death
If the guarantee of safety is to afford us the means by which to evade death, then it's no guarantee at all, unless we are to venture off into the theoretical.
Death is expected by all, and though we could make the argument that certain measures can be utilized in order to potentiate a reduction of death, such measures would necessarily need to identify a specific cause of death and champion its reduction over all other causes. It should be implicitly understood that in doing so, we are also potentiating deaths from other causes. This occurs regardless of strategy, simply by means of focusing resources on one cause of death. One cannot, as a first order operation, focus attention on one point of concern without simultaneously and obligatorily remove attention from another point of concern. Though there can be second order effects which may contribute a reduction of risk with respect to another concern, it is not by virtue of a first order focus on that other concern. Given that there are potentially an infinite set of concerns, it is logical to assume that focusing on one concern will necessitate an increase of risk for some unknown quantity of concerns. It should also be expected that the unknown quantity of concerns are themselves liable to modification of valence whose changes are not being focused upon, at least not to the degree of focus which is being applied to the explicit concern to which focus is being applied.
So, regardless of what strategy is going to be applied, the only way it can be veritably be sought, with transparency, and in a manner which promotes trust, is to be forthcoming about the fact that the decision to prioritize the reduction of death by one specific cause will necessarily bring about an increase of death by other causes. It can be argued, quite effectively, that the increase of death by other causes will be less significant, and that we will enjoy a net reduction of death as a result, but to make this argument properly requires that we are open about the different temporal effects of these concerns. That is to say, that if we are choosing to prioritize the reduction of one cause of death, it's prioritization is being performed with respect to a temporal scale, and that we are specifically looking towards a net reduction of death for a given temporal period. If this is not clearly declared, then it is an erroneous declaration, as the scales and periods to which it can be compared against are infinite, thus making the comparison unfeasible.
Injury
This one is even more difficult to observe and quantify, as the possible forms of injury which can occur are more numerous, more detailed in their structure/permutations and more liable to fail to be observed.
Certainly it can be said that some measures could be introduced to ensure that one avoid injury. For example, having guard rails for a building's steps, or having a seatbelt policy, though I would wouldn't be surprised if these things turned out to be still more nuanced than we give credit to. Nevertheless, there can certainly exist reasonable measures, policies, recommendations, and similar which can be implemented to avoid or reduce the potential for injuries to be incurred by a society's citizenry.
What becomes impossibly complex to evaluate, at least on the specific dimension of providing a rationalized recommendation or request to avoid injury, is comparing a forced modification of one's body to a theoretical circumstance which itself has not occurred.
It must be said that whomsoever wishes to enforce or promote the enforcement of modifying people's bodies as part of a process which they themselves believe reduces their own chance of incurring death or injury, must also declare an understanding of the other risks of death or injury, their belief about our ability to observe and predict such risks, and their willingness to engage in dialogue about this complex subject. Failure to do this can be indicative that they are treating other people's lives and health as a personal commodity that can be used to protect or enhance their own circumstances.
With that out of the way, let's assume that everyone participating in this society is orienting themselves towards truth, wants the best outcome the community, and understands that the community is made up of individuals whose individual state and function of health are what, in aggregate, contribute to the health of the community.
If we are asking them to perform an action which effectively modifies their physiology, it's not simply a matter of ascertaining whether or not there is an immediate and acute response to the action which demonstrates an injury.
It's also not a question of whether the most commonly observed effect of performing the action/modification is to be compared against the worst outcome of the concern which this action/modification is intended to mitigate.
It's also not simply a question of whether or not this action/modification is efficacious in mitigating the concern in question.
It is, in fact, a much more detailed and elaborate comparison and it requires many areas of investigation. In the interim, however, here is a rough breakdown:
- Research. Is this something which is well understood and has stood the test of time? Is this something for which a significant amount of unknowns still exist? Are there operations currently being performed to understand some of these things?
- Bias
- System of observation
- Declaring what cannot be known
Research
Temporal scales matter. The amount of time we've been performing research indicates what things can be known and what things cannot be known. Ongoing research for blind spots of understanding is significant and indicates that we cannot understand the true nature of the risks for the treatment. Ongoing research necessary for the approval of a treatment is itself a massive red flag in the sense that its disregard is a code smell which suggests that the approval process is superfluous, as it's not demonstrated to be a necessary component to determining safety and use of the product. It begs the question of why there even needs to be an approval process, at all, or - at the very least, the approval process being sought for this particular therapy is likely to be erroneous and redundant.
The excuse for this is our emergency situation, but I don't think most reasonable people would assert that the handling is proportional, nor would it even be proportional had the treatment been available at the onset of the situation (the era, one might say). So what does this mean? Given that the response is so widespread, so highly politicized, and bearing aspects which cause reasonable people to question, to a remarkable degree, the logic of the decisions being made, one might be inclined to consider it prudent to wonder if the handling is indeed not proportional, and that the risk were not an emergency.
Another factor worth mentioning is the fact that so many conclusions are drawn around particular concerns which take time to understand. The most obvious of these are those surrounding reproductive health. It has already been said, plenty of times, that one could not expect to have a clear understanding of the effects on a woman's reproductive capacity, capacity to breastfeed, and what the consequences of these things might be. But a more worths version of such a study would be one which compares multiple pregnancy periods of couples that have different configurations with respect to their status. It should reasonably be expected to take a plurality of cases, some of which are cases in sequence by the same people, and use this to make an informed decision.
That being said, to conclude that the research has demonstrated safety, or that it has failed to demonstrate a lack of safety, for a particular cohort for whom repetition of a particular action, which itself cannot hav ebeen performed even one time, is necessary to be considered before having the capacity to assert a position or opinion, is a major red flag that the research itself has not been done.