The title is more intriguing than it is informative. So let me explain. I don’t mean we can be immune to death. What I mean is we have the capacity to become immune to the idea of death, and by that I don’t mean the idea that we all eventually die. I rather mean that we learn to live with the idea that something will kill us. Therefore, at some point and until we discover a vaccine or treatment, we will find it acceptable to live with deaths from coronavirus. Some of the reasons for that eventual acceptance are grounded in historical experience, others in cynicism, and others in cold calculations. And the most powerful reason yet is our own nature.
In my last post, I dealt with moral judgment when a decision must be made between means and ends when human lives are involved. In this pandemic, the decision to lift restrictions is primarily in the hands of public officials. Nevertheless, the ultimate resolution of this matter will be determined by individual choices. Although currently people are still mostly hesitant to break out of the restrictions, we should not be surprised to see that as the spreading subsides and the economic and social consequences become more painful to bear more people will opt to take risks in order to restore their livelihoods and social lives. And we have the record to show that for better or worse we have accepted to live dangerously and to accept deadly conditions.
Over the last two hundred years we have developed technologies that introduced new risks of death. Electricity, industrial machinery, chemicals, fossil fuels, cars, airplanes, and the ultimate risk, nuclear plant accidents and nuclear weapons. We have lost many lives to these discoveries; but we have also gained solutions to diseases, starvation, and other maladies. I suppose we have found the cost-benefit trade-off to be to our advantage. And what about the multitudes of people who insist to live in tornado alleys, hurricane-stricken areas, and lands exposed to annual monsoons, cyclones, tsunamis, and earthquakes. The deaths come predictably every year and yet people stay put. It’s difficult to understand the reasons. It may be loyalty to one’s homeland or lack of means to change habitat or just dogged defiance.
Then there are deaths we have accepted because of a cynical indifference to those paying the price. In the early years, we remained idle as gay, and not only, people died of AIDS. Today, we do nothing or much less than it is warranted to eliminate the scourge of opioids, gun-caused suicides and the mass murders of schoolchildren, churchgoers and even concert attendants. Governments also refuse to impose or they ease regulations concerning water and air quality or work safety rules although these actions have predictable risks for diseases and fatalities.
And then we have cold calculations that pit self-interest against public safety. President Trump was unwilling to acknowledge the potential severity of the coronavirus threat for fear that it would spook the stock market. President Bolsonaro of Brazil was similarly dismissive of the pandemic until it was too late. Now both men are blamed for infections and deaths that could have been avoided. Cold calculations can also be attributed to businesses that are eager to reopen without adequate protective and safety practices in place. They may perceive infections and deaths to be part of the cost of doing business. Others, politicians included, point out in a very matter-of-fact manner how, after all, the pandemic is primarily dangerous to older people and, hence, that should not stop us from opening up for everybody else.
(A special case, I believe, is the display of a mix of moral dissonance and hypocrisy found in the eagerness of mostly conservative states to relax restrictions despite warnings of a flare up of infections and additional deaths. Aren’t these the states that have strict anti-abortions views and rules for the purpose of protecting unborn children? What about protecting the lives of real, already born, people?)
For one or another reason, therefore, we have learned to live with technologies, natural phenomena, policies, and ways of doing business that have the capacity to kill us. In spite of all the existential anxiety we feel for our ultimate end we do not seem to shrink from putting our lives at risk. And then there is one risk we cannot resist to take because it comes straight out of our nature as social animals. Our social ecosystem cannot survive if we stay in isolation from one another. This is the most important natural environment to humans. And it has the irresistible power of pulling us into its orbit. Living in isolation with loved ones, or even with very close friends, it’s not enough. We like to work with others, have fun with others, celebrate with others, grieve with others. And to afford these social interactions we are willing to risk our welbeing.
So this is the human record and background within which the current debates as to how fast and how far we should remove the lockdown restrictions are taking place. A cool mind and passionate heart would like to slow things down but, I am afraid, their power of suasion would wane over time. What I fear, however, even more is the opportunistic voices which, taking advantage of our record of risk taking and acceptance of death as well as our prosocial instincts, will become the sirens to coax and lure people back to “normal” life, thus, legitimizing Covid-19 deaths as one more of those cases we have come to take for granted.
And there are political implications in this tug of war. Conservative commentators and, of course, our equivocating President already clamor for relaxing the lockdown rules. Interesting, how all of sudden, their “bleeding hearts” lament the plight of the working-class people who can neither work from home nor can they rely on savings to stay home. But the political position of liberals is equally fraught with conveying the wrong message, that is, a message of over-caution and timidity. Humans are accustomed to taking control of their lives and their environment. To that end, they are willing to take risks and pay the ultimate price.
It will take a lot of collective wisdom to find the right and humane balance between courage and rashness and between compassion and selfishness as we try to restore our lives.
Let's Reason 
Consider also the relative timidity of political leaders to actively intervene to disrupt known ongoing genocide despite sufficient repeated historical experience making it clear that current occurrences are repeat examples.
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Thznk you, George. As you say, we are moving into a new phase as to how to manage the public health implications of the ongoing pandemic versus the damage to the economy, and, by extension, to the very lives of people who cannot work from home, and have limited resources.
Additionly, we are social creatures, and we simply need each other in order to thrive. Yes, people will continue to die of the virus. But, what about the multiple “deaths of despair” that are becoming more common in the U.S.? What is the public health policy remedy for this phenomenon? I would imagine that healthy interpersonal relationships, and a satisfying social life, the opposites of loneliness,
go a long way towards mitigating the lack of hope which causes some of us to simply give up on living.
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