Morality, murder, and the politics of quarantine

[Cyborg Girl]

So: while I'm sitting in my ass here, sipping a stereotype Boston-liberal latte, listening to stereotype Boston-liberal music, and waiting for a shell script to finish running, I would like to rant a bit. Because something has been weighing on my mind a lot lately.

...

Say that you're a border guard. You're positioned between an impoverished country where there's been an outbreak of some nasty disease, and a slightly more affluent country where there is no outbreak and better medical care.

At some point, a woman comes down the road to you, from the country where the outbreak has occurred. She has with her a daughter, maybe four years old, who is clearly very sick, utterly terrified, and in terrible pain.

The woman tells you she's from a very poor town; yes, her daughter has the disease, but at her home they don't have access to morphine, ibuprofen, or any painkiller whatsoever. They don't have anything at all. She begs you to let her through, so she can at least get the girl palleative care in the wealthier country.

The disease in question is usually fatal. It is also very easily transmissable. The woman herself will probably start showing symptoms in a few days. If she gets into your country, she and her daughter may start an epidemic that could kill thousands. You have been briefed on this, and know that letting her through could be a disaster.

On the other hand, letting her and her little girl die in unrelenting pain does not appeal to you. You don't have any painkillers at the checkpoint, but you do know there is a hospital a few miles down the road... On your side of the border, in your country, where the disease would find plenty more victims.

You know the answer, of course. You'd have to turn her back. And I'm pretty damn sure none of you would feel very good about it.

...

Now the problem.

I want you to imagine you're a four year old girl with a fatal case of pneumonia. You can barely breath. You can barely speak. You can barely focus on speaking, because every breath is an effort, your lungs are on fire, and you feel like you're suffocating.

I want you to imagine that this is real. That this person exists, and for her, at this moment, the entire world is full of pain. And relief from that pain is only a few miles down the road, past a checkpoint that won't let her and her mom through.

Now tell me that this is right.

Don't tell me that it's ethical, or necessary. Tell me that it is right.

...

People tell me stuff like, "The world sucks, deal with it." If you tell me that, I will yell at you. That is a horrible, shallow, dismissive thing to say. That's not brave, it's abstracting human beings out of existence. It's failure to comprehend the magnitude of what people deal with, deliberate failure, and it makes you look like a dick.

People tell me, "You have to do what needs to be done." Well, no shit I do. Does that make it right? Either way, you're condemning people to die. How is that not an evil act? How is that different from firebombing Dresden or Tokyo to save Allied lives? How does it matter that you have a choice, when all the choices are atrocities?

I understand that this is reality. I understand that it is necessary, insofar as we all want humanity as a whole to survive. I understand that harming people is inescapable.

What I don't understand is how people can be so obnoxiously goddamn comfortable with this.

[FZR1KG]

So: while I'm sitting in my ass here, sipping a stereotype Boston-liberal latte, listening to stereotype Boston-liberal music, and waiting for a shell script to finish running, I would like to rant a bit. Because something has been weighing on my mind a lot lately.

You're doing hardware,already? :p

r.e. the question, let's actually adress it instead of doing the whole emotional thing.

Let's say the little girl knows, and fully comprehends that her by going to get relief in the short term, she, will kill many people.
Would you, as the little girl turn round and say, fuck them, my suffering is bad, I want some morphine and I don't care that my desire to get morphine will kill many others, my need to feel better is more important than their lives?

I think not. You nor anyone that is worth saving will put their comfort as a higher priority than others lives. That is about the most selfish thing possible for a human to do and is the very thing that you complain about regularly.
If the guard knew the person was putting their comfort higher than the lives of others deliberately and conscious of their actions, do you think he'd let that person go though. I think not. I'm pretty sure most would be pissed off that someone who understands the situation wants to trade others lives for their own comfort.

Now, let's take away that understanding from her, make her ignorant of the fact that by giving her comfort, she will kill many others.
What does it change?

Does someone else being ignorant somehow change the situation the guard is in?
If it does, then the world is fucked. We will make decisions based on others ignorance and sacrifice the rest.

Now maybe it's just me, but, someone else's ignorance is not a reason to put other lives deliberately at risk.
If you want to see that in action, look at the vaccine deniers.

That's the reality.
The only thing's that suck is that we can't explain to the girl to see if she would make an informed decision and, that she got sick.
But if we made her understand, the only difference that would happen is that she'd die knowing she did the only moral and ethical thing that she could do in her circumstance and we'd make ourselves feel better by denying access if she still wanted it because she'd be a nasty human being.
Would that make the rest of the pain go away. No.

[SciFiFisher]

Watch Star Trek. Ethical Dilemmas for Dummies:

1. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
2. When you don't like that answer then cheat.
3. When you can't cheat go back to #1

At the end of the day they are called ethical dilemma's because they involve making really hard decisions that have tons of emotional gravitas that accompany them. They often do not have, strictly speaking, right or wrong solutions. What they do have is solutions that are less wrong than the alternative.

Some people deal with the emotional gravitas that comes with these ethical dilemmas by becoming very pragmatic and detached from emotion. "Suck it up sunshine. The world isn't all lollipops and unicorns". Some people are just naturally calloused. They usually lack empathy. Mother nature makes all types on the theory that sometimes it takes a true lack of empathy for survival in some instances.

Others allow the emotional gravitas to paralyze them from making any decisions. <insert picture of a hamster on a wheel>. I still haven't decided what momma nature was thinking with that. I suppose there are situations where the smart money is really on doing nothing.

Some actually understand that you work constantly to strike a balance in which you continue to make difficult ethical decisions. Knowing that sometimes a less wrong solution still sucks but it's the best you've got. Apparently, momma nature actually does value sanity.