Why The CoronaVirus Pandemic Is a Trolley Problem
Would you kill 1 person to save 5?
Imagine yourself standing next to some train tracks. You see coming in the distance a train accelerating down the tracks towards five workers who cannot spot it and will not do in time to save themselves. You, conscious of the situation, see a lever you can pull to divert the train into a second track where only one worker, as oblivious as the others, is doing his job…
Would you try and save 5 people at the price of 1 innocent man’s life? Is there a right answer?
The trolley problem is one of the greatest moral and ethical thought experiments suggested and developed by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967.
It relates to many of our day-to-day decisions and I’ll show you how it can be applied here in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic.
In that situation, you can play the role of different personas.
1) You’re a doctor and see rushing into the hospital, first, an 80-YO lady desperately needing an oxygen mask, followed by three middle-aged patients also in critical conditions. There are only 3 places left at the hospital…What do you do?
