T. Belman. I posted this comment on Jewish Journal.
“In a nutshell this article only considers which alternative will save more lives. But what about the question when is enough, enough. e.g. We know that if we lower the speed limit there will be less traffic deaths but we have decided to tolerate a certain number of deaths in order to allow higher speed limits. When we strive for higher and higher perfection we experience the law of diminishing returns. We thus decide to lower our expectations because it is too cstly to achieve a better result.
“Then there is the question of limited resources. We could if we choose to, double our resources at great cost for the few times they are needed. But we don’t. We decide on a certain amount knowing that at times we will run out of resources to deal with a problem.
“Bottom line is, are we prepared to go into economic depression affecting the vast majority of our people in order to save some people. Even if the number of people we save, is lass that the number of flu deaths or traffic deaths. Or even if deaths from coronavirus would exceed those deaths.
“You tell me.”
By Pamela Parensky, JEWISH JOURNAL | 
Coronavirus Wuhan. US quarantine, 100 dollar banknote with medical mask. The concept of epidemic and protection against coronavrius.
By now, commentators have noted the similarities between our coronavirus crisis and the classic “trolley problem,” first formulated by the late philosopher Philippa Foot.
Imagine there’s a runaway trolley heading straight for five people who will be killed. You’re standing next to a lever. If you pull it, the trolley will switch to a different track where only one person will be killed.
Most people say the moral choice is to spare the five and sacrifice the one. This may be akin to how many conceive of extreme measures to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus: The right thing to do is to issue and enforce stay-at-home orders and shutter businesses for as long as it takes to spare the maximum number of people at greatest risk from the virus.
For many of those who are certain that this is the only moral solution, the choice seems crystal clear. It appears to be a tradeoff between lives and money — that is, between a sacred value and a secular interest. This is what social scientist Philip Tetlock calls a “taboo tradeoff.”
When a tradeoff is taboo, there is no discussion or debate possible. Choosing the sacred value is entirely uncontroversial. As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo put it, “I’m not willing to put a price on a human life,” and “we’re not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable.”
The trolley problem has several variants, however. In another, devised by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, you are standing on a footbridge above the track next to a very large man. If you push that large man onto the track, the trolley will stop and the five people will be spared. The man, however, will die.
Most people think that pushing the man over the bridge would be immoral. But not everyone. In either case, you spare five by killing one.
Let me propose another version: To stop the trolley, you must push the large man off the bridge. But no one is entirely certain whether that will be enough. You might need to force another person off. And perhaps another. There’s no way to know in advance exactly how many people must be pushed onto the track in order to stop the trolley from killing the five people in the trolley’s path. Perhaps just one. But it could turn out that as many people must be sacrificed as will be saved.
Returning to our current crisis, using this lens, skeptics aren’t the cold-hearted monsters they’re made out to be. It’s not that they care more about money than your grandmother’s life. Instead, they are thinking about the people who will suffer from unemployment, poverty, loneliness, and despair. And they are imagining some point in the future when an unknown number could die from increases in child and domestic abuse, addiction and overdose, unmet medical needs, suicide, and so on.
Dr. David Katz of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center articulated this view when he wrote about the “unemployment, impoverishment, and despair likely to result” from a long-term economic shutdown. He is “deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life” could be “graver than the direct toll of the virus itself.”
From this perspective, the tradeoff is not taboo. We aren’t talking about substituting lives for money, but one set of lives for another.
We aren’t talking about substituting lives for money, but one set of lives for another.
In all of these trolley scenarios tragedy ensues regardless of the choice. There is no happy solution. There are no uncontroversial answers. These are the hallmarks of a classic moral dilemma.
On March 10th, a lifetime ago in pandemic time, social scientist Yascha Mounk wrote an article urging us to “Cancel Everything.” A week later, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, tweeted Mounk’s article along with the comment, “It’s hard to believe today that it was controversial at the time.”
This brings us to the larger point. We urgently need to reject the idea that these choices are uncontroversial. It is all too easy to cast some people as saints and others as knaves. And we must get past the false debate of lives-versus-money.
The harder but truer and more productive debate rejects casting moral aspersions. It involves recognizing that we share common goals but have different views about how to achieve them, based on our different ways of conceptualizing unknowables and prioritizing immediate versus future dangers.
In order to solve pressing problems, we need to free our minds from the constraints that drive us to interpret and represent our ideological opponents’ ideas as attacks from enemies. Instead, we need to be able to use their ideas to test, strengthen, and build on our own.
This requires habits of mind that in recent times we have practiced too seldom and valued too little: Approaching dissenters’ views with curiosity, critical thinking, intellectual humility, and a willingness to be wrong; using the principle of charity when evaluating ideological opponents’ ideas; thoroughly considering views before rejecting them; refusing to assign malign intentions to those whose ideas we dislike; accepting that for some problems there are no risk-free solutions; and welcoming dissent and disagreement as necessary to a functioning liberal democracy.
One of the chief reasons these habits of a free mind are so essential is that without exercising them, we cannot even get to the point of having the right conversations. Having the right conversation doesn’t guarantee that we will get to the right answer, but at least it gives us a fighting chance.
PAMELA PARESKY is teaching “Habits of a Free Mind: Psychology for Democracy” at the University of Chicago & works for FIRE. Find her @PamelaParesky and PsychologyTodayBlog.com
Pamela Paresky’s opinions are her own and should not be considered official positions of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or any other organization with which she is affiliated. Follow her on Twitter @PamelaParesky
Continue article at https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/04/01/defense-minister-unveils-plan-for-phased-return-to-normal-after-passover/
“Mobileye CEO: ‘Current strategy of containment is road to disaster’
Professor Amnon Shashua says gov’t needs an exit strategy that gets the low-risk back to work and acquiring herd immunity.” From today’s Arutz Sheva. Mobileye is a company specializes in artificial intelligence. He says
that he has developed an “exit strategy” for the crisis that will allow the “low risk” younger Israelis to begin going back to work in two months. This will allow them to acquire “herd immunity” to the disease.
Arutz Sheva reports unemployment in Israel is now 23+ percent.
“The unemployment rate in Israel this evening stands at 23.8%, compared with only about 4 percent at the beginning of the current month”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/278095
Just FYI. This is BEFORE the lockdowns with 4% (Yay!) unemployment rate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHDkALRz5Rk
(I am passing no judgement here, I am just wondering what such a video may show in a couple of months while we MAGA!!!!)
“NY City currently has one person dying every three (3) minutes.”
Where can I see the info?
How many died every minute there BEFORE the coronavirus panic?
“Israel has 2 deaths per million people.”
Yes.
But how do you know that it is ONLY because of the draconian measures?
There maybe other factors, e.g., better health care system, better medical care because of more concern for a human life (Netherlands made euthanasia legal a while ago), possibly an overall younger population than in Europe because of the higher birthrates (for both Jews and Arabs), different testing/reporting standards, etc.
“Allowing hospitals to be over-run”
But they are still overrun because of mismanagement and panic.
Instead of setting up special testing centers, they allow the people who are healthy enough to stand for hours in the street to mob the emergency rooms.
And I think I know why these reasonably healthy people are mobbing the emergency rooms – because they are HOPING to be declared sick in order to get a paid sick leave for the “official” virus.
The “Italy-like disaster” is very questionable with what they were doing there and what they were actually reporting.
@ Bear Klein:
“A sick population”
4,800 or even if it were 20,000 cases in ~9 million or 12,595 cases in 17,5 million DOES NOT = a sick population (from the virus).
Strictly speaking, any population is always “sick” – if you subject any human on Earth to a thorough medical exam, you will find inflamed gums, bad teeth, viruses, bacteria, parasites, diabetes, arthritis, heart, liver, kidney, etc. problems, flu, colds, allergies,TB, obesity, etc., etc., and so forth. It’s just that most of the time and in most people their “sicknesses” are not disabling or even pass unnoticed.
@ Reader:
We need to agree to disagree I would suggest. I say it is very significant that:
Israel has 2 deaths per million people. (18 deaths)
Holland has 61 deaths per million people. (1039 deaths)
That may not be a big deal to you but it is to me.
In my view saving lives is a good thing. Keeping your hospitals from being over-run is a good thing.
@ Bear Klein:
“Slowing the virus down”
But, based on Israel/Netherlands comparison, there is NO “slowing the virus down” or the “slowing down” is fairly insignificant.
I don’t see why you have to kill the economy and produce 3 million unemployed a month while building more makeshift hospitals and making more medical supplies and equipment.
On the contrary – a healthy, unbroken economy with the majority of the population working while the sick stay at home could do it much faster.
Coronavirus is not THE PLAGUE.
Israel has 2 deaths per million people. (18 deaths)
Holland has 61 deaths per million people. (1039 deaths)
At least so far Israel’s approach is saving lives.
In my view saving lives is a good thing. Keeping your hospitals from being over-run is a good thing.
NY City currently has one person dying every three (3) minutes. That is truly a horrible situation.
Slowing the spread of the corona-virus also allows Hospitals to gear up with ventilators and other equipment. It allows additional facilities to be made into makeshift hospitals. Such as Israel is doing in hotels with mildly sick patients.
Allowing hospitals to be over-run allows the potential of an Italy like disaster to occur. I do not believe any intelligent person would want that to happen in their country.
Slowing the virus down means medicines can be tested and get closer to vaccines. A sick population does not end up with a healthy economy. Having hospitals over run means people will die of all sorts of things.
@ Bear Klein:
“the herd approach # 3”
Also, when comparing the lockdown/NO lockdown data and taking into account the sizes of the respective populations, the difference in the number of cases is not at all dramatic (Israel 4,800 vs. Netherlands 12,595).
Of course, if it were 4,800 vs. even 100,000, it should give someone a pause, otherwise (so far) the draconian measures against the spread of this virus seem unjustified.
@ Bear Klein:
“the herd approach # 2”
What I was trying to say is that, after comparing the lockdown/NO lockdown data (Israel, probably, has a younger population overall than Netherlands but I didn’t check this), it looks like AFTER the lockdown is lifted, the number of cases and deaths will most likely catch up to what it was supposed to be in the first place.
So, it seems that every country which uses draconian means to prevent its health care system from being overrun actually sacrifices its whole economy to the point of causing another Great Depression to the one branch of it, ultimately WITHOUT achieving its stated health goals.
The question is WHO BENEFITS?
@ Bear Klein:
“the herd approach”
Population – Netherlands has ~17.5 million ppl vs. Israel ~9 million (est.)
Cases – Israel (with lockdowns) 4800, Netherlands (no lockdowns) 12,595. Israel DOES have relatively fewer deaths from it.
The thing is, that everyone will get exposed to this thing sooner or later, and if they don’t, they won’t become immune to it.
These lockdowns can(?) slow it down temporarily (at least this is the assumption).
The elderly (as a group) will always have a higher rate of bad outcomes – should everyone over 65 (arbitrary age) be locked up every year for 6 months?
The Dutch have taken the herd approach allowing people to get exposed to the novel corona-virus. Holland is similarly sized to Israel in population.
Coronavirus deaths in Netherlands rise by 175 to 1,039 -authorities
By REUTERS MARCH 31, 2020 15:18
AMSTERDAM – The number of deaths in the Netherlands resulting from the coronavirus epidemic has risen by 175 to 1,039, health authorities said on Tuesday.
The number of confirmed infections increased by 845 to 12,595, the Netherlands’ National Institute for Health (RIVM) said.
Israel 4800 total cases – 18 dead.
Israel has tried to shield people from getting exposed.
@ Bear Klein:
Bear, you said,
“NY City right now has 14 deaths per hour from Covid-19! In Israel 50% of the hospitalized are the Haredi (Ultra-Religious) who have ignored the instructions not to congregate and keep social distance.”
You may be right on the money there. The first identified case in NYC, I believe, was a health worker recently returned from Iran. Until the geographical spread of the particular strains of SARS-CoV2 become available online, that’s the only indication I have of where the NYC pandemic came from; but if the Haredi have been behaving as you say, they are VERY likely the culprits at having disseminated the virus so widely.
There are a few groups of people who seem to have an elevated opinion of their invincibility. Foremost of these are young people in general, as evidenced by the defiant youth congregating on Florida beaches at Spring Break, or Mardi Gras revelers in New Orleans. Other religious groups are implicated as well, such as the Messianic cult in South Korea, or fanatical Shiites in Iran.
Cool-headedness and common sense seem to be the way we will effectively combat the current outbreak. I think President Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force are on the right track.
@ Reader:
Reader, thank you for enlightening me that “Adam Dalgliesh” + Shmuel Mohalever. That explains a lot.
@ Reader:
Oh, the cruise ship was a metaphor?
I finally figured it out. I tend to take things literally.
@ Reader: All excellent points, Reader. I couldn’t have said it better.
Our system also privileges the rights of criminals to their freedom over the rights of non-criminals to the lives, liberty and property, and to freedom from violent assault, including rape. When judges have to choose between the safety of the public and some newly invented procedural right of a defendant, they usually choose the latter. So much for respect for life.
“No gatherings of 2 or more people, weddings with guests.” Bibi’s latest proposed restriction. (today’s Arutz Sheva). Madness.
US Coronavirus Cases:
159,689
Deaths:
2,951
@ Ted Belman: I will remember your guidelines, Ted. I won’t repeat posts again. I won’t post many posts at once. I will try to avoid going on too long.Thanks.
I realize that sometimes I go on too long. But please understand that I don’t have much opportunity to talk to people here where I live.So chatting with my friends Iat Israpundit is important to me. Please bear with me.
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
Thanks for explaining your situation.
It’s like they lost their minds.
I couldn’t understand why you posted about being locked down on a cruise ship.
@ Ted Belman:
What is rational and responsible under these circumstances is complex and new territory.
@ Bear Klein:
I am not making the case for being irresponsible. I am opposing the panic and supporting rational thinking.
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
Never repeat a comment beause that doubles my work to deal with it.
Your commentws may be going into trash 1) becaquse they exdceed a certqain number of words or 2)they come too rapidly. ie wait a minute between comments.
Oh for goodness sake, Ted, please post my reply to Reader concerning my personal situation during the New York State and Orange County emergency, which has just been trashed. I wan’t people to know that I am OK, although struggling.
@ Reader:
I am not exactly locked up (yet, although Cuomo is toying with a possible “stay in place” lockdown. We can’t invite guests from outside the complex to our rooms. I have no children our grandchildren. But this is a real hardship for most of our residents, who live for their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.
The community room in my complex has been closed. Th management has posted signs in all the the lobbies where residents always used to sit and talk with each other, strongly discouraging everyone from sitting in the chairs there, although they have not explicitly forbidden us from doing so. The management requires all residents stand at least six feet away from each other at all times, even when trying to talk to one another. Everyone strictly follows this rule. All of hte residents except myself are terrified of the coronavirus.
THe building manager won’t let anyone in her office unless you call up first and schedule an appointment.
The management is putting intense pressure on us to pay our rent electronically, and have it sent automatically to them directly from our bank accounts. They claim that the staff are afraid to touch written physical checks with their hands.
All seniorr citizens’ activities and groups both in the complex and throghout Orange County and the surrounding counties have been indefinitely suspended. So much for my social life.
Restaurants have either closed down or give take-out or delivery only. You are not allowed to sit down. And even those restaurants that are still open for take-out say they can’t hold out much longer.
Most non-food businesses have closed, including department stores. Walmarts are still open. But there are no Walmarts in my town. The nearest one is ten-fifteen miles away, in another state.
If I go any distance from my apartment, I can’t find any place that will let me use their bathroom. Nearly all bathrooms in restaurants and other stores are closed to the public. Even the police stations, courthouses, and municipal buildings won’t let you in to use the bathroom, or for any other purpose. If you need help from the police, you have to phone them and ask them to come to your door. They won’t let you in to th police stations.
Board meetings of our municipal government are now closed to the public. You have to call and make a special appointment to see a local official.
Many local people have been laid off their jobs.
I am able to write this to you because they have yet confiscate my computer.
@ Reader:
I am not exactly locked up (yet, although Cuomo is toying with a possible “stay in place” lockdown. We can’t invite guests from outside the complex to our rooms. I have no children our grandchildren. But this is a real hardship for most of our residents, who live for their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.
The community room in my complex has been closed. Th management has posted signs in all the the lobbies where residents always used to sit and talk with each other, strongly discouraging everyone from sitting in the chairs there, although they have not explicitly forbidden us from doing so. The management requires all residents stand at least six feet away from each other at all times, even when trying to talk to one another. Everyone strictly follows this rule. All of hte residents except myself are terrified of the coronavirus.
THe building manager won’t let anyone in her office unless you call up first and schedule an appointment.
The management is putting intense pressure on us to pay our rent electronically, and have it sent automatically to them directly from our bank accounts. They claim that the staff are afraid to touch written physical checks with their hands.
All seniorr citizens’ activities and groups both in the complex and throghout Orange County and the surrounding counties have been indefinitely suspended. So much for my social life.
Restaurants have either closed down or give take-out or delivery only. You are not allowed to sit down. And even those restaurants that are still open for take-out say they can’t hold out much longer.
Most non-food businesses have closed, including department stores. Walmarts are still open. But there are no Walmarts in my town. The nearest one is ten-fifteen miles away, in another state.
If I go any distance from my apartment, I can’t find any place that will let me use their bathroom. Nearly all bathrooms in restaurants and other stores are closed to the public. Even the police stations, courthouses, and municipal buildings won’t let you in to use the bathroom, or for any other purpose. If you need help from the police, you have to phone them and ask them to come to your door. They won’t let you in to th police stations.
Board meetings of our municipal government are now closed to the public. You have to call and make a special appointment to see a local official.
Many local people have been laid off their jobs.
I am able to write this to you because they have yet confiscate my computer.
“But what about the question when is enough, enough. e.g. We know that if we lower the speed limit there will be less traffic deaths but we have decided to tolerate a certain number of deaths in order to allow higher speed limits.”
Well, tolerating more deaths to allow higher speed limits is similar to tolerating the large number of annual deaths from the flu.
Deaths from traffic accidents, however, cannot be compared to deaths from an inferior/insufficient/for-the-rich-but-not-for-the-poor health care system because traffic deaths are largely dependent on the skill of the driver, his attention span, his being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, his texting or talking on the phone while driving, driving in unsafe conditions on unsafe roads, etc. In other words, there is a great amount of free choice there between life and death.
Where is the free choice in getting cancer, having certain birth defects, or being infected by a contagious disease?
People can make attempts at prevention but free choice here is very minimal. Therefore, the most moral health care system is a universal one with the best quality treatment (and strong disease prevention) available to everyone.
The article’s “moral” dilemmas are, in reality, purely immoral, no matter which choice is selected.
The reason for this is (as I stated in one of my other posts elsewhere on this site) that RATIONAL thought has its limits. RATIONAL or LOGICAL does NOT = MORAL and LEGAL does NOT = MORAL and vice versa.
The question of MONEY vs. LIFE is also completely artificial. It is being answered in the United States ANNUALLY by tolerating TENS OF MILLIONS flu infections (not counting pneumonia, TB, etc.) with their TENS OF THOUSANDS flu-cause deaths (up to 70% in the elderly), or tolerating traffic deaths for the sake of higher speed limits (to the extent that they increase the number of traffic deaths).
Entertaining the question of of money vs. life and whose life is worth (or not) saving is a slippery slope which leads to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
“Fellow citizen, that is your money too.”
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
Adam, I thought you were locked up in your apartment complex in New York?
Although you are right about the cruise ship lockdown.
Last time one of my comments was detrashed, I think,only after a couple of DAYS when I gave up on ever seeing it posted. And I tried it several times, even removing the link – it still didn’t work.
Is there a LENGTH LIMIT? Or is it completely arbitrary?
My comment was TRASHED again.
This is extremely frustrating.
The coronavirus is a fake. Someone in China fabricated it for unknown reasons. Lockdown has placed us all on a cruise ship where we can’t avoid contact with people awith infections. Th elockdown will cause a steep rise in infections–not the coronavirus.
Responsible return to normal activities would be for those tested who have anti-bodies in their system from the novel corona-virus.
Also when a medication and available is proven to work against Covid-19 then all but the elderly should be allowed to return to normal activities.
NY City right now has 14 deaths per hour from Covid-19! In Israel 50% of the hospitalized are the Haredi (Ultra-Religious) who have ignored the instructions not to congregate and keep social distance. Ted, you are advocating for more of this?
Ted I just wrote two comments and they both were trashed!
Get testing for those who have developed anti-bodies to the novel corona-virus.
Allow these people back to work immediately.
Finish the clinical trials on drugs successfully to combat Covid-19. When you have drugs that work, you can free up the workplace, but still try and keep older people safer until a vaccine is developed.
This would be better than just saying I do not care how many die or people die a whole lot of other ways it is just okay that they die.
Ted, So how many are okay for you to die? Are willing to have everyone walk into the middle of the busy highway? It is cheaper to have stop signs and stop lights or more operating rooms for the injured?
What would be responsible is to get testing to see who has the anti-bodies in their system and allow them back to work. Also wait longer until treatments are proven in trials for some of the drugs being tested. When you can do these two things then it would safe to open up the economy. If not you risk a massive amount of dead.