Is this a viable choice? Can we rely on hope and optimistic anticipation as a public policy? Our COVID-19 enemy has been agile and widely present. It has not easily succumbed to human intervention and is too widely distributed to prevent re-occurring outbreaks in remote regions of the world (where the preventative or curative measures are not present). This could happen in the case of any future virus. There are likely to be repeated struggles with containment throughout the world. The epidemiologists 0f 2020 might be right: there could be a very long-term, drawn out struggles against future viruses. We must be engaged in painfully realistic assessments of future viruses.
The Third Choice: Humane or Defiant Herding
The third personal choice leads us directly to this painful assessment. We become considerate realists. Like the second choice, fast thinking takes place when we make the third choice. This leads to the absolute abandonment of any individual behavior related to recommended social behavior. “Why bother with social distancing and other preventative actions when they don’t really make much difference in the long term.” We abandon all compassion and sense of collective responsibility. We turn away from NPI and any recognition that recommended norms regarding social behavior can be managed in a humane manner. We could blend consideration with a pinch of compassion by support a public policy that allocates caring resources to those many citizens who must become infected in order to gain immunity. Instead of focusing on testing and contact tracing or sitting around hoping for a cure, we wait out the eventual global immunization (as happened with many other illnesses and pandemics in the past, such as the Spanish Flu in 1918).
At its extreme, we redirect our primary attention and resources away from the discovery of new curative drugs and preventative inoculations. We personally become more focused on the reinforcement of existing health care services. Those who are infected should receive the best possible care. We are hunkering down in a different way from that involved with the second choice. Put simply, we turn with this third choice to the caring and thoughtful treatment of those who are suffering and most afflicted. We become the good Samaritans through our thoughts and actions. In the long run, it is a choice that is just as compassionate as the second choice. In the short run, however, the outcomes of our car can be quite brutal. Many people about whom we care will die. This can lead us individually and collectively to a polarity response–a swinging back to the second choice or to a freezing in place (choice one).
