So how have we failed the trolley problem? I am using this an analogy for how we are dealing with this pandemic. We know, with scientific studies and HARD DATA, that the vaccine works as does wearing a mask. Some will poo poo that and find some reason that numerous studies are all fake. If that is your logic (and I use the term loosely there), there is nothing I can say that will change your mind. I won’t waste my time trying to.
Sadly, at least to me, there are many people who have decided that being asked—or told in some cases—to do something for the greater, public good is not for them. The vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions of people at this point. I hear people all the time saying that there needs to be more data. What junk do you eat and drink each day? Did you wait for studies to tell you that the five energy drinks you consume daily are good for you? They aren’t, by the way.
So in my view, we have failed the trolley problem. Not only have we not made a decision to save the group or the individual, we have unleased a second trolly to take out any survivors as well! By the logic of some (again, in the loosest sense of the word), why bother vaccinating for anything? Polio was a laugh riot, wasn’t it? Let’s let measles run wild through the population. Why not bring back smallpox, too? It only killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 300+ million globally since 1900 (link here)—that’s fine, right?
I have no concept of how people can be arrogant enough to think that a virus, COVID-19, will not affect them because of their politics, or religious affiliation, or whatever other excuse people use to say they don’t need a vaccine. There is a way out of this pandemic, and it is right in front of us. But we apparently don’t want to save one person or a group of people. We instead want to thumb our nose at science and our fellow people to say it should be our choice. Funny how that argument doesn’t work for women who want reproductive rights.