
Ask HN: Covid-19 Philosophical Questions - dustinmoris
I have been musing with some philosophical questions lately.<p>1. Death by poverty vs death by virus?<p>It&#x27;s evident that the world is going into a lockdown which will inevitably last for at least 12-18 months. This will tank the world&#x27;s economy like never before. It will demise many industries (hospitality, aviation, travel, holiday, insurance, maybe even healthcare?, etc.) and many jobs might be lost forever. At the end of the pandemic one might be left significantly worse off than if they would have just caught the virus and moved on with life. Will we cause more harm through action than inaction?<p>2. Blessing in disguise?<p>On the contrary a complete shutdown of the world is exactly what we needed in order to stop further global warming. The reduction of travel and lots of other things might have the largest impact on global warming which we&#x27;ve ever had. It&#x27;s as if nature forced us into action because we were incapable of acting ourselves. Maybe the demise of one generations&#x27; economy is a worthwhile trade-off for saving our planet for future genrations?<p>3. Is nature exposing our bluff?<p>On a philosophical level one might say that the better we become at cheating nature (as in keeping dead people alive) and the more we get (over-)populated with an ever aging population, the more likely it is that a rather harmless pandemic like COVID-19 will have a significant impact and be able to wipe out large numbers of people in absolute terms.<p>One day we will reach such a large number of people with such severe health conditions that even the slightest cold could kill hundreds of thousands of humans and at some point we ought to ask ourselves is COVID-19 already that point or not? Is it ethical to force a 20 year old healthy human into a 18 month lockdown (prison) in order to save a 85 year old person who was able to enjoy their entire life and now is already on the brink of death anyway?<p>What are your thoughts?
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cannedslime
1\. I don't see how this would "demise" industries long term. Maybe flight and
travel will take a hit? Big whoop, maybe they should have had a contingency
plan for stuff like this? Travel is kind of to blame for this epidemic, so its
only fair that these companies gets a dose of karma. There is something wrong
in this world when people can only get a sense of fulfillment if they travel
all over the world, its just a decadent, polluting form of escapism.

2\. Im sure this won't stop global warming long term, humanity will be back to
being good little wage slave consumers in no time.

3\. Your reasoning is build on fallacies. Not only 85 year olds are affected
by this outbreak of SARS. Even healthy young adults can get ARDS like
conditions that will seriously affect quality of life and age.

