The rights of the individual versus the rights of the community during a public health crisis is an interesting question. Let us say for a moment that this current illness were a bit more deadly...would the current lockdown efforts be justified?
Are the current lock down efforts justified for this illness? What are the rights of the community versus the rights of the individual? Do individual rights trump community rights to survival?
This whole episode is rather surreal. It is like a slow moving train wreck without the train...
“The rights of the individual versus the rights of the community during a public health crisis is an interesting question. Let us say for a moment that this current illness were a bit more deadly...would the current lockdown efforts be justified?”
I think the concept of imminent, likely, direct and severe threat comes into play in those sorts of dilemmas. Otherwise, you could move in the other direction, and argue that we’re all potentially silent carriers of the flu, with a small but finite chance of indirectly causing some old fellow to die. We could argue all of ourselves permanently into hermetically sealed bubbles, or worse, with that sort of logic.