Where are the Trolley Problem considerations when you need them?

In philosophy, there is the notorious Trolley Problem.  It is both trite and improbable but also a valuable tool for teasing out delicate distinction and hidden considerations.

The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. Opinions on the ethics of each scenario turn out to be sensitive to details of the story that may seem immaterial to the abstract dilemma. The question of formulating a general principle that can account for the differing moral intuitions in the different variants of the story was dubbed the "trolley problem" in a 1976 philosophy paper by Judith Jarvis Thomson.

The most basic version of the dilemma, known as "Bystander at the Switch" or "Switch", goes thus:

There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.

Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

It can be represented as:

There are infinite permutations to this.  Say your utilitarian choice is to pull the level, saving five for the sacrifice of one.  

But what if you change the scenario?  All five who are at most risk if you pull the lever have been kidnapped from the local hospital ICU and each suffer serious health conditions and are not expected to live more than six months.  So the main track choice costs 2.5 years of lost human life.  

On the side track, however, the alternative which you can effect, there is a ten year old child in good health tied up on the tracks.  If you pull the lever, you will sacrifice one life for five but it will simultaneously mean the loss of 65 expected human years of life versus 2.5 years of lost life.  

The Trolley Problem is both irritating and enlightening because it forces implicit considerations into being explicit considerations.  

I like this version of the Trolley Problem because it is both real and horrendous.  And good for making explicit some trade-off factors which we would just as soon did not exist but which are very real none-the-less.  This is the business person's version of the Trolley Problem rather than the abstract philosophical version.  

Click to enlarge.

The utility of the Trolley Problem is that is versatile and applicable.  We are dealing with it during the pandemic.

The permutations include:

Do you do nothing about Covid-19 and simply let it burn itself out as has usually happened in the past?  

 

Do you pull the lever and place Covid-19 among the most exposed (New York's Strategy)

Or launch a low probability expensive race for a vaccine? 

Or do you leave decisions to those locally affected without knowing what is the best approach?

Or do you lock down the economy to potentially reduce the spread of Covid-19 even though this as never worked in the past and most health authorities recommend against it?

We don't know which might have been the best answer yet but it is a reminder that it would have been nice for the various global (WHO) and federal experts (CDC, FDA, etc.) to have made decisions based on science, empirical estimations and Trolley Problem considerations rather than just the knee jerk [olitical moves so many of them elected.