Covid Conundrums and Moral Dilemmas

Josh Landy
What moral dilemmas and conundrums has COVID raised for you?

Ray Briggs
Are you wondering what to do when people around you break the rules?

Josh Landy
Is it ever okay to put workers at risk by ordering non-essential goods?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from our respective shelters-in-place via the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today we’re thinking about COVID conundrums and moral dilemmas.

Josh Landy
Recently, we asked you to tell us if there’s an ethical quandary or moral dilemma you’ve had to confront in the age of COVID and social distancing,

Ray Briggs
We got a lot of calls and emails. So on today’s program, we’re going to try to work through as many of them as we can.

Josh Landy
And we’ll have a guest ethicist here to help us. Bbetween the three of us, we hope we can provide at least some philosophical insight about your dilemmas.

Ray Briggs
I don’t know if we’ll actually resolve any of them. But we’ll certainly try to give you lots more to think about,

Josh Landy
You know, I’m curious to hear what you’ve been thinking after social distancing for… how long has it been now?

Ray Briggs
Decades…

Josh Landy
Yeah. Well, certainly a large number of weeks at any rate. So are there any ethical dilemmas that have been particularly weighing on your mind?

Ray Briggs
Oh, yeah, lots. So for instance, like, what if I have only one mask and I’m going out for a walk with Blossom? Should I wear the mask? Or should I give it to her?

Josh Landy
Wait a minute, isn’t Blossom your dog?

Ray Briggs
Well, yeah. But she depends on me. So don’t I have a special obligation to her?

Josh Landy
Oh, you know what Dubois would have said.

Ray Briggs
No, what?

Josh Landy
Get a cat.

Ray Briggs
But I don’t have a cat-size mask!

Josh Landy
Okay. All right. Fair enough. Are thre any non-pet related questions that have been troubling you?

Ray Briggs
Well, actually, one thing I’ve been thinking about is how to ethically order food to support local restaurants. I worry that the apps under pay their workers, but then if I try to tip on the app, like Will the app, take it away from the worker? And on the other hand, if I give them cash, will the cash be sort of contaminated and dangerous for them? So I’m so not sure what the right thing to do is in that situation?

Josh Landy
So is there any way to make sure the cash isn’t contaminated?

Ray Briggs
What I’ve been doing is just putting it aside in an envelope for a couple of days to sort of let any virus decay and then only handling it after I wash my hands and then putting it outside my door for them.

Josh Landy
Oh, that’s that’s pretty smart.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I mean, it’s the best thing I can I can think of what about you, Josh, is there anything that you’ve encountered recently that’s got you stumped?

Josh Landy
Yeah, I have to say one thing I’ve been wondering a lot about is what we can do for our healthcare workers. Like, I’m all for applauding them. I think that’s actually lovely and wonderful. But is that the limit of our obligation towards them? And like, shouldn’t we be advocating for them? More PPE increased pay maybe even a different healthcare system altogether?

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I find that one way trickier than the one about restaurants because as an individual, I can at least work out how to tip somebody in like the minimally risky way, but as an individual, what can I do for healthcare workers who need systemic change?

Josh Landy
Yeah, and that’s obviously a really difficult thing. Obviously, we can write to our senators, and maybe we can donate to organizations, campaigns candidates, about like maybe donating an organ to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ray Briggs
I mean, we can all do that. But also, another thing we can do is just stay at home so that healthcare workers don’t have as much strain put on them. But honestly, I’m just glad that I’m not an advice columnist, and I’m a philosopher instead, like, especially now during a global pandemic, when nobody knows what to do.

Josh Landy
I know exactly what you mean, I find it much easier to make philosophical distinctions than to dispense advice. So how are actual advice colonists handling the current situation? We sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter Holly J. McDede to find out. She files this report.

Holly McDede
When it comes to COVID-19 there are the big questions like, when will this end and how bad will this get? Then there are the personal questions that people dispatch to advice columnists, like this one sent to slates advice column, Dear Prudence.

Dear Prudence
Dear Prudence: My roommate is a concert pianist who’s furloughed because of the Coronavirus. I am working from home. She spends eight plus hours a day practicing even though she’s not going to be playing in the orchestra for the foreseeable future.

Holly McDede
That advice to a letter writer Be nice to the concert pianist.

Dear Prudence
I will try to imagine a world in which having someone like play beautiful concert piano music from 5pm until bedtime is a problem but I get that life is a rich tapestry and different things bother different people.

Holly McDede
In a letter to Judge John Hodgman’s online column, someone named Megan inquires about whether she should wear a face mask while playing the Animal Crossing computer game

Judge John Hodgman
My sister wants to require that all visitors to her island where virtual face masks. I feel this ruins the escapism of the game.

Holly McDede
The judges answer to Megan is direct: your sister’s island, your sister’s rules. “Be kind” seems to be the common refrain of the advice columnist.

John Paul Brammer
One of my early struggles was like, I don’t know what to do either.

Holly McDede
John Paul Brammer writes the popular Hola Papi! advice column. He describes himself as a Twitter adult gay Mexican with anxiety. And he says he’s no expert on the daily challenges of a pandemic.

John Paul Brammer
I don’t know how to tackle this moment we’re in; I don’t necessarily have advice for anyone else.

Holly McDede
Brammer knew he didn’t just want to make people feel better. He also wanted to figure out how to present the truth without making things feel even worse. And more and more letters kept pouring in.

John Paul Brammer
So what I did was I just—I read all the letters I got recently, several times. And while every situation is unique, they’re all sort of similar in that they all have to sort of genuflect to the big thing, which is COVID-19 right now.

Holly McDede
He says these days, many of the questions he’s getting are about internal struggles people coping with themselves. There are also lots of letters about spending too much time with other people. In one letter, a person who calls himself Heartbreaker asks if it’s okay to break up in quarantine.

John Paul Brammer
Hola Papi: How can I deal with my guilt about ending things when the world feels like it’s ending? Am I heartless for wanting to end a three year relationship at a time when everyone else seems to be clamoring for connections? Signed, Heartbreaker.

Holly McDede
Poppy tells Heartbreaker he might be a bad guy for other reasons, but not this one.

John Paul Brammer
Breakups can be heartlessly done but they are not in and of themselves, heartless acts. I think a lot of us are clinging to the idea that some things haven’t changed. I don’t know about you, but that impulse hasn’t brought me much peace at all.

Holly McDede
When people write to Hola Papi, often they’re just looking to be heard. The scientists can tell us how far apart to stand and how long viruses stay on doorknobs. But Brammer says when the facts feel overwhelming, there’s advice calmness like him waiting electronic mailboxes open.

John Paul Brammer
The absolute brutal reality of the situation is a lot to handle. And it can make people want even more some some figure that they can see as a friend that they can sort of just lay all their problems out to, because while it’s super important to have all the facts, it’s also important to get your feelings out there.

Holly McDede
You could write a letter asking Dr. Fauci for advice on a breakup. But practically speaking, if you’re going to ask a stranger for personal advice, it might as well be a thoughtful, well intentioned columnist on the internet. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that great advice, Holly. I’m Josh Landy with me is my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs, and today we’re thinking about moral and ethical dilemmas in the age of COVID-19.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Karen Stohr, who is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and the author of “Minding the Gap: Moral Ideals and Moral Improvement.” Karen, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Karen Stohr
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Josh Landy
So Karen, you’ve been writing a coronavirus ethics column for The Washingtonian magazine. But you’re a philosopher. So how did you get interested in advice columns?

Karen Stohr
So I’ve always loved reading advice columns, ever since I was a teenager, I always look forward to reading them in the newspaper. And then when I was in graduate school, you know, if you’re doing a PhD in a field, like philosophy, it’s always good to have a backup plan in case the job market doesn’t work out for you. And my backup plan was that I was going to try to be the next Miss matters because I thought, well, you know, what could be more fun than telling people what to do all the time. But philosophy didn’t work out. So I didn’t end up working as an advice columnist. And that’s probably for the best because I actually think it would be much harder to be an advice columnist than to be a philosopher, but I have been having a lot of fun moonlighting as a kind of ethics ethics advice, columnist for the Washingtonian magazine, I still, I’ve had a long standing interest in matters as a philosophical topic, just because I think that there’s a lot of sort of moral work or a lot of ethical activity that goes on in the realm of manners. And so I think that process of trying to figure out what we should do is pretty similar, whether we’re thinking about it as philosophers or whether we’re thinking about it as advice columnists.

Ray Briggs
So Karen, do you think that people should be turning specifically to ethicists and philosophers for advice?

Karen Stohr
Yeah, that’s a good question, because of course, philosophers are known for being sort of useless when it comes to practical problems, but I actually think that’s not quite true, not perhaps as useless as we might seem. I think one reason why philosophers and ethicists might seem useless is that we have a tendency to generate what seems like a more confusion than people brought to the table. So people come thinking they’ve got a simple question, and they’re looking for a simple answer. But if you ask a philosopher, what happens is that the answer is never simple. And it will often turn out that your question wasn’t actually all that simple in the first place. So sometimes people find this really frustrating because they were looking for a concrete answer. And that’s not really what philosophers do. But I don’t think this is a bad thing. Because I think very often the questions that people are bringing to the table really are a lot more complicated than they think. Or at least they open up a lot of space for conversations that extend well beyond that question and take us into territory that is definitely in the realm of ethics. If we’re talking about things like respect, or fairness, or justice or inequality, those are definitely in the realm of ethics. And so I think the questions that people raise that really troubled them are ones that already bring up philosophical considerations. And so then I think it’s not such a bad thing to have philosophers as part of that conversation, even if we end up making it more complicated.

Josh Landy
I agree. I guess that’s fair warning for the rest of the show. We sometimes we might have actual advice, and sometimes we might just have a way of complexified the question even where we have actual advice, that’s just, that’s just our opinion. And as good existentialists, I guess, we we probably agree that ultimately, we each take responsibility for making the the choices that we do,

Ray Briggs
I’m really curious about why etiquette is philosophical.

Karen Stohr
So I think it depends a lot on how we think about etiquette in the first place. So very often, people just think of etiquette, as you know, the order in which you place the forks and pick them up, or how you answer an invitation of the third person. I mean, those are technically in the realm of etiquette, but they’re not all etiquette. And they’re not the most interesting things about etiquette, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, the way that I think about manners, it’s, it’s our way of sort of acknowledging to other people that we see them, and that they matter. And manners are our way of, of sort of moving through social space, whether we’re talking about our physical presence or our presence in social media. Those are ways in which we express attitudes toward people. And those are moral attitudes, you know, are we acknowledging people’s presence, people’s needs, people’s desires, and the way that comes out very often is through what we think of as sort of the rules of manna or the rules of etiquette. So I think that they do actually have quite a lot of moral importance because they do express in a whole range of ways how we’re thinking about ourselves in relationship to other people. So I think it’s a lot more than forks, although I think the fourth part is kind of interesting. I think that etiquette is about way more than that. And actually, I think the Coronavirus epidemic is kind of showing that because all the questions that people have about, you know, sort of how to you know, get groceries and how to, you know, navigate around joggers on narrow pas. All those questions are questions about etiquette, or manners. But now they take on a new importance for us because they become part of how we’re working out this very different kind of physical and social space that we’re now in.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about moral dilemmas in the time of COVID. With Karen Stohr from Georgetown University.

Ray Briggs
Coming up: we’ll dig into the COVID conundrums that you’ve sent us over the last several weeks. Like, how do you balance mental health with physical health? And what should you do if your roommates refuse to follow the rules? And how can you cultivate your virtues while sheltering in place?

Josh Landy
Your COVID conundrums—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Fiona Apple
Fetch the bolt-cutters, I’ve ben in here too long.

Josh Landy
Fetch those bolt-cutters Ray, I’ve been in this living room way too long. I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re thinking about moral dilemmas in the age of COVID, with Karen Stohr from Georgetown University.

Josh Landy
So Karen, let’s get right into it and hear what issues people out there are grappling with. Our first conundrum has to do with putting other people at risk.

Nancy
This is Nancy from Berkeley. My conundrum is about asking others for help if I get COVID-19 I’m 69. So in the high risk group, but not old, I live alone and I have pets including to I’m fostering for close shelter. I’ve prepared for everything I can think of but if I need help, and if my animals do, do I ask my friends and neighbors knowing that however careful we are, there’s still some risk to them. If my doctor tells me to go to the hospital and I can’t drive myself, but I don’t really need an ambulance. Do I ask someone to turn If me, or do I call for an ambulance anyway, perhaps denying it to someone who needs it more urgently?

Josh Landy
Thanks so much for that great question, Nancy, What do you think, Karen?

Karen Stohr
So I think it’s wonderful, both that Nancy is planning ahead, and also that she’s so considerate of the risks that she might be putting onto other people. I mean, I think it’s straightforward. If if you have an emergency, and you need to call for help, you should call for help, that’s fine. But thinking through who you should call for help in what’s fair, I think is a really great question.

Josh Landy
So what are some considerations we have? We might have hear Karen, like, is it better to ask a friend to do it? Where you might put that friend at risk of contagion? Or is it better to ask, like an Uber driver? Where he might feel like you’re kind of exploiting that person? I mean, burden doesn’t burden Williams have that thing about one thought too many that you actually should sometimes give priority to your family members? Right? Maybe you should be, you know, trying more to protect your friends and family members from contagion than other people. But that doesn’t seem quite right to me. What do you think, Karen?

Karen Stohr
Yeah, it doesn’t seem quite right to me, either. I mean, it’s easier to repay your family or friend. On the other hand, you can pay your Uber driver and give them a really big tip, which is what I would do. In this case, I think it depends on how well your Uber driver can protect themselves, whether they have access to protective equipment. And also the same with your friends and family member, I probably asked a friend or family member first, but I think if it were an emergency, I wouldn’t hesitate to call Uber or an ambulance.

Josh Landy
Let’s get to our next one. This one’s from Margaret in Traverse City, Michigan, she writes, I’d like to hear people discuss the ethics of ordering non essential items online. Is your desire to have comforts more important than the health of warehouse and delivery workers. What do you think about that one, Karen?

Karen Stohr
Well, when you put it that way, the answer is definitely no, of course, it’s not. But of course, it’s also not that simple. Here we go. complicating things. This is complicated. I say this as someone who has been ordering all kinds of non essential things and feeling guilty about it. The challenge is trying to figure out just how much we’re putting other people at risk when we’re doing this, because we’re supporting the economy. On the other hand, we want to make sure that we are not unfairly burdening other people. And that is very hard to know.

Ray Briggs
I’m also a little bit puzzled about these cases, because I can be helping one set of people economically while ordering a non essential item. Like if I order something from an artist on Etsy, I’m helping the artist but then somebody has to deliver it. So I’m hurting somebody else. How do I balance that?

Karen Stohr
I think I think can make choices here about where what we order and where we ordered from. And I think we definitely have a more responsibility to make those choices. Well, in terms of what companies we order from, what businesses we support, what their practices are, and also in terms of advocating for things like access to health insurance, and sick leave for employees of major companies.

Josh Landy
That seems like a really good thought. And of course, it’s buying things as, as Ray was saying, from individuals or from mom and pop shops. One other thought I had about this is, is what counts actually is non essential. Because, right, I can imagine a lot of things became non essential. But but if we deprive ourselves of all frivolities, I wonder if we wouldn’t actually get worse at taking care of each other. I used to think of it as like the the oxygen mask wisdom, right? You put your own oxygen mask on first before you put it on your kids. Because if you’re at a commission that’s going to harm them. So do you think there’s room for each of us getting at least one or two things that just keep us sane, during these times that we can actually be better contributors to the sort of the welfare of the general community?

Karen Stohr
Well, I think what keeps us sane is essential by definition. It’s hard to because like, you could go like you could make an essential trip to the grocery store, and you know, buy something like Captain Crunch, which I’ve been doing, which is definitely not essential. So it does get pretty hard to determine what is really essential. And what can you just grab because you’re in the store. And there it is. I don’t really know how to work this out. I think being mindful of what we’re doing and the impact that we’re having on other people is the crucial thing, and also being honest with ourselves about that impact, which is hard to do.

Ray Briggs
So we’ve got another submission. This one’s from a listener on the East Coast, who’s thinking about people affected by illnesses other than COVID-19 right now.

Emma
Hi, my name is Emma, and I’m calling from Connecticut. Thank you for this discussion and for taking my question. It seems as though we’re approaching this crisis as if we have plenty of time to recover from it. But regardless of COVID, none of us is guaranteed tomorrow and on average, 2.7 million Americans die each year. So for 2.7 million people in the US this new reality as how they may be spending the last few weeks or months of their lives, possibly completely alone, terrified of human contact, as we weigh the costs of this approach, is that an appropriate trade off?

Ray Briggs
Thank you, Emma for that good question. What do you think, Karen?

Karen Stohr
So I think this is a heartbreaking question. And Emma is exactly right. about some of the other costs that we’re not seeing, or we may not be seeing of this epidemic. And I don’t have an answer to that question. It’s one of these things that’s incredibly challenging for all of us to work out. To what extent are we posing risks other people, lots of us are in a position where we want to go see someone we love, perhaps someone who’s older who has a life threatening condition, but we’re afraid of making them sick. And that’s an incredibly difficult position to be in and a hard question to answer.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I worry particularly about the kind of psychological effects of isolation on people. Because there’s a there’s a cost to not isolating, which is the more people will get sick and die. But there’s also a cost to isolating, which is that sort of not everybody can maintain their mental health without human contact.

Karen Stohr
There are, I think, additional challenges when we’re talking about people who may not be in a position to understand what’s going on or what the cause of the isolation is, and thinking of older people with dementia or Alzheimer’s, then the cost of isolation become even more poignant, because just because people aren’t necessarily in a position to understand why their friends and family members have stopped visiting them.

Josh Landy
Oh, yes, that’s a terrible situation. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re talking about ethical dilemmas that you’ve been facing in the age of COVID. Our guest is Georgetown University philosopher Karen Stohr, who’s been writing a coronavirus ethics column for The Washingtonian magazine. Ray, I believe you’ve got another conundrum for us.

Ray Briggs
This is Rocky from Atlanta, who writes a lot of people, myself included, are having a really rough time with their mental health from not seeing touching or interacting with their friends and partners, thinking from a harm reduction framework, is there a point where it’s appropriate to break quarantine to see another person in order to reduce the damage to your emotional or mental health? And if so, what is that point? And how do you do it ethically?

Karen Stohr
So mental health is health. And it’s essential. I mean, it is I think, for people to think, well, I don’t really have to do this, we shouldn’t downplay emotional and mental health needs. You know, that being said, we clearly have responsibility to do that as safely as we possibly can. And so that’s going to mean, limiting your contact as much as you can and doing everything you can do to reduce the risk to that person and to others that you have contacts with.

Ray Briggs
Right, I’m thinking maybe a principle here is that I can’t do this for everybody in my life. Because that would just obviate the point of isolating. So it seems like there’s a little bit of a, if you’re going to sort of see people in person, you sort of have to decide whom, which seems like not the best situation like I don’t want to pick among my friends, but at some point I have to make.

Karen Stohr
Yeah, I think they’re, I mean, thinking of ways to find those connections, you know, to the extent that you can do it safely, you know, thinking about well, you know, being with friends outside, you know, trying to maintain as much space as you can, it doesn’t completely minimize the need that humans have for physical contact. But there might be things that we could do to ameliorate some of those negative effects of isolation that don’t actually put others or us at increased risk or not much increased risk.

Josh Landy
Well, you know, thinking of risk and difficult balances. We’ve got this question from a listener in the Bay Area.

David
This is David from Mountain View in Santa Clara County in California. Through all this Coronavirus stuff, I’m learning that I’m more of a risk balancer who thinks about economic risk versus virus risk? Almost all my friends are rule following risk maximizers who only think about virus risk, I find that peer pressure to conform to risk minimization almost impossible to overcome. And I find myself becoming a risk minimizer with my actions. Which is fine, because I don’t want to lose any of my friends. That said, Is there something to be said about comparing the risk of economic disaster due to shutting everything down to the risk of allowing the virus to run unchecked and going about my day as if there were simply another variety of flu?

Josh Landy
Thanks for the great question, David. Okay, so Karen, what do you think?

Karen Stohr
So I think David is raising a couple of different issues. One is about sort of how we should think about risk more generally. And then one is about how we should interact with our more or less risk averse friends. And I think those are worth thinking about differently. No doubt David is right about the economic risks being important too, but I think his question is really about that interacting with people who just take a different idea about risks. Then you do and that is definitely challenging.

Ray Briggs
I also want to ask about sort of what exactly the economic risks are and who bears them. So it seems like some of the economic risks accrue to sort of, like small businesses, or to people who are now unemployed. But also, I worry a lot about, like people who are already unemployed, who are maybe homeless. So that seems like a just like a kind of a place where I wish we had more of a safety net. And I’m kind of worried about how to coordinate a good response to that we sort of make sure that economic help goes to people who need it most.

Karen Stohr
Well, I think the economic risk needs to be broken down, of course, into the kinds of things that we’re talking about, because there’s, you know, there’s a failure of small businesses. And then there’s also what that might mean for people’s access to things like health care, you know, or adequate food, which affects their physical health, too. And so it definitely is really complicated. And it’d be much less complicated. If we had more of a safety net, we didn’t have to worry so much about our neighbors going hungry when their business fails. I think that it does help us to frame the risks in terms of a variety of different considerations. But we don’t want to let or lose sight of the fact both that some people are doing very more risk than others, and also, that some of these risks are just much more serious than others, you know, if someone is dead, nothing else matters much. And I think all of us need to have a fair bit of humility, in terms of what we know, you know, people are really confident about what will happen or what won’t happen if we do different things. The fact is, none of us really know, no one has a magic potion. And we’re all kind of trying to work this mess, without a clear vision of what the risks really are.

Ray Briggs
We have another listener all the way from Louisiana with a question about the demographics of the disease.

Leslie
This is Leslie from Baton Rouge. Here in Louisiana, we have seen very grim statistics this week, demonstrating that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts communities of color. At the same time, hearing that many of my fellow citizens are frustrated by the stay at home order. They say we should be targeting our public health measures much more narrowly. And I’m worried. I wonder what you think about the ethics of this situation, knowing that this virus highlights social inequalities, does that change the ethics of our individual behavior? And how should we think about the ethics of public policy given that fact?

Ray Briggs
So Karen, what do you think?

Karen Stohr
I think Leslie has raised one of the most important questions about the ethics of pandemics, which is how we think about the ways in which risks fall differently on different segments of the population. And the deep ethical question behind that, of course, has to do with injustice and inequality. I mean, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything about disparities in access to health care in our country, that certain groups are being more affected by this virus than others. And the question for us as a society is, what are we going to do about that? Now, we can’t ignore this, and we have a choice about how we’re going to respond to this. And the question is, are we going to respond to that?

Ray Briggs
Well, yeah, I have to admit, I’m kind of like worried and pessimistic. Do you think there’s anything we can do to increase the probability that we do respond to it well, rather than badly, or at least think about it right?

Karen Stohr
I don’t know. I’m kind of I try not to be pessimistic. But on this question, I have to say that I am. I’m worried that people, the longer we’re under lockdown, and the more inconvenient people find it and honestly, the more it starts to impinge on people’s livelihoods, and their ordinary ways of life, the less patient people will be. And I think perhaps the less solidarity they will feel with people who work say in meatpacking plants, were invisible to them, or to people more globally, who will be suffering from this people in refugee camps, it’s easy for us to forget about the ways in which other people are impacted by our actions and focus only on our needs. And I think there’s a real danger that that’s going to happen.

Ray Briggs
It occurs to me also that thinking about the problem as just the pandemic and isolation is maybe not the right way to think about it. So if there weren’t people like stuck in refugee camps, then the pandemic wouldn’t be a threat to people stuck in refugee camps. If there weren’t so many people stuck in prisons, then the pandemic would be like less of a problem. So I think maybe like a less kind of atomistic way of thinking or where we still have all these other battles. problems, they don’t become not problems because of the pandemic.

Karen Stohr
If anything, they become worse, because people who are already more socio economically vulnerable are in a worse position because of the pandemic than people who were already in a position of privilege. So it exacerbates our existing inequalities.

Josh Landy
We have another submission. This one’s from Christina in Utah, she writes, people seem to be turning on their neighbors perceiving one another as a threat. normal activities, like playing at the park are now looked down upon, and neighbors are ready to turn on each other for what were once considered healthy and normal behaviors. So how so have our personal interpersonal values changed? Because of COVID? Do we rank values such as fidelity, connection and empathy differently now? What do you think care?

Karen Stohr
So here I’m going to channel Mr. Rogers, and perfect quote from him that’s often brought out in times like these, which is to look at the helpers. You know, I see what Christine means. But now I’m going to be optimistic here. They Yes, there are people who this is not bringing out the best in them. But there are many, many more in whom it is bringing out really good things. And all you have to do is look at EMTs in New York, or people who are working in nursing homes. There are so many people who are working so hard to make our situation better that I’m not convinced that all hope is lost.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about COVID quandaries and moral dilemmas with Karen Stohr from Georgetown University.

Ray Briggs
What do you owe your roommates in a time of crisis? What should you do if they behave badly? Are some people just jerks?

Josh Landy
More of your conundrums—when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Police
Don’t stand so close to me

Josh Landy
Don’t stand so close to me—six feet minimum! I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is Karen Stohr from Georgetown University. And we’re thinking about your ethical dilemmas and an age of social distancing.

Josh Landy
Needless to say, we’re not professional advice givers. We’re just here to offer different ways to think about these COVID quandaries and you should take any suggestions we may have with a grain of salt, even when they’re true, unreasonable. So let’s get back to your conundrums. Here’s a fellow San Francisco having some problems with her roommates.

Natalie
Hello, my name is Natalie. I live with a family, John as a business and he was having clients over to the house during the shelter in place. And he continued to do so until I asked him to stop. On top of that, John and Mary continue to hang out with friends inside the house and outside. When I complain, John told me I was making up laws. I call 311. To see if I was too extreme. They said no, they said that John and Mary are breaking the law. And I could call the police so that they could come to the house to educate them. I didn’t call the police, by the tell children marry by had called Finn one one. Now they’re making me feel like I’m the one who did something wrong. Like I betrayed them, or something. Now, I’m really confused. And I don’t know if I’m like a person who could call the Gestapo and Jews hiding somewhere.

Josh Landy
Wow. Okay, so that’s a tough one. Do you have any advice for Natalie, Karen?

Karen Stohr
Well, I think Natalie needs some new roommates. But that might not be the practice. I’m sure she knows that herself. I mean, I think she was within her rights to call 311. You know, they are endangering her that’s different from people being judgmental about someone whose behavior they don’t like, but that isn’t threatening them. I mean, Natalie is made less safe by what John and Mary are doing. It seems totally fair to me, for her to be able to defend herself with the help of the authorities.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, honestly, this sounds like she wasn’t trying to punish them. So there is this like, philosophical question, which I have, like, pretty strong views on which is like, is it okay to hurt people just because they did something bad. But that’s not what’s going on here. Like she’s just trying to stop them from doing something that could could hurt her and others.

Josh Landy
Yeah. I mean, I have to say, this is the first conundrum that we’ve had where I feel very strongly, you know, turn them in. And if there’s a part of me, that goes even further and wonders whether, you know, could Natalie come up with some strategy by which she could, you know, make them feel what it’s like for like, maybe buy a pet snake?

Ray Briggs
Well, that doesn’t sound like a punishment. Like, that’s different.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I know. almost certainly wrong. Right, Karen?

Karen Stohr
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think if Natalie could get through to them That would obviously be the way to go. But it doesn’t sound like that’s very likely. And so, you know, I think in this situation if moving is not an option for her, then the only one she has is to enlist the help of local authorities. Normally, I would say that should be a last resort, but it’s hard to see what other options are short of a snake. Natalie has but Natalie, the philosopher’s have your back on this one. I don’t know if that’s helpful. And we have another call about roommate issues.

Stephanie
My name is Stephanie. I’m from Chicago. I currently live with two other people in a two bedroom apartment that is emphatically not big enough. One of my roommates lives on our couch. I don’t begrudge them living on our couch at all by any stretch of the imagination. But it does make this apartment very crowded, and makes things tense. Due to this and other things, including the distance I travel for work. I am intent on moving out at the end of our lease. My dilemma is related to whether or not I should move out at all, my company just did furloughs. I survived. I did not get furloughed. But it only lasts for three months. And if this goes any longer than three months, then I’m going to possibly be on that block. My other roommate did get furloughed. She is a manager at a restaurant that attempted to three days of online ordering and delivery and then shut down completely. So she has furloughed she’s receiving unemployment, but the third roommate is the only one currently working. Do I still move out? Do I bite it and stay? Can I do that to them? Should I do that to them?

Josh Landy
Alright, Karen. So does Stephanie move out?

Karen Stohr
I think it’s all right. I mean, from what she said she described them as roommates, not friends, which I think does make a difference. That line is hard to draw. But it raises questions about what we owe people and under what circumstances and she owes them fair treatment. She owes him her share of the rent, whatever she’s agreed to, but she does not owe them her permanent presence on the lease.

Ray Briggs
Is there a question of sort of preserving these relationships and making it so that they can help each other out in the future?

Karen Stohr
I think so. If Stephanie wants to preserve these relationships, in particularly if her roommate situations become more desperate, then I think there are things that she might consider about what she can do for them. Beyond living with them. There are ways to help people that that don’t just amount to living in the same house with them, especially if it’s making her anxious. But I do think she wants to take that into account, you know, abandoning people who need us, in general, is something we should avoid doing. And so I think the extent to which Stephanie can separate out reasonable annoyances from genuine problems, I think would be helpful, because it may be that there are ways in which she can mitigate some of the things that make her situation difficult, and enable them to still count on each other to help them get through this.

Josh Landy
That’s nice. I was wondering about other kinds of compromise, like if she moves out, could she cover the rent for them for a couple of months or something like that? And if that’s the kind of thing that you think might mitigate the damage?

Karen Stohr
I think it would be nice if she could manage that.

Ray Briggs
We’ve got another question from a listener in the South. This one is more kind of a self reflective question.

Karen
This is Karen and I’m sending a memo from New Orleans. How has the Coronavirus pandemic changed things already going on your life prior to this period of physical isolation or quarantine? This is to say, what kind of impact has this global crisis had on more ordinary local sorts of life crises? How has this experience of living in this particular moment in time caused you to reevaluate or reconsider certain aspects of your life? And what surprised you most about whatever changes? It’s forced upon you? Thanks.

Ray Briggs
So Karen, what are your thoughts on that?

Karen Stohr
So, on a light note, I’ve always been the kind of person who has a lot of toilet paper around and I’ll make fun of me for that. And now I feel so vindicated by that. I’m even able to give toilet paper away. Um, so no more seriously, this has really, I think, shown the differences in sort of levels of privilege. I think it both show up in our broader community, but also more locally, who has to go to work under what circumstances and I think it also lends to kind of a feeling of neighborliness, at least for me, people are much more likely to check on their neighbors to see how people are doing. There’s different kinds of communities have arisen in virtue of this pandemic. And you know, there’s pluses and minuses to that.

Ray Briggs
Yeah. Can I contribute a thing that I feel like this has changed for me is that I’ve noticed that a lot of the things that I was doing before might be things that I could drop, now that I realized they’re ending Central, like, I traveled a lot for work, and I’m going to all these conferences on Zoom now. And it’s pretty great. And it’s a lot less environmentally costly.

Josh Landy
That’s a thought I had to write. So I take Karen’s point about a kind of revelation of features of our society, we weren’t aware of sometimes horrifying features. And I take your point to write that, you know, maybe the kinds of some of the skills that we’re developing now some of the habits we’re developing now could carry over in a really productive way, to a different kind of future. I mean, think, just think about working from home at conferences from home, but working from home, I think about all the homeless people. And on the other side, most of us live in two spaces, one by day, one by night. What if there was a revolution in social space after this, if there was a lot more working from home, which would free up more spaces for people to live. So maybe there, maybe there could be a, you know, silver lining to this massive cloud.

Karen Stohr
Yet we might see sort of a renewed attention to the importance of public spaces, especially green spaces that are near people’s houses, places where people can get away from others, but also be with others, I could see a lot of positive changes. You know, I have a couple of teenagers and I’m spending a whole lot more time with them than I was before. And there are pluses and minuses to this. But as a mother, I would say they’re mostly pluses. I don’t know what they would say.

Josh Landy
I do.

Ray Briggs
We’ve got time for one last conundrum. This one comes from all the way across the pond in Ireland.

Brian
Hi, guys. My name is Brian. And I’m from Ireland. And my question is, should we be relishing in the time that we’ve all been granted away from everyone to do a full detox of all the things that are stress provoking? Our should we be using the time to learn a new skill, develop ourselves in some way or find alternative ways to be productive? This is somewhat an opportunity costs dilemma are more like the paradox of choice.

Ray Briggs
So Karen, what do you say?

Karen Stohr
Well, this is obviously a great opportunity to pick up some skills. On the other hand, I don’t think we should put too much pressure on ourselves to suddenly become these bread, baking gardening, Instagramming experts. That’s not realistic, because it was a stressful situation that we’re in. So maybe the answer is kind of both use it as an opportunity to rethink the way in which we’ve been living and try to figure out what matters to us, but also not put pressure on us to write King Lear. or its equivalent, because that’s also not going to happen for most of us.

Josh Landy
That’s definitely not gonna happen. For me. I like that way of putting it right. If you know, don’t put pressure on yourself, but also think about what might be the the more or less important skills to pick up if you if you do feel able and ready and excited to do that. I mean, I go back to Christine’s question like, how are how is our sense of ethics changing? And it? On the one hand, it seems like some forms of ethical interaction or being weakened. On the other hand, you know, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. I think actually, this situation, as you were saying earlier, Karen, that’s it’s really bringing home to us the importance of community so so I guess, what I’d like to see is folks working on skills of social interaction that can come in handy later, right. So certainly skills of self soothing meditation, stoic wisdom, things like that, but maybe also the new forms of sociability, we’ve all been cultivating, and, and a kind of caring spirit is a way of differentiating between what I need and what the world needs from me. That’s, I guess what I I’d really love us all to be doing if, you know, again, if we have time between taking care of teenagers. What about you, Ray?

Ray Briggs
Well you know, I decided I was going to be productive and learn a bunch of philosophy and I read Zhuangzi, and Zhuangzi told me that I should be useless.

Karen Stohr
Are you being useless? Um, I hope not. I think one of the things that I think this, the pandemic brings home is the importance of attention. You know, I think it’s Iris Murdoch, who described love as a form of attention to people. And I think one of the things that we should be aiming to maintain is attention, not to people as vectors of disease, but to people as people. And that is a really easy thing to lose sight of in a very busy frenetic existence. And if there’s one thing that we might be able to take home from this experience is the significance of attending to people in all of who they are in our interactions with them. And I think if we could do a better job with that, then we will end up better than we were before this all started.

Josh Landy
That is a beautiful note to end on. Karen. Thanks for that. really uplifting final thought and thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you This has been fun. Our guests is being Karen store professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, author of minding the gap moral ideals and moral improvement and a Coronavirus ethics column for the Washingtonian magazine. This conversation continues that philosophers corner online community of thinkers were a moto with apologies to Descartes is Cogito ergo Blago. I think, therefore I blog and you can become a partner in that community by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a COVID conundrum that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you send it to us at conundrums at philosophy talked about or GE and we might feature it on the blog,

Josh Landy
And whether or not you have anything to share with us, we hope you stay safe and healthy throughout the current crisis/ Now, a man so quick he makes COVID sick, it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… The Covid seems more an inconvenience that a catastrophe. No fires, no floods, nothing concrete to make it real. You’ll never see a movie in a theater again, maybe. Let that sink in, except it hasn’t not happened yet. Lockdown should sober us up, think about what brought us to this sorry pass – climate change, overpopulation, globalism – where to go from here, make the world better. Why not. Thinking is free. And honest to god, how much Netflix can you take? Instead, we come up with conspiracy theories. Bill Gates invented the Rona so he can sell us a vaccine. The Chinese invented the Rona, to make Donald Trump look bad. So: go to war with China? Trump thinks so, I think, so we’ll vote for HIM some more. Or Q Anon: maybe Hillary Clinton and Democrats conspired to freak us out about the Covid so we’ll lock down, ruin the economy and make Donald Trump look bad. When he loses the election, bam, there goes Covid, just a big hoax trick. And if Trump wins? We’ll go to war with the democrats, or democracy or whatever, and we’ll have viruses until the cows come home. So we twiddle and yearn. You can’t make moral choices if you don’t even know what you’re deciding about. Trump won’t make the effort. He won’t even test. If it’s bad news, he’ll look bad, and if it’s good news, Dems will take the credit. As I write this there’s talk of reopening the country, but how much were we even closed? I can go to the drugstore but not a movie. I can buy a beer but not a haircut. What IS the disaster? Are we ready for work again? What if the office is contagious? What is the danger? If the house is on fire, where’s the smoke? It’s only been two months, but we’re already tired of a thing that hasn’t cost us much besides money, a life here and there, and we shut it down why? Trump decided to go all Federalist, to make his laziness seem like a political choice. He made the states do the work, but only made it easy for states that voted for him. Georgia reopened. Have they had more cases or less? Did they cook the numbers? Conservatives accused Governor Cuomo of causing unnecessary deaths at senior centers, even though they’re the ones suggesting that maybe we sacrifice old sick people to get things booming again. Now people with machine guns are showing up at state legislatures demanding that the economy reopen. Who are they going to shoot if it doesn’t? A simple letter to the editor would have been more persuasive. But we don’t have newspapers any more. The right wing hated those too, because fake news. Well come on it wasn’t ALL fake. Weather was real, comics, sports, what’s on teevee tonight, well not any more, it’s all Netflix Netflix Netflix, maybe a little Zoom thrown in, now the Internet has all that stuff, and it’s harder to find. And if you do a search for weather, chances are you’ll find links to chemtrails and climate change, when all you want is a picture of a cloud with zig zags coming out of it. Is it gonna rain? That’s all you want to know. Also, if you get your job back, will you take your machine gun to work, in case a doctor comes around with a tape measure to make sure you’re social distancing? Maybe I’ll stay home then, get in shape for the civil war to come. Except I’m not getting the full benefit of immunity boosting smoothies, because the fashion bloggers selling them are gone. All the influencers. Shut down. Ruined. You can order designer shoes but who’s making them? We could take up arms and MAKE them design shoes, but how will we get them if Trump refuses to fund the post office. Much less vote by mail. Still, it has only been two months. There have been castle sieges that lasted longer. The Donner Party didn’t even start eating their own until three months in. I think that’s true. If it’s not, go ahead, shoot me. You’ve got the gun. But don’t come knockin’ unless you’re wearing a mask. Hang on, tell you what, if you put the gun down, I’ll give you a free haircut and a beer. The haircut will be terrible and the beer alcohol free but what do you want, it’s a disaster. So they tell me. Not everybody’s acting like it, but disaster’s what I heard. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2020.

Ray Briggs
Our Executive Producer is Tina Pamintuan.

Josh Landy
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Ray Briggs
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston and Lauren Schecter.

Josh Landy
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from the partners at are online Community of Thinkers.

Ray Briggs
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable! The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you to become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs, thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

Anthony Fauci
You have a responsibility not only to protect yourself, but you almost have a societal, moral responsibility to protect other people.