What is bodily autonomy? A loose definition might be the right to make your own choices. More specifically, it may refer to the right to make choices pertaining to your body and your health. However, having the ability to make choices is a different concept than making the right choices, and does not exempt you from bearing the consequences of those choices, and those around you from experiencing the fall out effects of those choices. How do we make prudent decisions in the context of a pandemic while being considerate of others around us? Should we self-regulate or is it the state's job to regulate the minutia of our day to day lives?
In the context of the Coronavirus pandemic, there is a prevalent and damaging belief floating around that any healthy person puts others at risk just by carrying about their day to day activities as normal without taking extra precautions and thereby is attributed with ill intent against others simply because there is a small chance they could unknowingly spread disease to others. While there is some truth in that all day to day activities present some level of risk, and that certain strains of coronovirus carry an above average level of risk, how we handle various risk levels is up for debate, and in my far-from-omniscient personal opinion, ought to be left to personal conscience.
Each person is personally responsible for weighing their own risk of any activity (and by extension, adults are responsible for those under their direct care such as children). By climbing or hiking near a cliff, you risk falling to your death. During an ongoing pandemic, one might make the decisions to protect themselves by choosing to wash hands regularly, stay home and rest when ill, and decide what social activities they are comfortable engaging in, and so on. Each person carries unique levels of risk for various activities. For some people, walking is a risk if they have poor balance. Others have strong bodies and don't need a walker. Each weighs their own level of risk, and decides what precautions to take appropriate to the probability of harm to reduce their personal (or collective) risk. Choosing a higher level of personal risk does not in any way mean that you wish or intend the worst possible case outcome of harm to another person, it means that the overall benefits of taking on a higher level of risk still well outweigh the level of risk.
Protecting others can certainly be considered the right ethical thing to do. It boils down to making a choice to not only weigh your own risk, but to also consider the impacts of your decision on others, out of consideration, deference and respect. If you see others in the way of danger and know that there is a way to prevent that risk, you can try to educate them about the risk so they can make their own educated decisions about the risk. Of course you should not intentionally tell them to stand close to the edge of the cliff which you know would increase their risk, or withhold information that might help them better understand the risk - those are clear examples of ill intent or carelessness. Similarly, it is a fairly clear cut ethical decision not to intentionally increase others’ risk if you observe yourself or a child with symptoms of illness by continuing to engage in normal social activities putting the ill person in close proximity to others and thus increasing others’ risk.
On your own part, if you are convicted that you can do something to protect others, for instance, knowing there is a cliff face on your land and installing a guard rail to keep folks from encroaching on it, by all means do so - you're not only decreasing others' risk, but also decreasing your own liability at the same time. If you choose to wear a mask (perhaps because you have a high level of uncertainty as to whether people around you may be contagious or of compromised health and prefer to err on the side of caution), do so because you feel it's the right thing to do (not just because you're forced to). However, recognize that taking extra precautions based on a low-probability risk is a judgement call; this type of decision is the source of much unnecessarily polarizing controversy these days.
While we want to do the right thing and encourage others to do so, we must not allow our preferences and opinions to drive us to forget how to treat other people. Are you really serving the greater good to exercise one act of consideration if in order to do so you resort to flaunting your own choices in another's face, ridiculing others for their choice, being unkind or rude, insulting, being haughty about your difference in opinion (there is the saying, pride comes before a fall), or even resorting to ferocious verbal, physical, or emotional abusive attacks that harm one another? For every good reason you have for your decision, the other party could be in a completely different circumstance - and it's not your business to be intimate with the details of their circumstances. What it boils down to, is that you can only control certain factors that are within your circle of control. While you may strongly believe others have influence over your level of safety, the simple truth is that each individual (and for the vulnerable, their caretakers) has the highest level of control over their own personal safety through the actions and decisions they personally take. One will only get exhausted (and drown in anxiety) trying to control the actions and decisions of others, who all have competing priorities. All told, what precautions or actions another person decides to take after being aware of all factors including the risks is still their choice to make.
What is the answer then, do we have to force our will on others to make them comply with our version of the solution to this crisis? Is military/government force necessary? Our culture promotes as values self-aggrandizement and pride. These sadly often take precedence over values such as self-regulation, humility, compassion and putting others first. Self regulation means identifying risks, weighing them against the benefits of a course of action, and considering the situation holistically before choosing a course of action. Moral values determine whether you take into account only your self and your own desires, or instead consider others and how your course of action impacts them. The urge to impose strict external regulations to make others behave in a certain way is driven by the realism that people are selfish and that people have a hard time trusting other people to self regulate and choose to do the thing that is most beneficial for everyone.
When it comes down to it, trying to regulate others by force removes their individual right to make those choices for themselves. While proving how little we trust other people to self regulate, regulating others by force removes the opportunity from them to learn how to self-regulate. People who do not know how to self regulate due to not being trained in self regulation could actually end up worse off when they expect others have done all the work and removed all risk, they are less able to identify risk, and on the flip side are more likely to disproportionately see all new/ unknown/ different things as an immediate risk to their comfort and security even if the risk is relatively low. Compliance by coercion may be done with good intentions, but cannot account for the infinite number of factors and situations that influence each person’s individual circumstances in which those individual decisions would have normally been made, and thus will most likely result in unintended secondary impacts, the “butterfly effect” ripples and consequences.
While one cannot deny that the effects of some strains of coronavirus are quite severe and uncomfortable, many of the excess deaths (and consequences) of the Coronavirus outbreak and its fallout were not only the direct ill effects of coronavirus itself. The reactionary restrictions created far reaching secondary impacts. It is not news that for elderly and compromised individuals, the most minor of things for the rest of the society - a broken bone, a cut in the skin, the flu, a cold… anything could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Lack of care is just as deadly a killer, maybe more, as the disease itself. Isolation from loved ones, grief and loneliness, healthcare workers abandoning or reducing the level of care of their charges due to limited staff and fears, often results of decisions made under the guise that they are “protecting” themselves or others.
State-mandated stay at home orders, however well intentioned, created other risk factors when people could no longer support their family, when living in fear and isolation degraded people’s mental health to dangerous levels. The reaction to the pandemic greatly crippled access to much needed spiritual, mental, and emotional nurturing resulting in reduced quality of life, put many churches out of a home, and discouraged people from being in each others life face to face to support and help each other and take care of each others' needs. Other side effects included creating baseless tensions and divisions between people, legalized baseless discrimination and justified and encouraged a self centered existence. Further, it has resulted in even more restricted access to healthcare - both preventative and reactive care, and widened the gap between the wealthy and the poor.
As much as it may have been begged for by a scared population, state driven restrictions have done much harm. Trying to control and restrict others' behavior to the nth degree has only harmed and prolonged harm to those it has tried to help. It is worth saying that the benefits of the freedom to choose are closely linked to the obligation not to force your will on others and in doing so overrule their freedom to choose. Every person deserves the chance at the pursuit of life and happiness in a way that is at peace within and with one another. As we live our lives in the context of known risks and struggle to make the best decision within our personal context and convictions, let's not forget to treat others with the respect and honor with which we ourselves would like to be treated, to view others as valuable and precious, to see and care for the needy and hurting all around us, and to not let our own pride become so big that it tramples those in its path.
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Disclaimer: none of us want your grandma to die. We're losing our loved ones too, death is sad, and in most cases, it's not anyone's fault.
