"Give me liberty or give me death." Patrick Henry (March 23, 1775)
"With great power comes great responsibility." Peter Parker (1962)
A militia man walked up to the drive-through of the Paxton Street McDonald's in Harrisburg (PA). He carried an assault rifle and wore no mask. "Give me liberty or give me death," he shouted to the drive-through window.
"That's a combo these days," the drive-through employee replied, "You get a drink with that. We have chloroquine, diet chloroquine, and bleach."
There are some interesting, tricky questions regarding responsibility during this pandemic. Questions of life and death. Who is responsible for whom? Who should be responsible for whom? What is it that we are missing when it comes to responsibility because this virus milieu is new? Surely a decade or a century from now, we'll realize that we missed obvious angles and questions.
Before addressing the first in a series of intricate debates, I'd like to return to Peter Parker, the amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man's writers had to tackle some nitpicky questions in the early days of the comic. No matter how powerful, Spider-Man was not allowed to break the law. No matter how much good he strove to do, or how many lives he saved, or his intent, every legal detail had to be covered. Spider-Man was often too broke to afford a cab for a date, but when he stuck to the roof of a bus en route to saving someone, he would leave a webful of change dangling down to the driver or, conversely, web the required fare to the roof of the bus. When a reader wrote a letter and pointed out that Spider-Man's web slinging through Manhattan left a lot of sticky webbing, Marvel wrote into the storyline that the webs actually dissolved after an hour or two. Therefore Spidey was not actually littering.
Very precise legal behavior was the comics code rule. Without precision, in fact, one can argue that there is no modern law.
So what happens when demonstrators in Michigan or Pennsylvania fail to use masks and spew flumes of potential virus at police standing a couple of feet away? Is this not attempted manslaughter, or assault at the very least? Or is it only so if the spewers test positive for COVID-19?
Here are two angles on these questions. In the first example, consider a roomful of ISIS recruits. They are told a cannister of SARS will be sprayed in the room, and the majority of them will become infected and contagious. Some will not. Since time is of the essence, however, the operation has been designed so they will all leave the room and immediately head to the nearest major airport, where they will mill about for a few hours and then board planes bound for destinations all over the world. Is this terrorism? Most people, I presume, would answer yes. How, then, is this significantly different from people attending a rally while ignoring social distancing and sans masks, and then a week later attending another rally? Isn't this also terrorism?
Or does intent somehow divide the guilty from the not guilty here? And how do you measure intent in the case of the rally attendees? The effects of the virus, and how contagious it is, are a matter of public record. Does ignoring the public record and believing in conspiracy alternatives somehow render people innocent?
If someone yells, "Fire!" in a theater, that is a crime based on probability. If a person yells "Fire!" often enough in many theaters, people will eventually get hurt. What happens this particular time affects the severity of the crime but not the actual defining of the action as a crime. If you ignore social distancing and don't wear a mask and you are virus positive, the results are clear. You will eventually infect someone. Shouldn't that be a crime?
Opaque chains of contagion cause-and-effect allow people to pretend they aren't really harming anyone. What if cause-and-effect weren't opaque, but were instead precise? Here's my second angle on this.
Suppose everyone who caught COVID-19 overlaid his or her DNA onto the virus in such a way as to be identifiable as the transmitter, a kind of ongoing virus paternity test. Ultra-accurate contact tracing, if you will. Now, if tests for such a thing existed, who would bear responsibility for the transmission? Would the person transmitting the virus be considered primarily or wholly responsible for who is infected by his DNA-stamped virus, or should the person being infected bear some of the responsibility? If the individual who catches the virus from the identified specific other gets ill or dies, should the transmitter be guilty of assault or manslaughter? Does intent matter? And if the transmitter has flouted safety guidelines, isn't his intention legally clear?
Nobody wants to get into an auto accident. But when we do, we are held responsible. If others are injured or die, we are held even more accountable. So if our hypothetical DNA-coupled tracing reveals that Person A has infected Person B and person B dies, shouldn't Person A be held accountable? How much recklessness can be considered "innocent?"
Our lack of answers to these questions means that we have just scratched the moral and legal surface of this pandemic. Any kind of accountability is clearly lacking.
Re-opening without testing and contact tracing in place has the potential to be a disaster. I understand that the culture is rattled and on tilt. Individuals must realize, however, that right now the only power we have to battle the virus is recognition of our responsibility to others.
In this case, great responsibility rewards us with great power.
Bob Dietz
May 13, 2020
