Q&A: Is it the injured party or the damager who must keep their distance?
Is it the injured party or the damager who must keep their distance?
Question
This is definitely purely a worldview / philosophical question; I’m not getting into, and I’m not interested in, what would actually happen in reality.
In a case where both the potential damager and the potential injured party have permission to walk around here, on whom does the obligation to keep away fall?
I and another person are on a deserted island, and there are two abandoned houses there. I live in one house, and he lives in the other.
I am sick with a serious contagious disease and want to go out for a walk on the island, but the resident of the other house claims that I could harm him, and therefore I am the one who has to stay in the house while he gets to walk around.
Who is right, and who has to stay home?
And what is the law if it is ten people sick with the same contagious disease and they are staying in one house, while the healthy person is in the other house, and they claim that because they are the majority they want to go walk around the island, but the healthy person claims that the right to go out belongs to him?
And what are the implications regarding coronavirus—suppose we are in one city and all the people of the city have coronavirus, and only one person in our city is in a high-risk group. Are we supposed to say to him: Sir, please sit in your home (and we will take care of your needs), or should he alone walk around the city while we stay at home?
Answer
If you are asking a moral question, it depends on a great many things: how burdensome it is to stay at home and how important it is to go outside; what the chance of infection is, and what the risk is if infection occurs. I have no general answer to this question.