Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
I work as part of a small team that must meet in person once or twice a week. (We’re careful to wear masks and maintain social distancing.) None of us has been vaccinated yet, but I recently learned that one member of our team—let’s call him Dennis—pronounces the “P” in “Pfizer.” Do I have an ethical obligation to correct him?
—Silent P.
Dear Silent,
You do not. In fact, I would suggest that you’re obligated not to set your co-worker straight. Why? Because every time he says “Puh-FIZER,” Dennis brings a bit of joy to everyone within earshot. What could be more ethical than helping to spread joy? While you’re at it, get him to try to say “AstraZeneca,” too. And maybe “chiaroscuro.”
Ethics asks much of us, but it does not preclude our laughing at someone else’s expense. That’s my understanding, anyway.
Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
I am a single, thirty-four-year-old kindergarten teacher and have just received my second dose of the COVID vaccine. (Yay!) My neighbor across the hall is an eighty-year-old woman in poor health. As far as I know, she hasn’t even got her first dose yet. Is it O.K. for me to take her huge, rent-stabilized two-bedroom when it becomes available?
—Studio-Bound in Bed-Stuy
Dear Studio,
You certainly could take this woman’s apartment—living across the hall, you will likely be among the first to know when it’s up for grabs. But should you? That is a thorny question, and it begets other thorny questions, some ethical and some practical.
Does your proximity give you an unfair advantage over other apartment-seekers? Might it be better if this apartment went to someone who truly needs the space—say, a young family? Can you really afford a two-bedroom—even one that’s rent-stabilized? Are you willing to break your current lease? How “icky” might you feel, living in the apartment of a dead woman? Have you offered to help your elderly neighbor find a vaccination site and make an appointment, or did you deflect when she recently asked you about the Band-Aid on your upper arm?
These are the kinds of questions the conscientious apartment-hunter grapples with before making such a big decision.
P.S. In the time it took me to write this response, your neighbor’s apartment went on the market and was snapped up by a day trader from Queens.
Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
My father is seventy-four years old and has a history of heart problems. Clearly, he is in a high-risk group. Yet he refuses to get the vaccine, saying that he doesn’t believe it’s safe. I would like to rent a windowless van and recruit some friends to stage a kidnapping—snatching my father from the street, pulling a hood over his head, and driving him to an abandoned warehouse, where he would be injected with “truth serum” (i.e., the COVID vaccine) and interrogated before being dumped back where we found him and warned to keep his mouth shut.
My wife thinks someone could get hurt. I think the benefits outweigh the risks. Who’s right?
—À la Balaclava in Buffalo
Dear Balaclava,
I’m with you. If your father won’t listen to reason, abducting him and injecting him under duress during what he believes is a kidnapping is the next logical step. (You may have to repeat the process a few weeks later, of course, to administer a second dose. But I’m sure you’ve accounted for that.)
As the population ages and more of us are forced into the role of caretaker, I’m afraid such difficult choices will only become more common. None of us wants to shove a terrified, elderly parent into an unmarked vehicle driven by masked strangers. But sometimes love leaves us no choice.
Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
I am a healthy forty-five-year-old woman, living alone, and not an essential worker of any kind. As such, I’m nowhere near the top of the list for a vaccination—and I’m O.K. with that. But I also know that if a vaccination site has extra doses on any given day, they must use them quickly or trash them. Am I ethically allowed to ask a health-care worker to squirt one such dose in my mouth? I’ve been wondering what that stuff tastes like.
—Curious in Columbus
Dear Curious,
Ethicists agree that the worst possible outcome in this scenario is that a vaccine dose goes to waste. So, yes, have a guilt-free taste. Or two! And please report back, because I’ve been wondering the same thing. (I’m guessing it just tastes “mediciney,” but you never know.)
Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
I’m not yet eligible to be vaccinated, but I would be if I lived in France. May I lie about my nationality in order to get the shot?
—Torn in Tacoma
Dear Torn,
Ethics prohibits lying in order to receive a benefit to which you aren’t entitled. That said, I believe there’s a way to thread this needle. Is it ethical for you to go to Paris? Yes. To wear a beret and smoke a Gauloise as you stroll the streets, looking bored? Certainly. To enter a COVID-19 vaccination site? To roll up your sleeve? To not protest as a needle goes into your arm? Yes, yes, and yes. No lying necessary.
True, some ethicists might call this lying by omission. But those ethicists wouldn’t last a minute on the streets of Paris.
Bon courage!
Dear COVID-Vaccine Ethicist,
Let me get this straight: I can’t get the vaccine yet, but somehow my asshole neighbor can? How is that ethical?
—Disbelieving in Delaware
Dear Disbelieving,
Ethics is asshole-blind. Just one of the many things wrong with ethics.
