The moral questions about what the risk of death compels the living to do about it are not exactly new. But they do feel unfamiliar as they rise with such urgency as a matter of life and death public policy. The philosophy of saving the most lives possible in swamped hospital emergency rooms is suddenly a matter of universal concern and confusion. All this has the effect of revealing societal attitudes toward death and its risk, and in some cases changing them. “The whole concept of death is terrible,” Trump said last week, when he was still adamantly maintaining that America’s COVID-19 death rate is less than one percent.

Source: National Post April 03, 2020 19:52 UTC