Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Corona Virus and the Value of Human Life

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Does Human Life Have a Price?

"The faster we reopen, the lower the economic cost, but the higher the human cost. Because of the more lives lost. That my friends, is the decision we are really making." – Andrew Cuomo Andrew Cuomo In his daily briefing of May 4, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pointed to recent projection models that had put the country's death toll from COVID-19 at 60,000.  However, projection models have now moved that figure up to 134,000.  Cuomo explained that rising mobility in most states as well as the easing of social distancing measures expected in 31 states by May 11th indicates a growing contact with the consequence that people will continue to transmit the virus at high rates. Cuomo said “that is a very nice way of saying when you accelerate the reopening you will have more people coming in contact with other people. You are relaxing social distancing. The more people in contact with other people, the higher the infection rate of the spread of the virus. The more people who could get infected, the more people who die. We know that." Governor Cuomo also drew an important moral conclusion from these facts when he asked and answered the following question.  "How much is a human life worth? That is the real discussion that no one is admitting, openly or freely.” But he said, we should make this admission: “To me, I say the cost of a human life is priceless. Period .” This being said, it seems obvious that the implication of the governor’s words is that it would be morally wrong for those who have political power to remove or relax the current restrictions to stay at home.  All governors ought to continue their earlier orders to citizens that they should minimize their mobility by staying home until the infection rates significantly decrease. But not every state governor nor the president of the United States agrees with Cuomo.  Consider the following quotes.  President Trump said “There’ll be more death” as we resume economic activity but "we have to get our country back”  Chris Christy, the former governor of New Jersey said that “we have to let people get back to work” even if this has the consequence of increasing the number of coronavirus-19 infections and deaths.  Christy’s remarks echoed an earlier statement by former Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick who said that “there are more important things than living, and that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.” Christy went on to draw an analogy between the “significant death” so far caused by the virus and the heavy loss of life during the world wars. “We sent our young men during World War 2 over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing that many of them would not come home alive. And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now, we have to stand up for the American way of life.”  Christy assumes that those Americans who die from the virus during an early reopening of the economy are making a justifiable “sacrifice” for their country similar to that of a WW2 American soldier who sacrificed his life battling the enemy. Implicit in all of these remarks is a centuries-old debate between several classical philosophers, notably Plato, John Locke, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.  The foundations of the debate can be cast in different ways, but philosophers refer to it  as the familiar debate between utilitarian and deontological ethical theories.  Utilitarian theories are forward-looking.  They argue that an action, law or policy is morally wrong only if it produces more bad consequences than good, where the word “good” means “pleasure or happiness” and “bad” means “pain or misery.”  For example, if you break a promise to repay a loan to a wealthy person because you need the money to pay for food and shelter, a utilitarian would say that this act is not morally wrong: the good consequences of breaking the promise (food and shelter) outweigh the bad (no food or shelter).  By analogy, if the governors remove their stay-at-home orders and allow retail stores, and public spaces (parks, beaches) to reopen, then this will relieve an amount of human suffering and despair for millions of people that far outweighs the despair of an increase of thousands of deaths due to the virus. Deontological theories  are backward looking.  They assert that an act, law or policy is morally wrong because it is inherently wrong, violates a moral rule or the natural rights of others. Breaking a promise is morally wrong not because of the consequences of breaking promise, but because breaking the promise treats the one to whom you broke the promise as a commodity, as a mere means to an end.  But people are not commodities.  They are ends-in-themselves, to be treated “as persons,” not “as objects.”  They have fundamental rights that cannot be weighed or “trumped” (not a pun) by the consequences of protecting these rights..  Returning to the debate between the governors about the wisdom of an early restoration of the economy, Trump, Christy and Patrick are clearly promoting utilitarian arguments by weighing the good and bad consequences of reopening the economy: getting people back to work and the loss of human life. They believe that when this calculation is done, the good consequences will far outweigh the bad, that is, there will be more overall happiness than misery in the general population by reopening the economy.  Governor Cuomo rejects the utilitarian calculus, not because the calculation is wrong but because it is irrelevant.  If human life is “priceless” then there is nothing to weigh. The value of human life is immeasurable.  Even if it is true that there would be more overall happiness than misery by reopening the economy while the infection rate is still high, the fact that there would be more loss of life is the only fact that is morally relevant.    Although Cuomo did not mention former governor Christy’s “sacrifice” analogy during his daily briefing, it seems clear that he would have rejected it as irrelevant. Here is why. The sacrifice of which Christy speaks is not the sacrifice of those who are battling the virus but the unwanted sacrifice of those whose death is a side effect of the battle.  It is similar to a wartime bombing of an area in which there are non-combatants who will die along with the intended enemy combatants.  But this is where Christy’s analogy completely breaks down.  Restoring the economy is not the same as dropping a bomb.  The bomb will damage the enemy and kill non-combatants.  Restoring the economy will not only not stop the spread of the virus, it will help the spread.   Finally, there is an important distinction between self-sacrifice and sacrifice by others.  The thousands who have died from the corona virus were not sacrificing themselves. And those thousands who everyone predicts will die during the premature opening of the economy are not asking to be sacrificed.  Instead, they are being sacrificed by others, notably by those politicians who are more interested in restoring the economy than they are in saving lives.  And this takes us back to the utilitarian dilemma and Andrew Cuomo’s powerful objection about the priceless value of human life. Postscript.  13 May 2020   Please follow this link to an article by an eminent scientist about the dangers of opening the economy too quickly and too soon.  Her remarks enforce the comments made by Dr. Fauci at yesterday's U.S. Senate hearings.  https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them  [For students. To learn more about utilitarian and deontological ethics, see my philosophy study guides:  Understanding John Stuart Mill and Understanding Immanuel Kant.]