The New York Times Magazine - USA (2020-09-13)

(Antfer) #1

The Ethicist


take care of an elderly family member.
What’s the responsible thing to do?


Name Withheld


You lack confi dence in the measures these
two campuses are taking, and that’s under-
standable. Because many young people
who have been infected by the virus are
asymptomatic, there’s no substitute for
the regular screening of all students. So
let’s fi gure that you each face some risk
of exposure, especially your partner. The
best way to assess that risk is to see what
happens on your campuses in terms of
known cases of infection, rates of positive
tests and the like. My fi rst piece of advice,
then, is to wait until the semester has been
underway for a while to fi nd out how much
transmission has been detected.
One ethical consideration here has to
do with your obligations to your respective
schools. As long as you each do everything
you’re asked — and adhere to the usual pre-
cautions — you are doing your fair share in
the collective eff ort to control the contagion.
There’s another consideration. Is your
partner still in contact with the elderly
family member? Research suggests that
the infection fatality rate is hundreds of
times as high among people over 65 as
it is among those under 35. It’s probably
best, then, if your partner doesn’t visit
this elderly relative until after being away
from campus for a while.
As for you and your partner, the ques-
tion is whether each of you has been able
to exercise the individual precautions that
can prevent exposure. If you’ve consci-
entiously done so, there’s no reason you
can’t get together. Hospital workers still
come home to loved ones, after all. Even
in situations that pose risk of exposure,
the correct protocols, correctly per-
formed, can keep us relatively safe.


A friend of my son’s says she is being
physically and emotionally abused by her
parents. She doesn’t want Child Protective
Services involved, because she fears that
her much younger sibling would grow up
in foster care. My son is asking if we
can shelter this girl while she hides from her
parents until later this year, when she turns



  1. Is being a runaway (and staying with
    my family or another) better than foster care
    or abuse, if those are her options? I have
    no legal way to protect her. And if I’m being
    honest, I fi nd myself balking at the thought

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