Not everyone is like you. Not everyone is impacted by covid the same way. There are winners and losers and those for whom it makes little difference.

The solution for you is probably not the same for everyone. We are not all in this together.

I believe solutions start from here

Because this at least recognises that what might be best for most may not be what’s best for you.

It helps you realise that your interests might not be all that important in the greater scheme of things. Or that your analysis is self evidently right.

From there it is a small step to realise that solutions require us to find a common moral framework for distribution of pain and benefit. A balancing of pain and expectation.

For most of us, we are called upon to suffer isolation and sometimes financial hardship, while other risk their lives, all to minimise the number of those who pay the ultimate price.

As one not on the front line, I consider that a small ask.

If I ask someone to go in the front line on my behalf to make my life easier, I am obligated, so I believe to accept their demands regarding basic safety that I am asking them to forego relative to my situation.

The conversation cannot begin ethically with benefits I demand

To take a case in point, it would be beneficial to parents and children of children were in sxhool.

But the ethical test cannot begin with the damage to children and families in them being home.

It must begin with the ask we make of teachers to forego our safety.

It must carry on to examine the risk to society at large should schools act as vectors. In other words the burden that beneficiaries of schools would consequentially place on others.

Only then can one weigh the ethics of the ask.

A lot of this amounts to measuring and considering externalities, and if there is a point to my little ramble it is this.

Externalities matter and are usually the source of conflict.

Solve the externalities and you solve the problem. Fail on this and there is no solution.

Norma Foley is trying to solve the problem by refusing to acknowledge the externality: that opening schools brings disproportionate risk to some but not all.

She has failed utterly because she has refused to recognise this externality with her schools are safe mantra.

Only by recognising and dealing with the externalities of the proposition, will one find agreement that is not only workable, but more importantly that is ethical and just.