Are Covid vaccines an instance of the trolley problem?

The trolley problem is often misunderstood. The point of the problem is that two actions have the same consequence (pushing a lever and pushing a person off a bridge) but many peoples' moral intuition is that one action is moral and the other not. It is an argument against consequentialism, the belief that what makes an action moral or not is its consequences. The consequential view of morality is that authorizing the use of a vaccine is moral if it saves more lives than it costs. One deontological view might be that the government has a responsibility to completely test all vaccines before it releases them. Thus the early release of a vaccine on the theory that it would save more lives would be correct from the consequentialist view, but not on this deontological view. This would be the reverse of what the trolley problem is arguing.

Beats me.

I got Moderna and a Moderna booster. The side effects of the vaccine were like the flu, I got a fever, took a day off from work, etc. The booster made my arm sore but that was it.

I got Omicron three weeks after the booster and had a sore throat and slight cough, maybe one loose stool. No fever.

The vaccine didn't stop 3 out 3 family members from getting Omicron but it may have modified the course of the disease. Certainly the vaccine reaction I got was worse than the disease I experienced. When it was all planned nobody knew the Omicron variant was coming. I know people who got previous variants and got a lot sicker. I know quite a few people who got Omicron and it was no big deal, but one of them wound up in the hospital with double pneumonia.

I don't like the trolley problem as a paradigm because even though it approximates real situations it distorts them enough that it obscures rather than reveals real moral dilemmas.

I am struck by this. The mRNA vaccines can be developed, tested and deployed at "warp speed" compared to any vaccines in the past. Yet, Omicron was discovered around Thanksgiving and exploded such I (presumably the median person) got it less than two months later.

I'd imagine that an mRNA vaccine targeted for Omicron would be super effective. The experts started working on an updated vaccine within a few days of the discovery but even working at "warp speed" it seems that Omicron will have run its course by the time a vaccine is ready -- a completely different situation from the previous variants.

Yes. It's incredible narcissism on the part of those that propose vaccination of other people for their own protection, or in the name of protecting others.

If someone wants to protect themselves from the virus, let them take the vaccine, but don't impose it on others as a proselytization of salvation. Even if they are truly doing it to keep other people around them safe, or truly do have someone's best interest at heart, nothing justifies the forceful baptism of another individual.

If anything, learn from stories online about children abused by narcisstic parents. Stories of having parents who think they know better for you than what you know for yourself, to have parents who demand encroaching power over their children's personal space, to have parents that want to abuse you and your body for their own psychological issues. What is going on is undeniable narcissism charading as "I know what's best for you" / "I do it because I love you".

Even if we had undeniable proof that vaccines work 100% of the time, even if we knew vaccines took our souls to heaven, even if we knew undeniably that vaccines would save us from brimstone and fire, no amount of state power should be allowed to exert that much control over an individual.

So yes, it is a classic trolley problem, in the sense that it is a decision to save the highest number than to save an individual. And those in support of vaccinating others not themselves are deliberately choosing to save the number 5 over an individual, which as I've ranted on you, is incredibly narcissistic. Because if they really cared about someone else, they would let them choose their own path, regardless of salvation or damnation.

In the absence of a legally enforceable vaccine mandate that does not allow for medical exemptions, no. It's more of "at your own risk."

In a broader sense, I don't think anything is actually an instance of the trolley problem. It's a pathological thought experiment that has literally no options except to kill a certain number of innocent actors who have zero agency themselves. Maybe if you have exactly one organ, two patients, and it's known that there's zero chance of another one coming available in time, but even that seems farfetched to me

No. The trolley problem indicates Person A making a decision (pulling a lever, or not) that impacts either Person B or Person C. Person A is not at risk in the trolley problem.

Taking a vaccine is Person A’s choice. In this case, the lever is:

Option 1: Get vaccinated and steer the COVID train away from myself and all the people I may infect if I get covid, but also steer the risk of myocarditis or whatever towards me.

Option 2: keep the COVID train pointed at me and also the people I might infect, but also steer the myocarditis train away.

Considering that the people who are adversely affected by a COVID vaccine are not the same as those who might die from the virus...

That is not a given. There is such an infinitesimally small number of serious adverse vaccine reactions even reported, let alone confirmed, that I don't think any conclusions can yet be drawn about who is likely to have an adverse vaccine reaction. So no, definitely not the trolley problem, where the risk of death is the same (100%) for all potential victims.

Maybe the person choosing to get vaccinated is controlling the switch and one track has a group of people tied up and the other track has the person's pride

Every policy has winners and losers. The best we can hope for is to maximize the benefits while minimizing the costs (and setting a floor for the losers if possible). In that sense every policy can formulated using the popular conception of the trolley problem, but I’m not sure how useful that is

No, because multi-track drifting cannot be used to solve the problem in a funny way.