We don't talk about this stuff because we've lost the ability to have honest adult discussions about the cost/benefit of anything that involves not just harm, but risk of harm, let alone death.
There's a classic engineering ethics problem involving an overpass. Build a cheap overpass with a support in the median and eventually someone may die crashing into it. The odds are low and the cost of a bridge with no support is high.
Modern, western, white collar society is unable to look itself in the mirror and say "we're building the cheap bridge" for anything but the most ludicrously extreme cases.
If it wasn't Covid that made this clear it would have been something else.
It has little to do with 'Modern' 'Educated' or 'White Collar'.
'Public Communications' is more ancient than as the joke goes 'the oldest profession'.
PR is probably the oldest profession.
Even Egyptian Pharaohs were overwhelmingly concerned with their perception among the Plebes, the Nobles, and their Enemies, and almost everything they did was oriented towards that. Every group or individual in a position of power since then has that as a fundamental concern.
Imagine writing a Constitution that says 'Everyone is Created Equal' and then still having slaves, you need some serious narrative formation to keep that paradox from bubbling up. (FYI I'm not taking a postmodern view of history here, just saying the issue is real).
There's a classic engineering ethics problem involving an overpass. Build a cheap overpass with a support in the median and eventually someone may die crashing into it. The odds are low and the cost of a bridge with no support is high.
Modern, western, white collar society is unable to look itself in the mirror and say "we're building the cheap bridge" for anything but the most ludicrously extreme cases.
If it wasn't Covid that made this clear it would have been something else.