A Faustian Bargain Involving Privacy, Pandemic and a Functioning Economy
Will the price of controlling current and future pandemics be our privacy? Will societies, at some point, be willing to strike a Faustian Bargain and give up their privacy in return for a functioning economy? A Faustian Bargain is described by the encyclopedia Britannica as a " pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance for some material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches ." Some countries have already made that bargain, and as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, more societies will be forced to confront this decision. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, privacy looks to be one of the values required in the Faustian Bargain to keep an economy functioning. The other option is to offer up life itself - a serious topic for another time. South Korea, widely praised for their fast and efficient COVID-19 response and control, passed legislation in 2015 after a deadly MERS outbreak that gave government authority to coll