You can't make trolley problem tradeoffs when there's enough uncertainty involved in all the steps.

Older medicine is filled with supposed cures to issues that cause issues down the road. We also have countless medical trials that show no positive effects on the disease it's trying to cure, and outright ill effects (both short term and long term).

If we _did_ have visibility and a good understanding of the effects of stuff, you would think that Covid, of all things, would push at least some people more down this argument you are making.

But basically everyone involved (including many many people who had extreme incentives to push a vaccine through) stuck to the trial discussions.

I do understand the "Extenuating circumstances" argument. But this sort of massive generality reeks of Dunning-Krueger.

A problem is it's not really the trolly problem because the punishments if things go wrong accrue to different people than the rewards if they go right.

Theoretical question here: Do you want to be the one sacrificial lamb that dies, in order for the rest of us to live?

If you want to play Jesus here, then I’m sure the rest of society will support you.

It isn't that stark though. There are current policy choices that result in statistical deaths. Other policy choices are quite likely to result in fewer statistical deaths, but you've somehow decided that the current policy is not even up for discussion.