Pickup and delivery services protect high-risk customers

The argument

The ethical case for pickup and delivery services during the coronavirus pandemic begins with who is most exposed by the ordinary act of shopping. People with severe medical conditions face a level of risk in a crowded store that other shoppers do not: for them, a routine trip for groceries and other necessities carries consequences disproportionate to the errand. Yet food and household essentials are not optional purchases that can simply be deferred until conditions improve. The question is therefore not whether vulnerable people will obtain necessities but how, and pickup and delivery services answer that by separating the act of purchasing from the act of entering a public space. That separation is what makes the services protective rather than merely convenient. When goods travel to the customer instead of the customer travelling to the goods, the exposure that shopping would otherwise require is removed for the person who can least afford it. Contactless arrangements extend the same logic to the handover itself, eliminating the final point of contact between the person delivering and the person receiving. The delivery company DoorDash has offered discounts to elderly people using their service, encouraging them to choose a contactless delivery and minimize any risks, treating the price of the service as a lever for safety rather than only for sales. In the UK, packages of food have been delivered to thousands of high-risk people in an effort to minimize the chances of spreading the coronavirus, an acknowledgement at national scale that supplying vulnerable people where they are is preferable to requiring them to come out for supplies. Judged on that basis, the availability of pickup and delivery services during the coronavirus pandemic is ethical because it allows an alternative way to shop for the most vulnerable of the population, giving people whose health makes public spaces dangerous a means of meeting basic needs without accepting that danger.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is unfair that pickup and delivery service employees have to risk their health for their job. They have to travel into stores and communicate with people frequently to fulfill the customer's order, which put themselves at risk for catching or spreading the coronavirus. Despite all of the precautions taken to ensure a safe and healthy delivery, there is always a chance of transferring the virus across objects and to other people.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] There is still a small risk to delivery and pickup services. [Rejecting P3] Delivery and pickup service employees should not have to risk their health for their jobs.