Americans Want to Do the Right Thing Against Coronavirus. Here’s How.

This month, as the coronavirus spread across the U.S., many scientists and medical professionals decided to do the opposite: They stayed home. The American Physical Society canceled its March meeting, the American Chemical Society axed its spring conference, and several major health care meetings were scrapped. As of last Friday, I’d yet to hear anything about one meeting I’d signed up for long ago, a bioethics conference scheduled for this week in Boston.

So as I waited, I reached out to the bioethicists scheduled to attend and asked what they thought: Is it ethical to hold a conference during an epidemic? In Boston, there was particular concern because a cluster of cases had spread at a Biogen conference in the city at the end of February. The ethicists all agreed: Canceling big gatherings is the right thing to do. And by late afternoon, I’d gotten a notice that the meeting had been postponed to June of 2021.