What are your beliefs?
It is a perfect mathematical experiment. Usually, we shield our beliefs from reality. Now, you need to act by them. The life of other people depends on it. More precisely, people might die because of your direct action (as opposed to inaction, that's a reason for a death often, but we don't care too much).
First, I summarize what I believe about the pandemic. Maybe you are a lot more cautious than I am, then your response should be different. Then I describe how these beliefs act out in the real world.
Now is the second lockdown, the first lockdown I mostly spent simulating a simple dynamic of an epidemic. My hopes were high, but in the best case, it will be just a mediocre paper with a lot of simplifications. Anyway, my opinions are influenced by this.
I believe the chance of being hospitalized for me is negligible. The probability of dying is virtually nonexistent. What I mean by that? It is a lower order of magnitude than being hit by a car.
Following might be controversial, but I believe that people can decide for themselves. Meaning that everyone who wants can get relevant information and act on it. (Not getting any information and then shout about pointlessness of restrictions or licking everything in metro is included in that) I don't think there is a serious force that is trying to mislead others.
I don't know any better than other people. If they decide to be oblivious on purpose, it's on them.
I think that the probability that the average person gets the virus is high. And it will stay with us for a long time.
The weakest point of my argument are long-term complications. We don't know everything about the virus. For now, I do not expect and long-term complications, but this can change, then my approach needs to change too.
For how much are you responsible?
Here I argue that you are responsible only for your direct contacts (if you do everything your state tells you to). If you transmit the virus to someone who dies, then it's your fault. If you infect someone who passes it to someone else who dies, then it's not your fault. Also, if the hospitals are not overflowing, you should not be concerned with the overall shape of the pandemic.
Your fault
First, the negative part, you infected someone who can have complications. If you tell everything in advance, It's not your fault (Ok, yesterday, I couldn't help it, I just needed to kiss that coughing girl). They can decide if you are too risky to meet or if they want to live but with a moderate risk. In reality, it's not so easy to describe your exact risk. People usually underestimate it. So it is reasonable to minimize the contacts and to be super careful before meetings. If you don't do this, it's your fault.
Not your fault
Now, the positive part. You infected someone (middleman) who infected someone else. If you acted as your government tells you, then it's not your fault. Why? First of all, the middleman should have been more responsible and should not meet you if he meets someone risky.
There is a second argument. My belief is that lot of people will get the virus (for an average man, it's over 50%). Our middleman from the example got it (it was from you, but tough luck), it means he behaves irresponsibly. Even if you would protect everyone by shutting yourself home, he would probably get it anyway and would cause a similar problem.
So with the middleman, we should not judge the probability that we infect the middleman, and he infects someone in danger. The correct way is to compute the excess of suffering we cause: the chance that we infect the middleman, he infects someone else, and the transmission would not happen otherwise during the whole pandemic. Now, you see that your impact is mostly minimal. (But don't worry, if you still want to change the world, there are a lot of animals we haven't eaten or ****, and the Wuhan market is open.)
There are some exceptions, if someone says: "I'm visiting my grandparents and will not visit them for a half a year afterward." Now, you should treat him as a risk group.
If we are responsible, it will end faster!
Grow up, grow up! It will never happen.
The fact that you are thinking about that means that you are more responsible than 80% of the population is a wild guess.
From the simulations I was running, only very radical measures stop the spread. There are enough infected people that it will take very long to get rid of the virus. And afterward, we will be susceptible to infection taken from somewhere else.
Our chance is a vaccine. It is a reasonable hope.
Cost you expect other people to bear
There can be a lot of corner cases. Try to be on the safe side and be a bit more cautious.
And mainly, don't try to shame people into following rules (stricter than enforced). The best thing to do is to assume that they do not expose you to the risk that they are not willing to be exposed to (golden rule of interpersonal epidemiology). If you are forcing someone to behave differently, you are offsetting your reckless behavior by their compliance. Instead of you not meeting other people, they will not. It's quite selfish.
If you see such a behavior, send them this page. (Not because it might change their mind, not because it's well-written. But because I need some people to read my blog, especially my REU adventures might be a fun thing to read.)
If you don't agree with anything, have some opinions, or want to discuss, write me (my email follows the ist rules, and I'm Jakub.Svoboda).
What after covid?
Hopefully, I described a bit what you are responsible for: just your neighborhood. But what will happen after we shake off the pandemic?
There are a lot of unprecedented events. The government dictates our lives. We don't send our kids to school. We are meeting a lot less people.
Will we be better or worse off after it?
I think it might be worse, but I'm not convinced. I'm thinking about it, and soon, I'll write something.
Appendix: Special cases
If there is a chance of overflowing hospitals, then you should be more careful. The argument with a middleman still holds, but now, the middleman can infect someone who will not get adequate care. Then you are responsible.
If you send your children to school or kindergarten, you are super risky. It seems that children can be asymptomatic and still spread the virus. So you should consider your neighborhood (where you might catch the disease) as everyone with whom your child meets. But if you infect someone this way, it's not your fault. They send the kid to school.
Appendix: Paradoxes of covid
I have a pretty good mask. It filters everything, but is a bit annoying to wear. Someone wanted me to have it always on while wearing a light surgical one. I got one too. Maybe It's better. Maybe, I'm more dangerous overall..., who knows.
"What are you doing?"
"They send us that we shouldn't go to work, so I'm looking for a library to work in."
"..."