Amidst all the hoopla of COVID-19 are lurking some moral arguments. "Morality" in this case refers to the question of what one should or should not be allowed to do that affects another person. A more precise word is "justice."
1. Rules of Justice Abrogated in Existential Crisis
First of all, it has to be admitted that rules of justice are laid aside in an existential crisis. This has to do with the genetically-inherited will to survive which predates civilization. An existential crisis could be a military invasion, a global environmental catastrophe, or an epidemic such as the Black Death whose transmission mechanism is not understood (in the 14th century). The point about an existential crisis is that not enough is known to enable logical responses to be formulated, and so any course of action may be tried, including violating individual rights as "collateral damage." However, COVID-19 is not such a crisis. Enough is understood about the virus such that it does not constitute an existential threat and rules of justice don't need to be abrogated, even on a temporary basis.
2. Does the State Have the Right to Determine What Everyone's Assumption of Risk Should Be?
Many activities that human beings engage in are risky. Activities such as driving a car, engaging in certain activities or occupations, traveling by air, etc., are avoidable risks that most (but not all) people are willing to assume according to their own personal risk-reward assessments.
The argument goes, however, that allowing people to choose their own risk levels during an epidemic forces everyone to assume the same (minimal) level of caution.
While this might be of concern in epidemics that cause an existential crisis, it's not true for COVID-19. Data on the COVID-19 virus suggest that 1) most infected people are asymptomatic or recover, and 2) most at-risk people can be identified in advance. Therefore, it's possible for individuals to assess their own personal level of risk without forcing other people to assume a potentially deadly level of risk.
3. Should a Person Be Held Responsible for Transmitting a Disease to Another Person?
Can a person ever be held responsible for transmitting a disease to another person? Legal tradition holds that individuals are not responsible for Acts of Nature as such phenomena are held to be out of our control.
On the other hand, if an individual A were to knowingly, either out of malice or negligence, transmit a disease to an individual B, there should be a prima facie case against A. B would however, have to prove that 1) he or she had suffered objective harm (tort), and 2) that A was responsible.
4. Should the State Proactively Prevent Possible Tortious Transmissions of Disease?
If there is a chance that an individual could harm another, should the State act preemptively to prevent the possibility? Many would say "yes." However, if this principle were followed consistently, engaging in all potentially harmful activities would have to be banned. Suffice it to say that proponents of such measures never advocate that they be applied consistently, only on an arbitrary, case-by-case basis. This obviously collides with standards for just social rules (universalizability).
Another problem with this attitude is that it's application would violate one of the basic principles of traditional Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence: that an individual is innocent until proven guilty.
5. Property and Choice of Risk Levels
Like all questions pertaining to justice, choosing risk-levels can most logically be based on the concept of property. Each property owner can create a risk-level policy for his or her own property. Individuals can decide which properties they want to enter (or not) based on the various risk-level policies.
The question becomes, of course, muddied for "public" property. Although it's based on the injustice of forcibly-appropriated resources, bureaucrats and politicians as "property managers" can and do assume the risk-level policy creation function, since, to some extent, they always do exercise some ownership rights over public property.
