Virus as Vaccine / Involuntary Vaccine

What if we had released a mild but highly infectious version of Covid-19 into the wild in Sept 2020 rather than the vaccine? 

This is not SciFi, it is entirely possible.

Under Western ethical standards of "Do No Harm" this is totally unethical. Under Chinese standards of "Greatest Common Good" or "Greatest Communist Good" this could an arguably should have been done. 

Think through the implications. If we had engineered something like Omicron but milder (let's call it Omega) and released it into the wild in Sept 2020 - what would have happened? A huge number of people would have had a cold, and lived. A small number of people would likely still have died (making it impossible to do this under "Do No Harm") but compared to the number of people who instead died from Covid 'naturally' the outcome could have been far better - potentially millions of people and trillions of dollars better. 

Who gets to make that decision? Certainly no one in the Western world. I am surprised China did not try the approach however. 

Effectively, it creates an involuntary vaccine - one with no logistics challenges, expense, distribution, issues of access, issues of willingness to take the vaccine. It would have been highly effective. Paired with the actual vaccine itself, it could have stopped Covid 2 years before it will naturally fade (around the end of 2022 hopefully). 

Could we have done it? Yes. Should we have done it? Greatest Common Good has all kinds of problems attached to it - hence our "Do No Harm" standard. There are logical boundaries though, what if Covid killed 10% of infected people? 10% of children? When do you deploy an involuntary vaccine?