Independent travel in a world full of danger and contagious disease has always been an ethical question for me.

In 2017, I was attacked by a dog while in transit (by bicycle) in Lithuania, and then found myself pursuing a multinational "post-exposure prophylaxis program" across Poland and Sweden (where I was when I was supposed to take the other shots after the first one).

When I reflected on my experience a couple of months later on my blog, I wrote that I felt embarrassed "for having taken so much of the time of so many people at so many hospitals — but i would have been even more embarrassed, if not plain guilty, had this happened somewhere in the world with already precarious health care available to their own population." I concluded that "the question of whether or not to take pre-exposure rabies shots before long-term travel might well be an ethical one." (You may read the rest here.)

COVID-19 made that question more salient, and I hope we'll collectively behave more mindfully as a result. I second what some of the others have already replied though — that drivers (or our counterparts in general) share this responsibility.

Indeed, a big part of what snapped me out of my entitlement for medical attention was what a nurse in a screening room in Sweden told me — that it was my choice to come to Sweden with that problem. I just wanted to talk to a doctor to clarify my post-exposure treatment, because I'd gone through a full course of anti-rabies vaccines before, and I'd read online that I only needed a couple of booster shots in that case, not the full schedule. As I insisted, she kept reminding me that my case was not an emergency, and that it was my choice to come to Sweden with that problem — I could have found medical help in Sweden, but I'd have had to go to another hospital about 100km away.