Comment by stared

I call it Pontius Pilate's Ethics.

It is (a very rational) approach for administrative workers, who get little credit for getting things better, but are at risk when they can be taken accountable for something terrible.

That way, for example, in Germany, there was a halt on the Astra-Zeneca vaccine after a few cases of thrombosis per million. For comparison, it is one in six for COVID. The halt, most likely, caused many deaths. Yet, these deaths "have happened". If there were a death because an administrative organ didn't take action - the organ would be considered responsible.

For the matter, Pontius Pilate was an administrative worker. And his incentives were aligned accordingly.

In the language of the Trolley Problem, it is doing nothing (no matter how many are there on the tracks) or (even better) finding a way to pass the lever to someone else.