The (absent) ethics of lockdown

Is it ethical to lock us down again? This is not a facetious question. Over the past eight months, we have heard a great deal about the policies used to manage the virus, but very little about the ethics. This is a mistake. We should be asking how we can critically and reasonably strike a balance between conflicting values and interests. Yet even now, with so much at stake, this basic question on the ethics of our policies is not being properly asked.

When it comes to public health, the ethical balance is simply expressed: how do you achieve a certain public health goal with the fewest restrictions on individual rights? If the goal is to reduce obesity, for example, then is it justifiable to tax sugar — and if so, to what extent? There are issues to weigh up carefully on both sides — it is about finding the right balance. This is more acute in pandemic handling because it is not simply the case of lives vs liberty. Lockdown kills, too, so the right balance is even harder to strike.

We have heard repeatedly from the government that ‘lockdown is a measure of last resort’. If that is the case, why are we locking down now? For make no mistake, there are alternatives that better strike a balance between individual rights and collective interest. They have been ruled out, however, without adequate, rational ethical scrutiny.

One of the most obvious alternative policies would be to shield the vulnerable members of our society. We know that the virus is far more likely to hospitalise the elderly and those with certain pre-existing health conditions. Shielding is a form of selective lockdown that involves minimising the interactions these people have with other members of society in order to contain infections among them.