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Justifications for Lockdown Have Implications That Most People Would Not Accept, Say Philosophers

by Noah Carl
1 September 2021 8:39 AM
Front Green in autumn., exterior

Front Green in autumn., exterior

Although nationwide lockdowns are unprecedented in modern history, there’s been remarkably little public debate about whether they are justified ethically. Vague appeals to ‘protecting the NHS’ will not do, especially since the U.K. Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 says that halting the spread of pandemic influenza virus would be “a waste of public health resources”.  

In a paper due to appear in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Samuel Director and Christopher Freiman examine the two main justifications that have been given for lockdown. And they find both of these justifications wanting. In particular, they argue that each one has implications that most people would not accept.

The first major justification for lockdowns is that we have to minimise lives lost (or perhaps life years lost). In other words: we should adopt whichever policy minimises the total number of deaths, and since lockdown is the policy that achieves that, we should implement lockdowns.

As an example of this justification, the authors quote the former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said, “We’re not going to put a dollar figure on human life. The first order of business is to save lives, period. Whatever it costs.”

Yet upon reflection, this justification makes very little sense. For example, it would imply that governments should drastically reduce speed limits to prevent all road deaths – at the cost of time, convenience and economic efficiency. (Or perhaps they’d have to ban cars altogether.)

As I’ve previously noted: “Society has functions other than simply extending people’s lives for as long as possible. If it did not, we’d spend a much higher fraction of GDP on healthcare, and we’d ban alcohol, smoking and extreme sports.”

The second major justification for lockdowns is that we must defer to experts. In other words: we should adopt whichever policy the experts advocate, and since the experts advocate lockdown, that is what we should do.

Aside from the fact that many experts were against lockdown – not to mention the difficulty of even defining ‘expertise’ in this area – insisting that we must defer to experts has implications that many people would reject.

For example, it would imply that we should adopt free trade, open immigration, legalisation of some drugs, and perhaps even markets in human organs – since these policies all receive support from academic economists. Note: I’m not saying these are all necessarily bad policies; but they can’t be justified purely on the basis of what ‘the experts’ believe. 

According to the authors, the only justification that actually makes sense is that lockdowns have large “net welfare benefits”, i.e., their benefits in terms of lives saved outweigh all the costs they impose on society. However, as a matter of empirical fact, the authors doubt that lockdowns do have large “net welfare benefits”.  

For example, they entertain economist Bryan Caplan’s argument that the reduction in quality of life alone may have offset any lives saved by lockdowns. (Though of course, there’s not much evidence that lockdowns have saved lives in most of the countries where they’ve been tried.)

Director and Freiman’s paper provides a good overview of the debate over the ethics of lockdown, and is worth reading in full.

Tags: EthicsExpertsLockdowns

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67 Comments
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Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

As I’ve said before, we’ve had wild fire in Sutherland. And wild fire in Australia was caused by poor land management. The fellow who broke environmental laws and created a firebreak round his home survived unscathed during one of them…

And didn’t the so-called United States have a great dust bowl in 1934?

(And hasn’t global forest cover been increasing, despite the scare stories from the Amazon?).

Last edited 3 years ago by Hugh
22
0
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

How convenient he fires in California and Australia in 2018/19 were for the Carbon Neutral narrative – arson as Global Warming terrorism anyone?

8
0
BJs Brain is Missing
BJs Brain is Missing
3 years ago

I don’t know about you but I am sick to death of being lied to, deceived, conned, vilified, threatened and coerced by an array of fraudsters, crooks and thieves, and which infest our scientific and political institutions. It does not matter if it is Covid, Climate Change/Global Warming, the same mind-set proliferates “we know best, if you don’t agree with us, you are a denier”.

I have had enough of them and I don’t see why I should continue to keep paying ever-increasing taxes to fund these dishonest charlatans and their useful idiot supporters.

88
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

I’d add pesticides. So there.

6
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

None of which have eliminated you.

5
-3
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill Gates

4
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

What does Bill Gates have to to with pesticides?

3
-3
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Two things Hugh doesn’t like, therefore they are the same thing.

2
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Same mentality as climate alarmists. Repeat it often enough and it must be true.

6
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

That’s right, Bill gates.

3
-1
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Is there anything Gates hasn’t got his fingers into?

2
0
Dave
Dave
3 years ago
Reply to  David Beaton

Melinda, at least not recently

9
0
Beowulf
Beowulf
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Frank Warren got shot in 1989 and he’s still alive and kicking, so I guess we can conclude that firearms are safe (if not effective).

1
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

Your options are:

1 – Stay angry but keep on drinking the KoolAid anyway
2 – Lose your job, your house, your family and go to prison.

Neither of the above will have the least effect on what is happening, of course.

3
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

“Commenting on the move, the climate writer Anthony Watts noted: “This wholesale erasure of important public data stinks, but in today’s narrative control culture that wants to rid us of anything that might be inconvenient or doesn’t fit the ‘woke’ narrative, it isn’t surprising.””

(As in “Watts up with that?).

They really are counting on people’s ignorance, aren’t they?

Last edited 3 years ago by Hugh
20
-1
Mr Taxpayer
Mr Taxpayer
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.

12
0
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
3 years ago

Highly recommend reading the comments section on the link to the guardian article provided within this piece. They are hilarious. Literally squabbling between themselves to show who is the most virtuous. It’s a perfect example of the mindset of these childish moronic Guardian readers. My favourite so far is the person who asks the rheoretical question “How many people can honestly say they have no plans to fly somewhere for a holiday?” and reading the idiotic tw*ts queue up to answer it.

These people are needy children who need constant reassurance. They are also the very same people that have established positions of authority, hence influence, in every single institution on the land. These are the people that are now running the show – children.

Last edited 3 years ago by Free Lemming
29
0
DS99
DS99
3 years ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

Where is that link, the only one I can find is to the Watt’s up with that blog in the last paragraph?

Last edited 3 years ago by DS99
0
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  DS99

7th paragraph. “later described” is the link.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/06/climate-scientists-are-desperate-were-crying-begging-and-getting-arrested

1
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

And WUWT is great – as was the late, great Christopher Booker, Bill Gates.

1
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
3 years ago

History doesn’t re-write itself, you know!

7
0
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

No …those in power who win the wars write it of course – “propaganda of the victors”.

2
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago

the Met Office claimed that the additional heat from the continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, “has been absorbed in the oceans”.

Presumably then, atmospheric heat has been absorbed by the oceans in the past, which has to be released at some point in time.

Now, perhaps?

Or do the oceans just continue to absorb heat until they are boiling?

Usual fabricated nonsense from the congenitally moronic alarm mongers.

Last edited 3 years ago by RedhotScot
19
-1
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Excellent point. It’s what we call ‘critical thinking’ and would spin Guardian readers into a frenzy of emotion-driven abuse.

7
-1
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

Even Argo Buoys are a complete fraud. They ‘Park’ at 1,000 feet before diving to 2,000 feet every 10(?) weeks before surfacing to transmit their data, then returning to their parked position.

Strangely, they haven’t detected any extra heat, which the alarmist nutters blamed on different buoy manufacturers and problems with calibration etc. which they ‘fixed’ by data manipulation.

What’s really interesting is, however, that while they scoff at Roy Spencer’s tropospheric temperature data, whimpering “because we don’t live in the sky” they embrace ocean temperatures forgetting the inconvenient fact that humanity does not live at 1,000 – 2,000 feet beneath the sea surface.

They are just too dumb to string together a coherent argument.

Last edited 3 years ago by RedhotScot
19
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill Gates

5
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

Is Bill of Gates in the room with us now, Hugh? Can we assimilate him?

2
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Blame it on those pesky pesticides.

1
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill Gates’s pesticides.

4
0
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Interesting. Don’t suppose you’ve got a link to any of this stuff? I’ve a brother who is convinced the world is going to end next week. He’s a Guardian reader. Also a Covid fanatic. Also a blo*dy idiot.

8
0
MrTea
MrTea
3 years ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

I wouldn’t bother, trying to get through to people like that really is pissing in the wind.

1
0
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
3 years ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

Best to break the family ties. He’s batting at 100% lunacy

1
0
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

Forget the ‘Guardian’ and the ‘lost’ bought -out and sold media – we need to establish new ones run by real journalists .

4
0
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
3 years ago
Reply to  David Beaton

100% agree. They’re just subtle shades of the same thing.

1
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill Gates

3
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

Is living rent free in your mind. Klaus approves.

3
-1
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

More likely both ” rent and accountability free” in your mind from your posts.

Haven’t you read RFK’s The “Real Anthony Fauci”yet ? Mr Gates and his ‘philanthropic’ activities attract some interesting attention.

1
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago

Anthony Watts is not a “Climate writer”.

He runs a science blog (as stated on his site), which is utterly dominated by “the most important issue of our time” – if the doom mongers are to be believed.

WUWT is perceived as a climate site because every day the MSM or some bonkers scientist produces nonsense with ‘Klimate Katasrophe’ in its title even if the subject is the sexual proclivities of the natterjack toad.

No one of course is in the least bit interested in natterjack toads of course, but including ‘Klimate Alarm’ in the research study’s title automatically, and instantly, attracts money for the research.

It then automatically, and instantly, sinks into obscurity as yet another well funded waste of time and effort.

Last edited 3 years ago by RedhotScot
6
-2
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill Gates

P.S. I love natterjack toads.

Last edited 3 years ago by Hugh
2
-3
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

Hughie wanna cracker.

2
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

You have the intellectual capacity of a natterjack toad.

1
-2
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill “no points” Gates.

2
-1
Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Silly me. There was I thinking that a chap who writes about climate and edits a science blog about climate, could be described as a climate writer.

What was I thinking.

3
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Morrison

Go and read his site. It is not “a science blog about climate”.

It is a science blog. Numerous subjects are discussed.

2
-1
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Morrison

About Watts Up With That? News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts

This science news site feature original content from myself as well as several contributors:

4
-1
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Also recommended is ‘Notalot ofpeopleknowthat’

2
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
3 years ago

The science is settled. The historical data is however subject to change.

12
0
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

Science is never settled or the earth would be circled by the sun and be flat.

2
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago

Hugh now demonstrating his Obsessive Compulsive disorder. 🤣

3
-1
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

#NotACult, I’m sure.

1
0
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

How Dare You!

0
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

Bill gates.

3
-1
MTF
MTF
3 years ago

Why assume a conspiracy when there is a perfectly reasonable publicly available explanation?

The US wildfire data before 1960 was useless. The sources are no longer known and the figures are absurd. 50m acres a year would be a disaster that dominated the headlines round the world. It is an area larger than the entire state of Nebraska. The real scandal is that is was ever included as national data. From 1960 there was some kind of order in the collecting of statistics but still using a variety of methods. It is only from 1983 that there was a consistent rigorous method covering the whole of the USA.

1
-3
RedhotScot
RedhotScot
3 years ago
Reply to  MTF

But Klimate data going back over 100 years, is reliable.

Riiiiiiight……..

8
-1
MTF
MTF
3 years ago
Reply to  RedhotScot

The age of the data is not the point. Hundreds of scientist pore over the climate data comparing different sources and analyses under intense scrutiny. The wildfire data prior to 1983 is essentially a collection of random reports of uncertain source and meaning which have been subject to almost no analysis or verification.

1
-4
Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison
3 years ago
Reply to  MTF

How difficult is it to count wildfires and make a reasonable estimate of the area burnt. Obviously beyond the capability of anyone born before 1960. The decline in wildfires predates 1983, and this would seem to indicate the historical data was picking up an accurate trend back to the1940s.

4
0
MTF
MTF
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Morrison

How difficult is it to count wildfires and make a reasonable estimate of the area burnt.

Read the link. You need to make sure you are only reporting them once. (Several different agencies are going to be aware of a wildfire). You have to decide what is a wildfire and what is intentional burning. You need a consistent method of estimating acreage and so on. Anyway the sheer absurdity of the data shows something was badly wrong. Obviously the USA was not having wildfires every year equivalent to the entire state of Nebraska.

The decline in wildfires predates 1983, and this would seem to indicate the historical data was picking up an accurate trend back to the1940s.

The fact that rubbish data shows a decline proves it is not rubbish? I don’t get the logic.

It seems quite likely that the reason the reported data showed a decline from 1930-1960 is that reporting gradually improved getting closer to the truth. But really the only statistically sound thing to do is to accept the data are invalid prior to 1983.

0
-2
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Morrison

Perhaps Forest Management to prevent fires was more efficient? Clearing tinder dry brushwood fro example?

2
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago
Reply to  MTF

Disorganised collection of data usually results in under reporting not over reporting.

1
0
MTF
MTF
3 years ago
Reply to  JXB

Depends on the data. If you try to count road accidents by just asking for reports from anyone or organisation involved in an accident then you are going to get gross overcounting..

0
-2
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago

Meanwhile Mark Stein blows wide open the ‘Vax Narrative’ on GBNews – catch it on You Tube before it is “cancelled”.

The Vax Billionaire would-be Global Emperors have no clothes and our MPs have no excuse for not acting on te revelations!

4
0
MrTea
MrTea
3 years ago
Reply to  David Beaton

As with all of their crimes the tactic will be to simply ignore the evidence and carry on regardless.

0
0
MrTea
MrTea
3 years ago

A new report from the same globalist scientists now proves that the unvaccinated suffered far more vaccine adverse events than the vaccinated.

2
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  MrTea

I rather enjoyed that one. Thank you.

0
0
MrTea
MrTea
3 years ago

We a are all looking forward to globohomo rewriting the history of the dust bowl era in 1930s America, I’m sure they will decide that the history was written by anti LGBT Nazi extremists and must be dismissed or some such bollocks.

[Will it be illegal to write ‘bollocks’ under the Tories new internet censorship Bill, I mean the word would probably upset the trans community and be considered hateful]

3
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago

‘… “has been absorbed in the oceans”.’

And miraculously managed to get from the atmosphere into the ocean depths without going through the upper 1km of water and warming it, where the temperature is monitored by the ARGO buoy network.

1
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
3 years ago

Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, 1870. On his 100th birthday, the date was renamed to “Earth Day”
https://superu.net/video/2d3493c7-fbe3-4ae8-bdb9-faa5270454cb/
Google Celebrates Lenin’s Birthday
Tony Heller

Stand for freedom with our Yellow Boards By The Road

Monday 25th April 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Yellow Boards 
Junction A332 Windsor Rd &
A330 Winkfield Road, 
ASCOT SL5 7UL

Wednesday 27th April 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards  
Junction B3408 London Road &
Wokingham Road 
Bracknell RG42 4FH

Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane 

Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens 
(Cockpit Path car park free on Sunday) 
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD   

Bracknell  
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA

Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

0
0
richardw53
richardw53
3 years ago

That HADCRUT graph is itself a piece of propaganda. The scale of the axes leads to the impression of a sudden recent warming; in reality observational satellite data (from UAH) should be plotted alongside as it excludes the effect of progressive urbanisation of weather stations – leading to exaggerated warming – and the temperatures are not adjusted to fit a particular narrative.

3
0
JohnnyDollar
JohnnyDollar
3 years ago

I’m glad that there is an awakening about the climate crisis hoax & publishing exposing articles

3
0
allanplaskett
allanplaskett
3 years ago
Reply to  JohnnyDollar

I hope you’re right about awakening, but I don’t detect it. Young people in particular now seem more climate-demented than at any time since the whole lying business started in 1988.

0
0
TheEngineer
TheEngineer
3 years ago

Global Warming – a load of absolute bollox which “they” are trying to support by any data manipulation necessary. It has been so from the start many years ago which led to Gore’s “Hockey Stick” fabrication.

2
0

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