There follows a guest post by Dr. David Seedhouse, Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University, who says the underlying problem with the Government’s response to COVID-19 was that ethics was thrown out the window without a second thought, so no one reflected on whether it was justified so egregiously to trample on people’s fundamental rights.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for ethics. It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required – and must always require – the most comprehensive ethical justification.
During the largely self-made crisis, the Government passed sweeping mandates with barely any serious reflection on the impacts on millions of people’s lives, and stubbornly refused to listen to a multitude of far more thoughtful, well-informed alternatives.
Inexcusably, it appears that the main reason the Government and its advisors neglected to consider ethics was brute ignorance – they didn’t think about ethics because they have no idea why it is important. To them ethics is at best a scarcely relevant adjunct to ‘following the science’.
Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.
There are several ways to include ethics in decision-making. Two of these are 1) to apply ethical standards and principles and 2) to deliberate holistically. Both can be undertaken simultaneously.
Ethical standards
A range of carefully considered ethical standards has been developed and fought for in the Western world over the past 70 years and more. Arguably the most fundamental of these is the principle of informed consent to interventions, established in both ethical theory and health care law. It is now regarded as essential that any health care professional – including public health professionals – must fully explain the range of possible interventions available and disclose the reasoning behind any recommendation they make. Anything less is either negligent or coercive.
Holistic deliberation
Beyond the application of fundamental principles, ethics may be seen as a thoughtful, wide-ranging decision-making approach which seeks to balance a variety of factors to reach reasonable conclusions. These conclusions will aways include both evidence and values. Taking one without the other is bound to lead to inadequate choices: the evidence cannot speak for itself and value judgements alone quickly become dogma.
The Government and its advisors failed woefully to take account of either understanding of ethics.
Any robust analysis of a personal or social problem requires the consideration of a range of ideas. However it seems that where public health is concerned, policies are routinely drawn up according to a single imperative – ‘we must reduce disease and therefore save lives’ – but of course this imperative itself requires ethical standards and ethical deliberation because, as we have tragically witnessed, trying to save lives in one way risks lives in other ways.
As soon as you start to think beyond the fear of infection to consider the bigger picture, there is a flood of specific ethical issues.
- Is it ethical to force businesses to close their doors?
- Is it ethical to cause so many people to lose their livelihoods?
- How is it acceptable to override basic human rights with so little public involvement?
- Is it ethical to close schools, particularly when the evidence that this will help control the spread of the virus is unclear? (In 2022 it is now clear that this made little or no difference to ‘stopping the spread’.)
- Do restrictions heighten social inequalities (it is easier to self-isolate in a comfortable home, it is easier to cope if you have a pleasant garden, it is easier to weather financial uncertainty if you have a secure career and savings)?
- Given that governments have borrowed many billions to weather the crisis, and this debt will have to be repaid, is it ethical to cause hardship and suffering to future generations in the interest of existing generations?
There are many other measurable harms that should have been considered. ‘Minimising death’ was only one of many possible rationales. Consequently, the Government’s stubborn failure to reflect in a professional, balanced way caused massive, avoidable damage.
Ethics is ultimately a matter of respecting thoughtful traditions grounded in compassion and human rights, and thinking as deeply as possible about the many effects your choices will have on other people. Ethics is the essence of civilised human co-existence. Over the past two years a handful of people, quite out of their depth, were able to dismiss ethics – along with previous well-documented Government pandemic planning – with what seemed like a mere wave of the hand.
We must ensure that this can never happen again.
Professor David Seedhouse is a member of HART. This article forms part of HART’s developing response to the consultation on the U.K. COVID-19 Public Inquiry.
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As a GP who refuses to give any of the so-called vaccines, I am appalled at the lack of ethics shown by the medical profession in general. They can’t claim ignorance as we are taught about medical ethics.
At a very minimum, lack of full and informed consent should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. Instead, the profession just rolled over and proceeded to jab anything that moves. Watching my colleagues laughing about how best to hold down children while sticking them with ineffective stuff was disgusting. My comments about consent were just ignored.
There are plenty of us here in Oz who feel very strongly, but if you say anything against the government narrative, you will be suspended, possibly struck off, and also face the prospect of “re-education”. Many doctors have been suspended. Unfortunately, all we can do is spread a little true information to our patients, and not give the jab. There are plenty of people out there who remain unjabbed, but they are trying to avoid mandates applied by their employers. Meanwhile, the government can maintain a position that the inoculations are purely voluntary.
Altogether very depressing. One ray of light is that 6… Read more »
“It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required ……”
I do not agree. The decision makers, who were answering to others (clue: W_ _ / Klaus ____), knew exactly what they were doing. It was and is planned and deliberate.
And as the churches swallowed all the restrictions hook, line and sinker, it doesn’t say much for their leaders’ ethical standards. When Wellyboots said getting the vax is the moral thing to do, to ‘love your neighbour’, he cheery picked, and left out the ‘as yourself’. I do not love myself, or my neighbour, by throwing out all ethical, moral, and Christian standards, as demanded by a government in a blind panic, reacting like a rabbit frozen in headlights.
In Britain there is no agreed basis for ethics.
”….no one reflected on whether it was justified…”
Once again we have someone trying to excuse these wicked people as ”incompetent” or ”unthinking” in what they did. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing, having ”reflected” on it for what seems to be a long time before it happened.
Dr Ugur Sahin, the COVID-19 vaccine he designed for Pfizer was designed in just few hours in a single day (on a computer) on January 25, 2020. No other vaccine in history has been created and manufactured so quickly. Previously, the fastest vaccine ever developed took more than four years. co-founder of BioNTech Not only that, Pfizer Chairman (((Albert Bourla))) hasn’t gotten around to having his shot, or Dr Ugur Sahin, last I knew. And it went from laboratory straight into human arms without any animal testing first – mRNA never used in humans ever before – doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Obviously, no virus was present, when this vaccine was made on a computer and a Covid infection, was not the basis of the vaccine creation, either.
Documents by Pfizer Show BioNTech Paid FDA $2,875,842.00 “Drug User Fee” for COVID-19 Vaccine Approval
Vaccine Impact
“Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 91% for the Gamaleya, 67% for… Read more »
I would say all lockdowns are unethical and there is no moral ground for them they are cruel to separate a human race from friends family , is just cruel beyond belief,
covid was clear as day by May 2020 not dangerous to healthy slim people and that lockdown does nothing to help with slowing down the spread, and cast mass damage mentally physiologically, I believe it will take at least 30 Years for children abs young people damaged by lockdown,
I hope one day soon the lockdown collaborators the ones who clap for the NHS, and said what lovely weather is while sunbathing in their gardens these mid class people, I hope they just have a hard time in the next few months , they have caused our misery too , by complying, with this I hope they say I wish I never went a long with this scam.
I agree completely – thank you Dr Seedhouse.
what absolutely baffles me is where were all the infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists when the ‘pandemic’ broke out? It seems to me that these disciplines were completely rewritten at the start with absolutely no notice being taken of that which was known prior. It is certainly one way of removing a discipline from its root – as has happened to so many in this postmodern age, where robotic repetition of the narrative has replaced scientific enquiry.
Boris Johnson has called on P&O Ferries chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite to resign. Although we should welcome this action by Johnson, we should also realise that like almost all of his public actions it has been carefully spun in order to direct our attention away from certain areas as well as to direct it towards others.
I would make the following observations:
1. Johnson doesn’t call on the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure that Hebblethwaite is prosecuted for his brazenly admitted crime. (A twit might wish to object that those two officers are “independent” of the government. Well actually they are not. Moreoever, even in accepted legal terms, decisions on whether or not to prosecute are made “in accordance with public policy”, and it is for the government, led by Boris Johnson, to decide what public policy is. That is not rocket science.) 2. Johnson doesn’t dare call on Hebblethwaite’s employers, which is to say the royalist rulers of the federal state of the United Arab Emirates, to sack Hebblethwaite. (You can be sure that the Emirates desk at the Foreign Office, probably having heard from the British royal family, has “advised” the prime minister that… Read more »
The trolls are all missing – wonderful! Have they been given the day off after all their ‘hard work’ this week?
https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-behavioural?s=r
You can’t expect ethical policies from politicians and people who use and agree with using nudging. Least of all if and from a medical, ethicist and psychogical profession who fully agree with it too.
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/an-unethical-proposal-from-an-ethicist?s=r
Here is what you can expect from our current lot of so called ethicists even if you had and listened to them, see also my previous comment.
THIS is their ethics and mindset now. In Germany, they already had some clinics announce that they would refrain from treating Russians.
You can stick your ethics up your brown hole, the Tories had looting to do.
Emergency legislation meant contracts could be punted out with zero scrutiny so the Tories chums got oodles of gravy, even more than normal, and in return the Tories get their cut when the time is right.
So I don’t know where you got this idea about ethics, ethics doesn’t slip cash into the Tories pocket so ethics doesn’t exist.
True, but left wing governments worldwide (eg, Australia, NZ, Canada and USA) did exactly the same thing!
Ethics never came into it.
All the government (or “Regional Committee” as they should be known) was required to do was implement the instructions of the WEF.
I hear clearly what the author/s are saying on this. It looks evil. Much like taxation.(stealing private property while failing to collect unearned incomes)
But we are dealing with facts. And emotion (or more accurately the psyche) is what leads the whole thing.
So to keep banging on with fact bombs is a neurosis – we must realise by now that facts are not important to this kind of power.
Is it time to devote our energy to looking into the psychic pandemic, which intensifies with each new strain (bremoan, trump delusion syndrome, cv19, and now the Ukraine)?
From the very beginning of this shameful period of human history I knew that what was proposed was completely and utterly wrong. I opposed the nonsense as much as I could but I was TOTALLY alone. Toby himself can remember the vilification that he received for expressing a view contrary to the prevailing ‘narrative’ and all of us here can bear witness to that.
Joining this site and the other place on reddit has been a real lifeline, and I expect that Toby has found it to be a real help to himself.
But although ALL of the institutions of this country have been found to be wanting, my greatest and fiercest criticism is for the Church. At a time when spiritual assistance was most needed the church in the shape of the church leaders like Welby and Cottrell provided NO criticism of these unnecessary, cruel and satanic regulations. Not one solitary thing. Ordinary church members were obliged by diocesan jobsworths (I am speaking here of the CofE, but this criticism applies to ALL denominations) to complete reams and reams of ‘Risk Assessments’ and engage in other ridiculous and harmful practices, like wearing those disgusting face-nappies and observing anti-social distancing.… Read more »
I agree with the thrust of what you are saying. However being a non believer, at least in the spiritual aspects of organised religion, my unreserved and lifelong (what remains of it) contempt, as a taxpayer, is reserved (if you exclude central and local government and the police) for the NHS. When the country most needed them they were absent without leave. Barricaded behind locked doors, wearing PPE and drawing full pay.
Thank you. I agree with what you say. When composing posts like this there is SO MUCH about which to complain that necessarily many things are omitted.
Well said, brother.
I would add that these regulations have been entirely unlawful according to God’s law. Government stepped outside of its sphere of authority and into the family and church spheres of authority (Rom. 13; 1 Pet. 2; Eph. 5:22-6:4; Heb. 10).
And on church leaders, whose failings you note well, they will have to stand before the thrice holy God and answer for their actions. They neglelected their flocks and utterly surrendered to unlawful Government decrees. They abandoned God’s people when they are primarily called to care for souls, not ‘bodies subject to potential respiratory illness’ (Heb. 13:17; 1 Cor. 12:12-27). One takes no pleasure in saying one would not want to be in their position. Indeed, one trembles at the thought.
Thank you, Moderate Radical, a curious name if I may be permitted to observe.
Anyway, when penning or rather typing these fulminations against church leaders I sometime wonder if I have been extreme. Then I receive posts like your and realise that (a) I am not alone and (b) I think I have hit the target, or somewhere near.
I think the only answer is repentance; I must start with myself but it seems that the only way forward is to initiate nationwide repentance.
How that is to be achieved I do not know. We have a corrupt and tyrannical government whose only interest is to look after itself, we have a corrupt church (all denominations are the same) which is not interested in saving souls or preaching the good news, we have a corrupt and adulterous people addicted to divorce and other things, and we have a corrupt press which is not interested in uncovering the truth.
In all of these there are individuals who have not bowed down to Baal, like the 7,000.
Κύριε, ἐλέησον.
Well put, my friend.
It won’t happen – just try a little search for ‘Welby ‘ and ‘WEF’
This illegitimate regime, whether with good intentions or not, committed what we might generously call The Carpet Blunder, where they ostensibly attempted to flatten a minor bubble in society, focusing all attention on this minor bubble (with no consideration/public discussion of the necessary and potential harms which would follow as a direct result of the intervention), while there necessarily emerged a whole raft of major bubbles behind them, immediate, short-term and long-term problems that will affect our society and its people for generations to come.
At worst this was malevolent intent, at best it was unbelievably naive, stupid and callous. Either way, this government has forfeited legitimacy. Nothing it says or does now ought to be taken seriously or adhered to, unless, of course, it resigns en masse.
The Government ‘dare’ do anything because it is no longer answerable to the British people, only to the WEF, the WHO and GAVI and all ( yes all!) our MPs are craven jobsworths who rubber stamp the Johnson Tyranny.
Any tricky problems of ” narrative and presentation” can be fixed by another Mass Media Black Propaganda offensive. ( Recent: Ofcom censors warn MSM on contradicting the official on-going ( vax the babies next!) vaccine narrative!)
We are well and truly stuffed and the piece by piece demolition of all our freedoms has only just begun!
Not to worry. The sleepy sheep are still comparing their Covid notes and graphs, grazing on the grassy Covid Knoll looking forward to their £200 ‘loan’ to pay a £3,000 gas bill and blaming Russia ( as directed by the BBC).
This somehow reminds me of a recent speech by the wicked Mr Assad of Syria, who says that the actions of the West (us, that is) can be explained by the lack of any principles except what ever it takes for the elite to get money and power.
If we feel rightly aggrieved at the casual disregard of our civil liberties, think what Syrians must feel to see us arming and supplying Al Qaeda to overthrow the regime, having overthrown Saddam Hussein’s regimeand destroyed Iraq because we lied that they supported Al Qaeda.
Somehow I don’t think they can be shamed into consigning Covid totalitarianism to history.
Assad looks less “wicked” by the hour!
Just imagine if he has been telling the truth about everything all along? So many dots would instantly form a line!
I will never, ever forget. I will never, ever forgive. Those in government know who they are.
If tyrannosaur vision is based on movement, beancounter vision is based on spreadsheets.
If you can’t put a number on it, they can’t perceive or even conceive of it.
David Icke sums this all up pretty well in his latest video. I hesitate to share it as I find him a bit extreme these days, but on this subject I’m afraid he is absolutely spot on.
I’m not a fan, but the 2006 documentary “David Icke: Was He Right” had an eye opening moment where they were filming in public in London and he was bemoaning in general that we were drifting into a police state where things were forbidden unless permitted.
With perfect timing, a couple of Met robots pounced, demanding to know what he was filming, and whether he had a loicence for it.
The warning signs were well in place by then.
I think he lost most people when he moved onto shape-shifting reptiles.
Maybe he’s extreme only in his prescience?
The above article reads out as a naive normie who has been ‘tango’d’ by an invisible orange Pfeffel.
I would invite the author to cast his mind back to the very start of “The Pandemic” and recall the CCTV videos of Chinese people pretending to drop down dead and carted off by government officials dressed in hazard suits.
We were told by the UK media to believe in these ridiculous videos and that “The Pandemic” was coming our way. Did the author of the above article question for himself if we were being fed propaganda with [bad] actors?
If we can agree the videos were staged, then logically we must question if there really was a pandemic. The onus falls on those who took away our liberties to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there really was a pandemic. Instead, they meddled with data and staged their own propaganda videos using stock footage of busy hospitals.
The criminally ignored admission by Hancock and his mate that they committed mass murder of hospital “bedblockers” after transferring them to care homes and administering life-ending drugs explains the excess deaths which were labelled ‘covid deaths’. These became known as “The First Wave”.
The… Read more »
Nor will they question what the MSM shows them “from” east of Poland and west of Russia…
Nailed it.
Don’t recall you alongside the likes of Yeadon, Heneghan or even the GBD people, Prof Seedhouse in early 2020 when this sort of thing might have been useful.
Now its ‘safer’ to put your head above the parapet, you and many others are giving us the benefit of your wisdom. Well we were saying these things loudly in march 2020, much good it did.
The damage which started in earnest in March 2020 is going to be a h**l of a job to undo. The mask-fanatics and testaholics will be with us for years. They need their noses rubbed in something really nasty until they see sense.
“Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.”
Most likely not.
Germany has an ethics council, Ethikrat, consisting of many specialists in ethics from the fields of theology, medicine, law etc., advising the government, which became highly prominent and influential during the ‘pandemic’, in particular its two Chairwomen, Profs Woopen and Buyx.
It basically just whitewashed everything the government wanted to do in advance, from lockdowns to masking children to the discrimination of the unvaxxed to the vaccine mandate. Everything.
I now call them a council for justifying any discrimination, torture and genocide etc..
Which is also totally unaware of the trolley problem.
Professor Seedhouse’s stuff is great. As a nurse who is interested in ethics, his stuff is required reading. HART are great too.
But there are two very major flaws with his analysis; namely the assumption of good faith and the assumption that their aim was actually in preventing death at all.
Their actions can be much more adequately explained by assuming these were very much not their aims at all.
Nailed it.
Thanks Libertarianist. I cetainly do doubt their good faith but I have assumed it since it is hard to disprove. What is very clear however is that they ignored ethics entirely – was this just ignorance (they show little sgn of general education) or was it deliberate or did they just not care?
I suspect the latter.
Ethics? Even “the science”, correctly applied, wouldn’t have led to lockdowns (or leaky vaccines using experimental technology for that matter).
Panic, fear and mob ignorance overtook everything. The only guard against that happening again would seem to be the benefit of collective experience and wisdom. No ethical guide, law or scientific finding will be enough.
Nope. You are letting them off via the cock-up theory. Everything that happened was pre-planned. Ethics weren’t just disregarded they were deliberately ditched.
Everything the UK can be explained by the fear factor. Policy actually looked sensible until the media decided “herd immunity” was an evil policy (despite actually being the only solution) and the Cabinet panicked there would be people dying in hospital corridors.
Fauci and the American drug industry can’t be let off so lightly. Over here, we had no-one strong and smart enough to stand up to their nonsense.
let me fix the first sentence for you:
“One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for
ethicsthe law.Politics these days seems to be about simplifying the message to such an extent that the nuance of life becomes a white-hat black-hat sort of problem.
They did this very successfully with Covid.
Really we should all say ‘it is complicated’ whenever we see a complex problem, and call out anyone that says that ‘it is simple’ — it never is simple.
But people seem to like simple messages where they don’t have to think but just choose which side to be on — I suppose this isn’t too bad, but it fails when you’ve got government propaganda telling them that they’ll literally kill grannies if they happen to choose the other side.
Too true.
Everything in life is simple – until you actually study it.
This, unfortunately, is the default position for most people on the planet, regardless of intellect or education (and probably always has been). Most people do not want to think, they are intellectually lazy and want things spelled out for them in exactly that manner ‘right – wrong’, ‘black – white’.
Poor victim Ukraine, mean bully Russia. Climate change causing upheaval, blame people (because that can be easily dealt with), not nature (requires admission that some things are beyond control and any solutions would be very difficult). Virus kills people, hide under bed and don’t breath. Accept that viruses kill people and there are some things that we can’t change? Perish the thought.
Bring some nuance to a story (regardless of topic) and people will look at you like you’re a lunatic.
We have a tendency to label things rather than scrutinising. As soon as there is a label, analysis stops and dogma is established.
“Simplifying the message” is tantamount to using larger labels. These are more quickly applied and easier for the mentally lazy to run off with a fixed view that diverges from reality in proportion to label size.
There is some feeling of security in fixed views. One can relax without the hassle of having to think too much. People do not seem to be able to relax with “I don’t know”, which would be a more honest approach to the situation.