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What Happened to Ethics During the Pandemic?

by Dr David Seedhouse
25 June 2023 9:00 AM

The aims of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry are far-reaching. They include:

  1. preparedness and resilience; 
  2. how decisions were made, communicated, recorded, and implemented; 
  3. decision-making between the Governments of the U.K.

However, the Inquiry does not specifically intend to address two fundamental questions: Why was the Government’s action plan and the detailed planning document on which it was based disregarded? And why were ethical considerations not factored in when decisions of fundamental social importance were being made?

The policy documents are clear enough. For example:

There is similarity between COVID-19 and influenza (both are respiratory infections), but also some important differences. Consequently, contingency plans developed for pandemic influenza, and lessons learned from previous outbreaks, provide a useful starting point for the development of an effective response plan to COVID-19.

The U.K. Influenza Preparedness Strategy 2011 includes 14 references to ethics, yet ethics was never mentioned in any Government briefing by its expert advisers.

Section 3.3 of the Preparedness Strategy states that pandemic preparedness and response will “continue to be based on both evidence and ethical principles”. Section 3.19 says:

People are more likely to understand and accept the need for, and the consequences of, difficult decisions if these have been made in an open, transparent and inclusive way. National and local preparations for an influenza pandemic should therefore be based on widely held ethical values, and the choices that may become necessary should be discussed openly as plans are developed, so that they reflect what most people will accept as proportionate and fair.

This recommendation was itself based on a Department of Health ‘ethical framework’ drawn up in 2007. One section of this document says:

Those making decisions will:

  • involve people to the greatest extent possible in aspects of planning that affect them
  • take into account all relevant views expressed
  • try to ensure that particular groups are not excluded from becoming involved. Some people may find it harder to access communications or services than others, and decision-makers need to think about how to ensure that they can express their views and have a fair opportunity to get their needs for treatment or care met
  • take into account any disproportionate impact of the decision on particular groups of people.

Section 4.3 is ethically explicit:

During a pandemic, the Government will need to make final decisions and issue advice on the application of specific measures in the light of emerging scientific evidence and data. In doing so, the ethical framework and in particular the principles of precaution (which assists in ensuring that harm is minimised), proportionality and flexibility will apply throughout. No additional restrictions, such as restrictions to public events will be placed on the public unless it is absolutely necessary to protect the health of the public and then only for so long as it is appropriate.

Yet the measures taken during the pandemic – two national lockdowns, allowing spectator sport only behind closed doors if at all, confining students to Halls of Residence, closing leisure facilities for months, banning all but ‘essential travel’, severely restricting attendance at funerals, prohibiting visits to dying relatives in care homes, closing schools and mandating the use of ineffective masks – did not by any stretch reflect “widely held ethical values”, or support the “continuation of everyday activities”. Nor were the measures “proportionate”, “fair”, “inclusive”, “transparent” or egalitarian under any reasonable understanding of these terms. 

The reasons for such an extraordinary overreaction have been considered at length in this and similar publications. But perhaps at bottom it is disturbingly simple. Annexe B of the action plan offers a possible insight:

The U.K. health departments’ preparations and response are developed with expert advice, ensuring that staff, patients and the wider public can be confident that our plans are developed and implemented using the best available evidence. These groups include:

  • the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and co-chaired by the CMO for England – provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies, ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to decision makers to support U.K. cross-Government decisions in the U.K. Cabinet Office Briefing Room
  • the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) is an expert committee of DHSC and advises the CMOs and, through the CMOs, ministers, DHSC and other Government departments, and the devolved administrations. It provides scientific risk assessment and mitigation advice on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory virus threats and on options for their management.

The annexe continues in a similar vein, listing the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP), the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), FCO Travel Advice and tellingly concludes with: “The actions we are taking to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak are being informed by the advice of these committees.”

But not by anyone experienced in ethics, or indeed any non-quantitative form of decision-making. Perhaps the cause of the massively disproportionate response to a mostly harmless virus was simply that few if any of the key decision makers understood the nature and importance of ethics, human rights and the moral basis of liberal society.

If so, then it is of paramount importance that the Inquiry makes balanced recommendations in this regard and insists on a far wider focus in future.

Dr. David Seedhouse is Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University and the creator of Our Decision Too, a free website of participatory democracy which welcomes new members.

Tags: Covid InquiryCOVID-19DemocracyEthicsInfluenzaPandemicPandemic Preparedness

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17 Comments
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Hardliner
Hardliner
1 year ago

I’m not a fan of the modern Times, but they carried an excellent obituary of Alexander Waugh on Wednesday.
Perhaps their obit writers are the last good bit of the Times to be dying out…the rest of it seems to be a woke rag obsessed with losing the Brexit vote 8 years ago …

Last edited 1 year ago by Hardliner
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago

I always think when I see such a premature death is that another victim of the clot shot? Some of course will be clot shot related, others won’t.

Last edited 1 year ago by wokeman
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RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

Seems to be a bit of a pattern in that family – the men dying in their early 60s. The first two definitely didn’t die of the clot shot since it hadn’t been invented, although a genetic problem may well be the cause.

4
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago
Reply to  RTSC

Yes as you say genetics plus lifestyle choices.

3
0
MichaelM
MichaelM
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

There is nearly always plausible deniability in the case of the clot shot.

1
0
Freddy Boy
Freddy Boy
1 year ago
Reply to  RTSC

He had the evidence of his two predecessors demise as he reached his 60,s, so he would probably have been keeping an eye on his health . You would like to think that such an agile brain would have steered clear of Fauci,s Brew but you never know , given the Jab campaign’s intensity .

2
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Freddy Boy
Freddy Boy
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

Same here , I can’t help it .

2
0
Jonathan M
Jonathan M
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

According to the Telegraph’s obituary the cause of death was prostate cancer.

3
0
MichaelM
MichaelM
1 year ago

I came across Alexander Waugh only recently, when I listened to his discussion with James Delingpole on The Delingpod podcast dated 30 Sept 2023. The main topic was Shakespeare, and Waugh was extremely impressive and knowledgeable on the subject and made a very strong case (IMO) that Shakespeare’s works had in fact been written by Edward DeVere. Well worth listening to, if you are at all interested.

3
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stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  MichaelM

I agree it was excellent. Really interesting.

1
0
wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago
Reply to  MichaelM

Shoot me but the notion they werent penned by WS seems to wrest on the idea an oik couldn’t possibly pen those plays seems just intellectual snobbery. Without the video evidence I’m just ppl would claim the oik Ronnie O’Sullivan couldn’t possibly make 147 in 5m 20 and it was actually prince Harry in a wig. Genius never comes from the top but bubbles up from the middle or bottom.

3
0
Jaguar
Jaguar
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

There are various reasons for doubting the Stratford Shakespeare. He never taught his child ro read and write; he never left Britain; he never exchanged correspondence with other authors and poets. Alexander Waugh gives a brilliant descrption of the various clues pointing to DeVere

2
0
Corky Ringspot
Corky Ringspot
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

Not really a great comparison, surely: Sullivan, much as I enjoy watching him at work, knocks one ball against another – something he manages better than anyone else, for sure; the writer of those remarkable plays had to do a little more than that.The two activities are not seriously comparable; it’s much more difficult for an illiterate person to write ‘Hamlet’ than it is for an ‘ordinary person’ – a commoner – to pot snooker balls.

0
0
harrydaly
harrydaly
1 year ago
Reply to  MichaelM

Is being interested in ‘Who wrote Shakespeare?’ any sign of being interested in Shakespeare?

0
0
allanplaskett
allanplaskett
1 year ago

‘His YouTube presentations are masterful works of imaginative reconstruction: indicating just how we dissociated moderns can attempt to think our way back into the undissociated or associated minds of the past, such as, exemplarily, Shakespeare’s.’

Um, is it me, or is that a bit over-written?

Excessive alcohol intake was a factor in the early demise of the senior Waughs.

The young Auberon was caned savagely by his snarling, reeling and burping father. But it was sitting at table rather than bending over a chair that he received the most traumatic experience of his childhood. In 1945 no bananas had appeared in England’s shops for 6 years. All children had learned of their mythical deliciousness. The Atlee government decreed that every English child would have the treat of a single banana.

Auberon’s permanently tipsy father brought the multiple treats home and unpeeled them before the assembled siblings. Sedately he poured cream and sprinkled sugar and proceeded to devour the plateful.

The children cried for the lost soul of their dreadful father, and Auberon could never forgive him. He had done wrong.

Later Auberon wrote of his euphoric relief when his father died.

Last edited 1 year ago by allanplaskett
3
0
harrydaly
harrydaly
1 year ago
Reply to  allanplaskett

It is true that Dr Alexander’s remarks about ‘dissociation’ require some acquaintance with T. S. Eliot’s belief that something, which he called ‘dissociation of sensibility’ and connected with the rise of science, went wrong with English culture in the seventeenth century but, these days, with Google, the acquaintance is not hard to make. It might even be found worth making.

0
0
allanplaskett
allanplaskett
1 year ago
Reply to  harrydaly

We ‘can attempt to think our way back into the undissociated or associated minds of the past’, eh? It’s the ‘or associated’ that gets me.

In the 17th century, most of the population of England over the age of 20 had no teeth, and woke up wondering if they would get a square meal that day, or if their infant children might live to be aged 10. If science was rising and affecting their culture, they knew nothing of it.

0
0

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