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Cross Post: COVID vaccines: is it wrong to jump the queue?

Cross Post: COVID vaccines: is it wrong to jump the queue?

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Written by Dominic Wilkinson and Jonathan Pugh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Sabrina Bracher/Shutterstock

In the UK, an Oxford city councillor has been suspended after mentioning on social media that she had received a COVID vaccination from a private doctor. Meanwhile, media reports suggest that two Spanish princesses, who did not yet qualify for vaccination in Spain were vaccinated while visiting their father in the United Arab Emirates. They are among a number of ultra-wealthy people getting vaccinated in that country.

There have also been reports of people accessing vaccines early in the UK, despite not being in any of the groups prioritised for vaccination at the time.

So how concerned should we be about these cases?Read More »Cross Post: COVID vaccines: is it wrong to jump the queue?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Against Making a Difference

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This essay was the winning entry in the undergraduate category of the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Written by University of Oxford student Imogen Rivers 

I. The Complacency Argument

Some of the most serious wrongs are produced collectively. Can individuals bear moral responsibility for such outcomes? Suggestively, it’s been argued that “all who participate by their actions in processes that produce injustice [e.g. “sweatshop” labour] share responsibility for its remedy”;[1] “citizens… bear partial responsibility for the election outcome. Even if an individual’s vote is not decisive for a given candidate’s victory”;[2] “those who contribute to climate change… (by using… excessive… fossil fuels or by deforestation) should make amends”.[3]

However there’s a prevalent defence: it makes no (significant) difference if I do it. For example, “global warming will still occur even if I do not drive [my “gas-guzzler”] just for fun”;[4] “my polluting doesn’t actually harm anyone, since it doesn’t make a difference to anyone’s health”;[5] “why [should citizens] vote even if… each particular vote does not make a difference to the outcome”?;[6] “British officials… dismiss suggestions that our role on the ground in Saudi Arabia makes any difference [to targeting Yemeni civilians]”.[7] Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Against Making a Difference

Ethics Doesn’t Rule, OK?

By Charles Foster

Ethics and law are different. Or they should be.

Law has the power to coerce. That is a frightening power. There should be as little law as possible. But there should be more ethics than there is.

The boundary between the two domains is not absolute. Clinicians are probably more frightened of being struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) (after an adjudication on their ethics by the Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service) than they are about an order by a civil court that compels their insurers to pay damages for clinical negligence. The exercise of the GMC’s statutory powers can be draconian: the existence of those powers, and the associated sanctions, is certainly coercive.

But although the boundary is sometimes blurred, it is still real. It is the job of the law to keep it from becoming dangerously permeable. In a recent case the law was caught napping.Read More »Ethics Doesn’t Rule, OK?

Oxford Uehiro Centre Prize in Practical Ethics: ‘Rational Departure’: What Does Stoicism Reveal About Contemporary Attitudes Towards Suicide?

This essay received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category.

Written by Ed Lamb, St. Anne’s College

Abstract

The Stoics’ approach to suicide appears to differ remarkably from our own. By contrasting these two views, I will explore why a difference in circumstances, epistemic claims, and value ascribed to life itself provides justification for our believing that suicide is wrong where the Stoics did not. I take suicide as the act of taking one’s own life both with intent and by using only one’s own capacities. After considering how the Stoic account of suicide brings into relief the reasons which lie behind our own view, I will outline two valuable insights which arise from the comparison: first, that the conditions many hold as required for euthanasia to be permissible are actually very similar to those the Stoics’ required for suicide; second, that the Stoics’ open and rational confrontation of mortality reveals how our own reticence towards it is tragically inadequate.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Centre Prize in Practical Ethics: ‘Rational Departure’: What Does Stoicism Reveal About Contemporary Attitudes Towards Suicide?

Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021

Please join us in congratulating all of the finalists in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021, and in particular our winners, Imogen Rivers and Lily Moore-Eissenberg. As the Uk continues to be in lockdown due to the pandemic, the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was again held as a Zoom… Read More »Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021

Thoughts about Final Thoughts

By Neil Levy   I’ve written a brief article for Aeon Magazine, on whether the regrets of the dying give us insight into what really matters. Here’s the first paragraph. How do we find out what really matters in life? One way might be to ask those who are dying. They might occupy a perspective… Read More »Thoughts about Final Thoughts

Cross Post: Vaccine Passports: Four Ethical Objections, and Replies

Written By Tom Douglas

This is a (slightly modified) cross-post from The Brussels Times.

Should we all be required to produce a ‘vaccine passport’—proving that we have been vaccinated against Covid-19—before being allowed to enter a cafe, travel abroad, or work in a high-risk job?

Some governments are taking tentative steps in this direction. Belgium may require that its soldiers be vaccinated before travelling abroad on peace-keeping missions. In other countries, companies are introducing requirements of their own. Air New Zealand will begin trialling vaccine passports in April.

Many governments have been reluctant to go down this route. Yet the case for vaccine passports is clear: they could allow us to end some lockdown and distancing measures for vaccinated individuals sooner than it would be safe to end them for everyone. This would be a large benefit, since these measures involve severe interference with freedom of movement, and we know that they have serious economic and psychological costs.Read More »Cross Post: Vaccine Passports: Four Ethical Objections, and Replies

What Is The Justification For Keeping Lockdown In Place? Two Questions For The UK Government

Written by Alberto Giubilini and Julian Savulescu

Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford

Given the success of the vaccine roll out in the UK and the higher than expected drop in COVID-19 deaths, it is legitimate to ask whether lockdown should continue to be the key strategy to contain the pandemic or whether the ‘roadmap’ announced by the UK Government should be adjusted. Because lockdown is a very exceptional measure, the burden of proof is on the Government to provide answers as to why the easing of lockdown is proceeding at the current pace and not faster. The impact of lockdown is devastating for the economy, mental health, and employment rates and the cost and benefits are in many cases very unevenly distributed. For instance, the young are at highest risk of redundancy, but benefit less from lockdown because COVID-19 pose a very low risk on them. There is a serious concern around the rise of referrals for mental health assistance for  children and teenager over the past year. If the lockdown is justified at this stage, the Government has the burden of proof of providing a strong justification for this.

Such justification might need to be updated with respect to the one offered when the roadmap was announced on 22 February. That justification was centred on the target of “keeping infections rates under control” as determined by 4 tests: successful vaccine deployment program; vaccines being successful at reducing hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated; infection rates not putting unsustainable pressure on the NHS; and the risk assessment not being significantly altered by new variants.

Even assuming those criteria are fair, the justification now needs to take into account the “very very impressive” and “spectacular” results of vaccine rollout, to quote a lead researcher from Public Health Scotland.  As we shall see below, there are reasons to think that the vaccines are producing better results than those expected by the Government and assumed by the modelling used to inform the roadmap. Plausibly also because of the vaccine roll out, the drop in COVID-19 deaths in the UK is now three weeks ahead of the estimates of the modelling that the Government has used to design its roadmap: while the modelling estimated that COVID-19 deaths would fall below 200 a day after mid-March, we reached that point on 25 February. The model suggested we would have as few as 150 deaths per day by 21 March, but we are at that point now.

In light of these data, the Government would need to justify using indiscriminate lockdowns to achieve something – protection of the vulnerable and the NHS – which data suggest is now achievable without overburdening the whole society (as lockdown is doing) and possibly even without burdening those who need protection the most (as selective shielding would do). Vaccines are offering a level of protection to the vulnerable (roughly 80-90% drops in hospitalizations and deaths) that, if it was achieved through measures like selective shielding, would plausibly justify considering selective shielding successful. But vaccines do this without the downsides of indiscriminate lockdown or of selective lockdown.

Read More »What Is The Justification For Keeping Lockdown In Place? Two Questions For The UK Government