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Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong

In order to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19, governments have placed significant restrictions on liberty, including preventing all non-essential travel. These restrictions were justified on the basis the health system may be overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and in order to prevent deaths. Governme...

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Autores principales: Savulescu, Julian, Cameron, James
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7335694/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32561661
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106336
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author Savulescu, Julian
Cameron, James
author_facet Savulescu, Julian
Cameron, James
author_sort Savulescu, Julian
collection PubMed
description In order to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19, governments have placed significant restrictions on liberty, including preventing all non-essential travel. These restrictions were justified on the basis the health system may be overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and in order to prevent deaths. Governments are now considering how they may de-escalate these restrictions. This article argues that an appropriate approach may be to lift the general lockdown but implement selective isolation of the elderly. While this discriminates against the elderly, there is a morally relevant difference—the elderly are far more likely to require hospitalisation and die than the rest of the population. If the aim is to ensure the health system is not overwhelmed and to reduce the death rate, preventing the elderly from contracting the virus may be an effective means of achieving this. The alternative is to continue to keep everyone in lockdown. It is argued that this is levelling down equality and is unethical. It suggests that in order for the elderly to avoid contracting the virus, the whole population should have their liberty deprived, even though the same result could be achieved by only restricting the liberty of the elderly. Similar arguments may also be applied to all groups at increased risk of COVID-19, such as men and those with comorbidities, the obese and people from ethnic minorities or socially deprived groups. This utilitarian concern must be balanced against other considerations, such as equality and justice, and the benefits gained from discriminating in these ways must be proportionately greater than the negative consequences of doing so. Such selective discrimination will be most justified when the liberty restriction to a group promotes the well-being of that group (apart from its wider social benefits).
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spelling pubmed-73356942020-07-06 Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong Savulescu, Julian Cameron, James J Med Ethics Current Controversy In order to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19, governments have placed significant restrictions on liberty, including preventing all non-essential travel. These restrictions were justified on the basis the health system may be overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and in order to prevent deaths. Governments are now considering how they may de-escalate these restrictions. This article argues that an appropriate approach may be to lift the general lockdown but implement selective isolation of the elderly. While this discriminates against the elderly, there is a morally relevant difference—the elderly are far more likely to require hospitalisation and die than the rest of the population. If the aim is to ensure the health system is not overwhelmed and to reduce the death rate, preventing the elderly from contracting the virus may be an effective means of achieving this. The alternative is to continue to keep everyone in lockdown. It is argued that this is levelling down equality and is unethical. It suggests that in order for the elderly to avoid contracting the virus, the whole population should have their liberty deprived, even though the same result could be achieved by only restricting the liberty of the elderly. Similar arguments may also be applied to all groups at increased risk of COVID-19, such as men and those with comorbidities, the obese and people from ethnic minorities or socially deprived groups. This utilitarian concern must be balanced against other considerations, such as equality and justice, and the benefits gained from discriminating in these ways must be proportionately greater than the negative consequences of doing so. Such selective discrimination will be most justified when the liberty restriction to a group promotes the well-being of that group (apart from its wider social benefits). BMJ Publishing Group 2020-11 2020-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7335694/ /pubmed/32561661 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106336 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Current Controversy
Savulescu, Julian
Cameron, James
Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title_full Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title_fullStr Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title_full_unstemmed Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title_short Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
title_sort why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
topic Current Controversy
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7335694/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32561661
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106336
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