Utilitarianism and the pandemic

Abstract

There are no egalitarians in a pandemic. The scale of the challenge for health systems and public policy means that there is an ineluctable need to prioritize the needs of the many. It is impossible to treat all citizens equally, and a failure to carefully consider the consequences of actions could lead to massive preventable loss of life. In a pandemic there is a strong ethical need to consider how to do most good overall. Utilitarianism is an influential moral theory that states that the right action is the action that is expected to produce the greatest good. It offers clear operationalizable principles. In this paper we provide a summary of how utilitarianism could inform two challenging questions that have been important in the early phase of the pandemic: (a) Triage: which patients should receive access to a ventilator if there is overwhelming demand outstripping supply? (b) Lockdown: how should countries decide when to implement stringent social restrictions, balancing preventing deaths from COVID‐19 with causing deaths and reductions in well‐being from other causes? Our aim is not to argue that utilitarianism is the only relevant ethical theory, or in favour of a purely utilitarian approach. However, clearly considering which options will do the most good overall will help societies identify and consider the necessary cost of other values. Societies may choose either to embrace or not to embrace the utilitarian course, but with a clear understanding of the values involved and the price they are willing to pay.

Epistemic Vice Predicts Acceptance of COVID-19 Misinformation

“…Second, Pennycook, McPhetres, Zhang, Lu, and Rand 2020 Most philosophical work on Covid-19 comes from applied ethics and political philosophy, and concerns such topics as the allocation of scarce medical resources (Emanuel et al, 2020), the hidden costs incurred by children and young people (Larcher & Brierley, 2020), the ethics of clinical trials (Bompart, 2020), utilitarian approaches to pandemics (Savulescu, Persson, & Wilkinson, 2020), and the use of triage procedures (Herreros, Gella, & Real de Asua, 2020). 4 Rahimi and Talebi Bezmin Abadi (2020), in a letter to the editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, consider potential issues to do with peer review, publication, and dissemination of scientific results about Covid-19.…”

Public attitudes toward allocating scarce resources in the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Triage policies are motivated by different, and sometimes competing, ethical principles. Most appeal to the utilitarian principle of maximizing benefits [ 6 – 8 ]. Triage policies that aim to maximize benefits involve allocating scarce resources to patients to save the greatest number of lives or preserve the largest amount of life-years among treated patients.…”

Age in the Time of COVID-19: An Ethical Analysis

“…However, age itself does not matter; it is the expected length of the benefit. This is why utilitarianism is not unfairly discriminatory, and not “ageist” in an ethically problematic sense” [ 23 ]. Sometimes, the physician does not pay the same attention to a disease with a similar severity in the elderly as in a younger patient, many organic symptoms are attributed to neurologic or psychiatric impairments, screening procedures are recommended less often, surgery and other invasive treatments are recommended and performed less often without an objective proof they are futile, based on subjective criteria such decreased physical strength, decreased therapeutic compliance, a less significant increase in survival or disease-free survival, etc .…”