Was lockdown life worth living?

Abstract

Lockdowns in Australia have been strict and lengthy. Policy-makers appear to have given the preservation of quantity of lives strong priority over the preservation of quality of lives. But thought-experiments in population ethics suggest that this is not always the right priority. In this paper, I'll discuss both negative impacts on quantity of lives caused by the lockdowns themselves, including an increase in domestic violence, and negative impacts on quality of lives caused by lockdowns, in order to raise the question of whether we each had reason to choose quantity over quality in our own lives in a way that would justify the lockdowns we had.

Rates of John Cunningham virus seroconversion greatly reduced in natalizumab‐treated patients during COVID‐19‐related lockdowns

“…Masks were required when outside the home in all settings, and social distancing regulations were implemented. Most restrictions were relaxed on 29 October 2021, when the Victorian government predicted 80% double‐vaccination against COVID‐19 in the general population [17]. The pandemic‐related public health emergency was lifted on 12 October 2022 [18], providing the censor date for the COVID cohort.…”

Public health ethics: critiques of the “new normal”

“…Indeed, there are sometimes strong moral reasons to relax stringent measures when it becomes clear (or likely) that they are non-beneficial, offer net harms, involve excessive liberty restriction, or increase unfairness in society (e.g., by primarily benefitting people who are already well off or primarily harming those who are badly off). While "two weeks" of lockdown i.e., quasi-universal coercive social distancing measures, might have been considered justifiable at the peak of initial waves of illness and hospitalisation, prolonged lockdowns created enormous cumulative harms that likely (especially after the availability of vaccines) outweighed their benefits on a range of reasonable weightings (Pak, Adegboye et al 2021, Lally 2022, Lawford-Smith 2022. The remainder of this article considers the extent to which certain policies for covid19 were aligned with or diverged from the above principles of public health ethics, and identifies areas where reform might improve the ethical acceptability of responses to future pandemics.…”