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283Should
Immunity Licences be an Ingredient in our Policy Response to COVID-19?
In our view, this is a too hasty conclusion. The claim we want to explore
in the final section of this chapter is that the defence of immunity licences
against the equality argument holds only if no other policy tools can
achieve these goals while being less costly with respect to the value
of equality. Going back to our interpretation of the principle of “least
infringement,” immunity licences would be ethically acceptable only if
they did in fact pose the least threat to equality, compared with other
policy tools that have the ability to achieve similar safety objectives.
Are immunity licences “least infringing” with respect to the value
of equality? The primacy afforded the value of equality—both in the
general ethics of a liberal democracy and in its constitutional order—
means that before we opt for a measure that is offensive to that value,
we should look for measures that do not offend against it, or that do so
in a more minimal way. There should be a presumption in favour of
equality-promoting or at the very least inequality-minimizing measures.
Clearly, the goal of policy measures in the post-confinement, pre-vaccine,
or pre-herd immunity phase of the pandemic is to control the spread of
the virus, and the level of restriction that is required to achieve this goal
may vary as new evidence comes in.10 As we emerge from confinement,
we should choose the most egalitarian policies available, taking into
account that confinement is, in and of itself, an inegalitarian policy that
trades on a resource that is massively unequally distributed—namely,
the quality of the spaces in which people confine. Emerging from this
situation should not exacerbate inequity if alternatives exist.
Are there ways to achieve safety goals that are less offensive to
the value of equality? We think there are. Governments can reduce the
potential spread of the virus, not by limiting individuals but rather
through a community approach that redesigns the context of our
interactions to make them (safely) equally accessible to all. Such an
approach would for example favour the efficient use of space and time
through creative and thoughtful redesign. For example, the expansion
of shared spaces and the time they are available, physical distancing,
and the wearing of face coverings within these spaces are among the
tools that we can use to emerge from confinement together—united
in a shared predicament and a shared fate—rather than conferring
privileges on those who can prove immunity.11
10. Colleen M Flood & Bryan Thomas, this volume, Chapter A-6.
11. Daniel Weinstock, “A Harm Reduction Approach to Physical Distancing”, in
Meredith Schwartz, ed, The Ethics of Pandemics (Peterborough: Broadview Press,
2020) [forthcoming in August 2020].
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International