Thread by @bopinion

Six months ago, populations across the world went under lockdown to fight Covid-19.

Amid confusion and horrifying death tolls, the default position was to protect the elderly and minimize loss of life. Now that stance is shifting trib.al/ZsUBlJc

🇺🇸In the U.S., anti-lockdown protests have broken out across the country, with even New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community burning masks in public.

🇬🇧In the U.K., Boris Johnson’s government faces a rebellion from MPs in his own Conservative Party trib.al/ZsUBlJc

With six months of experience, people know that lockdowns exert a terrible toll.

The tide in the U.S. is moving toward reopening, allowing people to get sick and building immunity that way until a vaccine arrives to ease the dilemma trib.al/ZsUBlJc

The scientific journal Nature estimated that around 50% of people would need Covid-19 immunity in order for the virus to die out.

For France and the U.S., “this would translate into 100,000-450,000 and 500,000-2,100,000 deaths, respectively” trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Meanwhile, there are epidemiologists who believe that the herd-immunity threshold has been reached in regions that have already suffered major outbreaks.

They argue that Covid-19 can be choked off when as little as 20% of the population has been infected trib.al/ZsUBlJc

What do they propose? This week, epidemiologists briefed officials in the Trump administration on the “Great Barrington Declaration.”

They recommend moving to a strategy called "focused protection" trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Herd immunity “is achieved at the expense of some people dying,” says Sunetra Gupta, co-author of the declaration.

Centuries of moral philosophy have left us with various tests for these decisions. Gupta’s “focused protection” passes some, but not others trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Utilitarianism: the greatest good of the greatest number.

With this philosophy, sacrificing a few can be justified, providing this clearly benefits the many trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Libertarianism: liberty and survival of the fittest.

Opposition to lockdowns has been led by libertarians, who give priority to the right to self-determination. Its history goes back to British philosopher John Locke and the Founding Fathers of the U.S. trib.al/ZsUBlJc

The Golden Rule: first do no harm.

Doctors take their ethics from the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who based morality on the biblical “golden rule” — that we should not do to others what we would not want done to ourselves trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Communitarianism: the common good.

These ideas go back at least as far as the French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his social contract, and they appeal to socialists and to cultural conservatives alike trib.al/ZsUBlJc

Rawlsian theory:

Faced with the pandemic, governments and societies had reacted as though they had a duty to put themselves through great privations to protect the sick and elderly. Now we know that this was something of an illusion trib.al/ZsUBlJc

The ball is back in the scientists’ court — philosophers can only help us come to a decision that requires good data.

It’s up to science to illuminate the costs, and to leaders to communicate those costs to the population trib.al/ZsUBlJc