Making good choices in a time of pandemic
Political decisions must observe moral standards as well as expediency
In times of crisis people tend to pivot between panic and complacency. With the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine, confidence grew that a safer environment would restore “normal.” On the heels of this good news, however, we learned that new forms of the virus — more contagious and more deadly — have emerged in widely dispersed geographical regions, including Canada. Uncertainty over the effectiveness of some vaccines against these variants, not only dampened optimism, but also contributed to vaccine skepticism and anxiety over the procurement of and access to the vaccine.
A pandemic forces public authorities to make difficult decisions. Often such decisions appear to threaten the core civil value of personal autonomy. They also raise fundamental ethical issues. Toronto ethicist Peter A. Singer and colleagues identified some of these during the SARS crisis in 2013. At that time he wrote, “decision makers had to balance individual freedoms against the common good, fear for personal safety against the duty to treat sick people, and economic losses against the need to contain the spread of a deadly disease.” Such decisions have to be guided by both scientific knowledge and ethical consideration. At that time, they concluded, Canada was ill-prepared to fully deal with the ethical issues.
Are we more prepared today? Have we done our due diligence? These are questions for every public body whose responsibility includes both the public health of a community as well as the safety and protection of health care professionals, teachers, transportation workers and others who constitute the human reality of strategic policy choices.
Ethics, a thoroughly moral concern, is commonly associated with liability, which is a legal matter. As a result, many so-called ethical decisions are made not in the interest of the good of the persons impacted by those decisions, but for the protection of the decision makers.
In “A discourse on Rights,” the Roman philosopher Cicero argued strategic and political decisions (he called them expedient or advantageous) have to conform to universal moral truths. These truths are easily known to reasonable persons and serve as the basis for ethical decision-making. At the same time, he acknowledged the situations to which they might apply are not always clear cut and often require special consideration.
A pluralist society such as Canada lacks an all encompassing moral umbrella. Issues are not always clear and a set of universally binding moral criteria eludes us. When values such as “good,” “just” and “right” mean different things to different people and groups, ethics easily becomes partisan and politicized.
While it would be wrong to make too much of moral disagreement, it highlights the need for a rigorous scrutiny of the processes in which decisions regarding public health and individual safety are made.
Most of us make responsible decisions without intentionally and consciously appealing to a particular set of values or following a structured process shaped by moral principles. We rely, rather, on what is often called “moral intuition.” But moral intuition is not good enough for shaping ethical public policy. Why? Because in a pluralist society we speak with not one but several moral voices. Moreover, according to Princeton scholar Jeffrey Stout, when we do talk about the human good, it is primarily in the language of individualism, a language that he contends is “ill-suited for public discourse on the common good or for shaping meaningful lives.”
What defines, for example, essential shopping or the threshold for mandatory quarantines? How are vaccines to be acquired and distributed? Is a cost-benefit analysis or risk assessment an adequate tool for morally good choices?
Politicians need to pay close attention to what science says, that is the recommendations of public health officials, epidemiologists, and relevant others. They also need to hear the concerns of the public but to get a handle on the human context of their decisions. Public bodies that make decisions that impact public order and the common good require a framework of ethical responsibility.
It follows, that decision-making bodies, whatever their political, social, or economic roles, must operate in a truly open and transparent manner that locates rather than diffuses accountability.
It is never too late to expect government to make clear to the public both the set of ethical values and principles that they adhere to in making decisions, along with the content of those values and principles. Equally important is the process that makes transparent how these values lead to the good to be achieved. Declared values are empty, if they are not employed in an ethically sound way. A pandemic is a time for timely and effective leadership, the justification for which, going back to Cicero, must be not only expedience, but ethical clarity as well.