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Pandemic Ethics: Moral Reasoning in a Pandemic [Guest Post]

Cross-Posted with The Boston Review

By Professor Frances Kamm, Harvard University

Policy discussions during the pandemic have raised concerns for me, as a moral philosopher, about how policy analysts and policy makers are thinking about deaths from COVID-19 and the right way to combat them. The policy discussions I have in mind have ranged from broad issues about how and when to open the economy to more focused concerns about how Intensive Care Units in hospitals should allocate scarce medical equipment (including ventilators). I will here consider three areas of concern about how people are reasoning about what is morally right in the pandemic.

Interpersonal Aggregation 
How should we weigh the economic costs of keeping the economy shut down versus the lives lost to COVID-19 from opening it up? Speaking on the PBS evening News Hour June 18, economist Nick Bloom calculated that the experience of being shut in and suffering economic trauma could result in the loss of a year of life for a person. I do not want to second guess his estimate, but to ask about the use it might be put to in reasoning about what to do.

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