I have noted that there is a slow seepage of academic material which is critical of the Covid mandates. Daniel Miller and Alvin Moss, writing at the medical ethics/philosophy journal, The Hastings Center Report, “Rethinking the Ethics of the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdowns,” put the case that the lockdowns were in violation of the fundamental principle of liberty, and to over-ride that would require far greater evidence of harm from the non-lockdown situation than the health authorities gave.
As well, the lockdowns were harmful to much of the population, such as children, and people with a mental disability. That too raises the bar for the justification of lockdowns. Of course, the more basic argument, not addressed in an ethics paper, is that the lockdowns did not do what they were supposed to do, stop the transmission of the virus. As the virus was airborne, it could be transmitted from an open window in a house to a person across the street, just as easily as a transfer in the street. It all defied epidemiological reality. The case of China, with the most draconian lockdowns the human race have ever seen, refutes the lockdown ideology, as these lockdowns failed dramatically.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.1495?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“Rethinking the Ethics of the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdowns”
First published: 07 August 2023, The Hasting Center Report
https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1495
Abstract
Public health responses to the Covid-19 pandemic included various measures to mitigate the spread of the virus. Among these, the most restrictive was a broad category referred to as “lockdowns.” We argue that the reasoning offered in favor of extended lockdowns—those lasting several months or longer—did not adequately account for a host of countervailing considerations, including the impact on mental illness, education, employment, and marginalized communities as well as health, educational, and economic inequities. Furthermore, justifications offered for extended lockdowns set aside a basic tenet of public health ethics: restrictions on liberty and autonomy should be the least intrusive means of achieving the desired end. Since it is now clear that extended lockdowns cause severe harm to many vulnerable populations, the burden of proof is on those who would advocate for them, and there must be a much higher bar to implement an extended lockdown, with high-quality evidence that the benefit would substantially exceed its harm.”