Summary
Late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan, a tiny organism migrated from an animal to a human. Three months later, COVID-19 has gone global. So far, nearly 90,000 people are known to have caught coronavirus and more than 3,000 of them – mostly already ill or elderly – have died. Here in the UK, the government has acknowledged that its ‘containment’ strategy is likely to fail and is planning for delaying the spread of the virus and mitigating its effects. But nobody knows how the virus will behave in Britain, and planning for the unpredictable is far from straightforward. If we know we can’t win this fight, but we don’t want to lose it too badly, what are we prepared to sacrifice on the battlefield? How authoritarian do we want the government to be? Must we be ready to accept martial law, the isolation of towns and cities, closed schools, factories and offices, bans on public transport, concerts and sporting events? While some would see such measures as sensible, others warn against authorities who would stamp on our civil liberties out of a nervous need to be seen to be doing something. And what about those in the ‘gig’ economy who can’t afford not to work? The moral dimension goes beyond the arguments about precaution, panic, freedom and frailty. The coronavirus dilemma could be seen as a real-life example of that age-old ethical thought experiment, the ‘Trolley Problem’. Should we do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable in our society, even if the knock on effect to the global economy has the potential to cause suffering and death for many more people further down the line? With Dr. Tony Booth, Dr. Norman Lewis, Julian Sheather & Professor Dominic Wilkinson.
Producer: Dan Tierney
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.1 | Good evening. Sometimes the smallest things can cause the biggest problems. |
| 0:08.4 | The coronavirus is about 30,000th of an inch in diameter, but it's got the whole country on alert, |
| 0:14.3 | a couple of steps away from what amounts almost to a war footing. |
| 0:17.8 | This week, the hopes of containing the virus seem to be fading. |
| 0:21.7 | The authorities are mobilising to cope with scenarios that range from the equivalent of seasonal flu to 80% |
| 0:27.2 | of us catching it and large numbers of deaths. All we can do, it seems, is wash our hands a lot |
| 0:32.8 | and maybe hide. In truth, COVID-19 is not that deadly. We won't know for sure until it's over and we can assess |
| 0:40.4 | how many people had it, even if they showed no symptoms at all. But those at risk are overwhelmingly, |
| 0:46.3 | the very old and those with other serious medical problems. There is much government talk about |
| 0:51.4 | proportionate response, but sooner or later we may face that most basic of moral choices, |
| 0:56.9 | whether an action should be judged on its own merits or by its consequences. |
| 1:01.4 | Protecting the most vulnerable must be a good thing, |
| 1:04.3 | but what if the consequences are not just harmed to the economy |
| 1:07.2 | on which all our welfare depends, but suffering of all kinds, |
| 1:11.5 | including perhaps the deaths of those whose medical treatment for other conditions has been disrupted. |
| 1:15.9 | How authoritarian do we want our government to be in the face of this threat? |
| 1:20.2 | What price are we prepared to pay, to as one commentator, rather cruelly put it, |
| 1:24.4 | save the lives of those who will be dead soon anyway? |
| 1:46.0 | That's our moral maze tonight, the panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, and the priest and polemicist, Charles Fraser, Charles, you're a philosopher. This is a classic clash between deontological and utilitarian ethics, isn't it? |
| 1:47.1 | Oh, that's a mouthful, isn't it? |
| 1:52.3 | Well, listen, for me, the whole, the important thing here is about maintaining our civil liberties. |
... |
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