Lockdowns were a morally and medically appropriate anti-contagion policy to stop the spread of Covid. However, lockdowns came with considerable costs. Specifically, lockdowns imposed harms and losses upon the young in order to benefit the elderly, who were at the highest risk of severe illness and death from Covid. This represented a shifting of the (epidemiological) burden of Covid for the elderly to a systemic burden of lockdown upon the young. This article argues that even if lockdowns were a (...) morally permissible response to Covid, the harms and losses they imposed on the young ground a claim of compensation. I defend an intergenerational compensation argument that defends a claim for an egalitarian intergenerational transfer to compensate the young for the harms of lockdown. (shrink)

Were governments justified in imposing lockdowns to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic? We argue that a convincing answer to this question is to date wanting, by critically analyzing the factual basis of a recent paper, “How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis” (Winsberg et al. 2020). In their paper, Winsberg et al. argue that government leaders did not, at the beginning of the pandemic, meet the epistemic requirements necessitated to impose lockdowns. We focus on (...) Winsberg et al.’s contentions that knowledge about COVID-19 resultant projections were inadequate; that epidemiologists were biased in their estimates of relevant figures; that there was insufficient evidence supporting the efficacy of lockdowns; and that lockdowns cause more harm than good. We argue that none of these claims are sufficiently supported by evidence, thus impairing their case against lockdowns, and leaving open the question of whether lockdowns were justified. (shrink)

Our aim in this brief essay is not to defend a particular policy or attitude toward lockdown measures in the United States or elsewhere, but to consider the scope and limits of different types of arguments that can be offered for them. Understanding the complexity of these issues will, we hope, go some way to helping us understand each other and our attitudes toward state responses to the pandemic.

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved (...) voluntarily as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

How could the initial, drastic decisions to implement “lockdowns” to control the spread of COVID-19 infections be justifiable, when they were made on the basis of such uncertain evidence? We defend the imposition of lockdowns in some countries by first, and focusing on the UK, looking at the evidence that undergirded the decision, second, arguing that this provided us with sufficient grounds to restrict liberty given the circumstances, and third, defending the use of poorly-empirically-constrained epidemiological models as tools that can (...) legitimately guide public policy. (shrink)

The lifting of lockdown is a typical case of the tragedy of the commons, and as such should be regulated by public authority, instead of being left to the ethics and responsibility of single individuals. I would therefore argue that we should think about an intermediate phase between the lockdown and the opening of shops (which in the Italian case is the transition from the red zone to the orange zone): diversified access to commercial activities, on an hourly (...) basis, for different population groups. This can be achieved either by creating different opening hours for different commercial activities and offices, or by opening them all at the same time but introducing free entrance hours based on age groups of clients. Both solutions would imply an extension of business and office hours, contrary to what has happened in most countries, where an attempt has been made to shorten the days and in some cases, such as in Italy, a curfew has even been introduced at a certain time of the day (in Italy, at 10 pm). (shrink)

At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, two policy aims are imperative: avoiding the need for a general lockdown of the population, with all its economic, social and health costs, and preventing the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by the unchecked spread of infection. Achieving these two aims requires the consideration of unpalatable measures. Julian Savulescu and James Cameron argue that mandatory isolation of the elderly is justified under these circumstances, as they are at increased risk of becoming severely (...) ill from COVID-19, and are thus likely to put disproportionate strain on limited healthcare resources. However, their arguments for this strategy are contingent on the lack of viable alternatives. We suggest that there is a possible alternative: a mandatory, centralised contact-tracing app. We argue that this strategy is ethically preferable to the selective isolation of the elderly, because it does not target members of a certain group, relying instead on the movements of each individual, and because it avoids the extended isolation of certain members of the society. Although this type of contact-tracing app has its drawbacks, we contend that this measure warrants serious consideration. (shrink)

In response to the spread of COVID-19, governments across the world have, with very few exceptions, enacted sweeping restrictive lockdown policies that impede citizens’ freedom to move, work, and assemble. This paper critically responds to the central arguments for restrictive lockdown legislation. We build our critique on the following assumption: public policy that enjoys virtually unanimous support worldwide should be justified by uncontroversial moral principles. We argue that that the virtually unanimous support in favor of restrictive lockdowns is (...) not adequately justified by the arguments given in favor of them. Importantly, this is not to say that states ought not impose restrictive lockdown measures, but rather that the extent of the acceptance of these measures is not proportionate to the strength of the arguments for lockdowns. -/- We begin by exploring the case for restrictive lockdowns. We first argue that several of the principles that are used to justify the lockdowns yield unexpectedly revisionary implications for other political problems that many would be unwilling to accept. We then outline what we consider the strongest argument for a lockdown—namely, that its net welfare benefits are great enough to defeat the moral presumption against restricting citizens’ civil liberties to move, work, and assemble. However, we give a number of reasons for doubting that the lockdown’s net welfare benefits are, in fact, sufficiently high to defeat the presumption against it. (shrink)

As many Western countries emerged from initial periods of lockdown in spring 2020, they had brought COVID-19 infection rates down significantly. This was followed, however, with more drastic second and third waves of viral spread, which many of these same countries are struggling to bring under control, even with the implementation of further periods of lockdown. Could this have been prevented by policymakers? We revisit two strategies that were focus of much discussion during the early stages of the (...) pandemic, and which were implemented in several Western countries, albeit in a weakened form. These strategies both proceed by targeting certain segments of the population, while allowing others to go about their lives unhindered. The first suggests selectively isolating those that would most likely suffer severe adverse effects if infected – in particular the elderly. The second involves identifying and quarantining those who are likely to be infected through a contact tracing app that would centrally store users’ information. We suggest that both strategies showed promise in preventing the need for further lockdowns, albeit in a significantly more stringent form than anything that was implemented in Western countries. We then proceed to an ethical evaluation of these more stringent policies. We contend that selective isolation strategies face severe ethical problems due to its discriminatory nature, while the ethical issues with a more aggressive contact tracing regime can be mitigated. This analysis has implications for how to respond effectively and ethically to future pandemics, and perhaps contains lessons on how to successfully emerge from our current predicament. (shrink)

Lockdowns, or modern quarantines, involve the use of novel restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to suppress the transmission of COVID-19. In this paper, I aim to critically analyze the emerging history and philosophy of lockdowns, with an emphasis on the communication of health evidence and risk for informing policy decisions. I draw a distinction between evidence-based and modeling-based decision-making. I argue that using the normative framework of evidence-based medicine would have recommended against the use of lockdowns. I first review the World (...) Health Organization’s evidence-based pandemic preparedness plans for respiratory viruses. I then provide a very brief history of COVID-19 modeling, which was cited as justification for the use of lockdowns in the U.K., the U.S., and much of the world. I focus on the so-called Imperial College model designed by Neil Ferguson et al. as well as the so-called Oxford model designed by José Lourenço et al. I analyze the evidence-based pandemic response known as ‘mitigation’, and I compare it with Ferguson et al.’s experimental strategy known as ‘suppression’. I summarize the strengths and weaknesses of these strategies based on their diametric aims and each model’s parametric assumptions. Based on my critical analysis of the suppression strategy, I attempt to expose what has been called the ‘logic of lockdowns’, which Sunetra Gupta of the Oxford model group has suggested is flawed. Finally, I consider Trisha Greenhalgh’s objection to evidence-based policy based on the precautionary principle, and I attempt to offer a response. I conclude with a brief narrative review of the emerging randomized evidence on restrictive NPIs, which seems to support my claim that mitigation was the strategy that would have been recommended by evidence-based medicine. If this is true, then COVID-19 modeling may serve as an important reminder of the enduring lesson of evidence-based medicine: that one should always ‘Trust the Evidence!’ for better health policy. (shrink)

Background: Pandemics are challenging for clinical and public health agencies and policymakers because of the scientific and medical uncertainty that accompanies novel viruses like COVID-19 makes an increase of morbidity and mortality prominent. Consequently, there is a need to evaluate the public perception of social distancing, lockdown obligatory, and response satisfactory during the pandemic. Methods: This cross-sectional survey used an anonymous online google based questionnaire to collect data from respondents via social media platforms. The online survey was conducted among (...) social media users from 1st to 30th April 2020. A snowball sampling technique was employed to recruit respondents for the survey. A total of 1,131 respondents responded across the country. Results: Nine out of every ten respondents believed that social distancing is an effective measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Also, 8 out of every ten respondents agreed with the lockdown measures. However, just 36.8% think their government is doing enough to stop the outbreak, and only 25% of the respondents were satisfied with the country’s response to the worldwide epidemic. The age of respondents was found to be significantly associated with satisfaction with emergency response during pandemics. Conclusion: It could be concluded that Nigerian public accepted social distancing as an effective way of curbing the spread of COVID-19 and general acceptance on lockdown obligatory; however, more than half of respondents expressed non-satisfactory with government and other agencies responses during the pandemics. (shrink)

In December 2019 an infectious coronavirus disease, commonly known as COVID-19, was identified in Wuhan, China. The disease spread rapidly and became a global pandemic. New Zealand’s first COVID-19 case was confirmed on 28 February 2020, after which the number of cases began to rise significantly, prompting the New Zealand Government to introduce a nationwide lockdown on 25 March 2020. This factsheet reports early findings from a quantitative study with adult New Zealanders. It explores how prevalent the experiences of (...) unwanted digital communication were in the last 12 months, before, during, and just after the nationwide COVID 19 lockdown. This study found a higher prevalence of unwanted digital communications around the time of the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. This study’s findings suggest that unexpected health and social events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and compulsory lockdown, are factors that can trigger changes in people’s experiences of online risk from unwanted digital communications. (shrink)

كان يمشي في الأرض مرحًا، مُصعرًا خده للطبيعة، ومُنتشيًا برفاهيات حضاراته؛ أو يخطو فوق أديمها مهمومًا بضنك العيش، يعتصره ألم البحث عن قوت يومه، قبل أن يُفاجئه الفيروس التاجي ليقلب حياته رأسًا على عقب. إنه الإنسان، ذلك المجهول لنفسه، الجاهل بعلمه، المغرور بعقله، الضعيف بقوته، المتناقض مع ذاته، الفقير بثرواته الضخمة! فجأة باتت تعتمل بداخله مشاعر الحيرة والخوف والقلق، تؤرقه تساؤلات تسخر من عجزه الصارخ عن الإجابة عنها: ما أصل هذا الفيروس؟ هل هو نبتٌ طبيعي أم مؤامرة من بني جلدته؟ (...) ما هو أفضل علاج لمكافحته؟ لماذا يحصد الأرواح غير مًبالٍ؟ وكيف يمكن لكائن متناه في الصغر، غير مرئي، أن يشن حربًا ضد البشر بكل هذه القوة في القرن الحادي والعشرين، ورغم كل ما تحقق من تقدمٍ علمي وطبي مذهل؟ يعجز العلم عن الإجابة، ويعجز الساسة عن التبرير، ويعجز الدعاة عن المواساة، ويعجز العائل عن حماية رعيته، وينكفئ المرء على نفسه باحثًا عن الإجابات في منطقةٍ فكرية مُهملة: الفلسفة! أجل، فتساؤلات الجائحة تُشبه كثيرًا تلك المنطقة الحدودية التي حدثنا عنها الفيلسوف الألماني «كارل ياسبرز»، والتي لا يمكن أن نتجاوزها بالطرقة العلمية والتجريبية، عندها يُواجه المرء خيارين لا ثالث لهما: إما أن يستسلم لأمواج اليأس العاتية، أو يتوضأ من أنهار الحكمة التي تناساها ردحًا طويلاً من الزمن! لا شك أن ثمة نظريات عديدة عن أصل الفيروس: بعضهم يعتقد أنه مُنتج بشري تم تخليقه في المختبرات لاستخدامه كسلاح بيولوجي يُعزز الهيمنة، لكنه فرَّ من مخترعيه فأصابهم، سواء عن غير قصد، أو مع سبق الإصرار والترصد؛ وبعضهم يعتقد أنه مجرد أداة تحصنت بها الطبيعة ضد عبث الإنسان وإفساده اللامنقطع في البر والبحر ... لكن الفيروس في كل الأحوال يتحدانا بقوة، ويكشف لنا بوحشية عن مدى هشاشتنا، سواء كنا أفرادًا أو جماعات، ويدفعنا إلى إعادة تقييم لحظتنا الوجودية: مَن نحن؟ وما مكاننا في الكون؟ وهل ثمة ما يمكن أن يُهدد بقاءنا كنوعٍ في أي وقت؟! لقد أظهر لنا الفيروس مدى أهمية الحياة، ومدى غباء انخراطنا الدائم في الصراع بدلاً من البحث عن سُبلٍ للتفاهم والتعاون! وعندما ينسحب الجميع في معازلهم، سواء أكانت مختبرات ومشافي تموج بأشرس معارك العلم ضد الفيروس، أو منازل تتضخم فيها مخاوف القدرة على اجتياز الجائحة، تتحول معازل الفلاسفة إلى خلايا فكرية تبسط أشرعة المعنى والمغزى والهدف على الجميع. هذا ما نحاول تبيانه في هذا المقال؛ من عزاء الفلسفة للحيارى والقانطين والموجوعين؛ إلى حالة الطبيعة الهوبزية البادية في الأفق وشروط تجاوزها؛ إلى المعضلات الأخلاقية المنبثقة في غيابات التيه الفيروسية الجديدة؛ إلى معنى الوجود والبقاء والهوية؛ إلى العدو المُكتشف والمُنتظَر في عالم كورونا وما بعده: اللامساواة، والعبث بالاستقرار المُناخي! (shrink)

With the rapid advancement of society, online learning has become more popular in the entire world due to Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic offered almost a total paradigm shift to online teaching and learning across various educational platforms. This paper was aimed at reviewing the teaching and learning changes in higher education during COVID-19 Lockdown using empirical evidence from central universities in India. The study adopted a survey method utilizing an online questionnaire as the primary tool for data collection. The (...) study covered 19 Central Universities in India that are offering Library and Information Science courses. Major findings showed, amongst others, that- most universities provided online classes during the lockdown period; Zoom application was the most utilized for online instructional during the COVID-19 Lockdown; the major difficulty faced by students during the online classes was the lack of internet facilities; the use of webinars in the field of LIS field was considered as an important source of education and learning. Based on these findings, key implications were discussed for the sustainability of LIS teaching and learning in higher education. (shrink)

Ang papel ay paglalagom ng itinuturing na pinakamahalagang yugto ng buhay ni José Rizal—ang kanyang pagkakatapon sa Dapitan, sa lente ng konseptong “bagani” ng ating mga ninuno. Sa pagbanggit sa lang nauna nang pag-aaral ukol kay Rizal, ipapakitang kung papaanong ang yugto sa Dapitan ay ang katuparan ng kanyang mga layunin sa La Liga Filipina, na kanyang isinabuhay kasama ang bayan. Sa lente ng kasalukuyang pandemyang COVID 19, makikita natin na tila naranasan din ni Rizal sa kanyang pagkakatapon ang ilang (...) bagay na ating dinaranas ngayon, na tila siya isang frontliner na nasa lockdown, inilagay sa kuwarentena, nag-homeschooling, nagkaroon ng lockdown sickness at namahagi ng ayudang pangkabuhayan sa mga mamamayan ng isang natutulog na bayan upang ito ay sumiglang muli. Nawa ay maging inspirasyon sa bayan na anuman ang hamon at mga balakid, walang makapipigil sa isang Pilipino na magsilbi sa bayan gamit ang kanyang mga talento at manatiling liwanag ng katotohanan at kaalaman. (shrink)

The fear of the unknown is the lived reality of the handloom industry in India. Handloom is the second largest employment provider in the country, after agriculture. According to the 2019-20 National Census of Handloom Weavers, there are 31.44 lakh households engaged in weaving and allied activities, out of which 87% are in rural areas. The objective of this article is to study the social enterprises that are looking for innovative ways to receive the handloom sector in the post-pandemic period. (...) Further its aim to study the digital impact on the handloom sector, especially on women. (shrink)

Are mandatory lockdown measures, which place restrictions on one’s freedom to move and assemble, justifiable? Offhand, such measures appear to compromise important rights to secure goals of public health. Proponents of such measures think the trade-off is worth it; opponents think it isn’t. However, one might think that casting the debate in these terms concedes too much to the opponents. Mandatory lockdown measures don’t infringe important rights because no one has a right to impose a risk of grievous (...) harm on others—and, in the context of a pandemic, participating in the prohibited activities (e.g., going out to the bar) does just that. -/- This chapter explores whether this defense of mandatory lockdown measures holds up. It, first, considers whether we have a right against risk imposition—and, if so, how such a right is best understood. It then considers the objection that, even if there is such a right, people who voluntarily choose to engage in the prohibited activities—at least if fully appraised of the risks involved—effectively waive it. The chapter argues that this objection fails. (shrink)

A clear and provocative introduction to the ethics of COVID-19, suitable for university-level students, academics, and policymakers, as well as the general reader. It is also an original contribution to the emerging literature on this important topic. The author has made it available Open Access, so that it can be downloaded and read for free by all those who are interested in these issues. Key features include: -/- A neat organisation of the ethical issues raised by the pandemic. An exploration (...) of the many complex interconnections between these issues. A succinct case for a continued lockdown until we develop a vaccine. An original account of the Deep Moral Problem of the Pandemic, and a Revolutionary Argument for how we should change society post-pandemic. References to, and engagement with, many of the best writings on the pandemic so far (both in popular media and academic journals). -/- ISBN: 978-0-6489016-0-0. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the idea and ethics of vaccination for the sake of others. It conceptually distinguishes four different kinds of vaccination—self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic, and indirect—based on who receives the primary benefits of vaccination and who ultimately makes the vaccination decision. It describes the results of focus group studies that were conducted to investigate what people who might get vaccinated altruistically think of this idea. It also applies the different kinds of vaccination to ethical issues surrounding COVID-19, such as (...) class='Hi'>lockdown measures, routine or mandatory vaccination of healthy children, and the ethical justification of restrictive measures for unvaccinated people. A more general philosophical account of vaccination ethics is ultimately developed, which is based not on moral duties, but on the moral reasons that people may have to get vaccinated for the sake of others. It is argued that such reasons may be stronger or weaker, depending on various factors related to the vaccines in question and the specific epidemiological circumstances. (shrink)

We were slightly concerned, upon having read Eric Winsberg, Jason Brennan and Chris Surprenant’s reply to our paper “Were Lockdowns Justified? A Return to the Facts and Evidence”, that they may have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of our argument, so we issue the following clarification, along with a comment on our motivations for writing such a piece, for the interested reader.

Since March of 2020, the world has been brought to its knees by unscientific and unethical mandates. These mandates have destroyed the world economy and the lives of countless innocent individuals. The “cure” that has been offered by medical bureaucrats and politicians has been more deadly than the disease (COVID-19). The imposition of ludicrous lockdowns, mask-wearing, coerced vaccination, and vaccine passports have not only proved to be ineffective, but also much more harmful than SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants. COVID-19 has (...) a recovery rate of close to 99% for most of the world’s population, however, despite this, institutions and power-hungry individuals have trampled upon our civil liberties and ignored our inalienable human rights. It is precisely as Thomas Paine famously stated: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” -/- Many lives have been gratuitously lost because of the administration of deadly medical treatments, and the rejection of effective treatments that follow genuine science. In the process, informed consent has been disparaged and desecrated. For over two years, we were instructed to “trust the science,” but the “science” advocated by medical bureaucrats and greedy politicians was the reason why the world was turned upside-down. In the face of these crimes against humanity, justice will only be brought by real courts and real judges, but this will require the awakening of a critical mass. This book serves as an instrument for this awakening. (shrink)

In a Covid-19 world, everyone’s circumstances changed. Most of us are living and or working in quarantine or lockdown. There is evidence that lockdown itself can have serious negative psychological impact (Brooks et al., 2020). Nonetheless, strategies are being proposed which, arguably, mitigate these harms. Artmaking is one such strategy. As ‘art therapy’, it has been usefully deployed to address a wide range of mental health challenges including anxiety, depression, fatigue and post-traumatic stress (Regev & Cohen-Yatziv, 2018). Given (...) that these self-same impacts profile the mental health challenges identified in relation to pandemic isolation, art may be useful in mitigating mental health issues associated with lockdown. This paper does not address how the role art can play in the therapeutic mix for serious mental health disorders. More specifically it is focused on a narrower brief of ills – predominantly those associated with boredom and a loss of stimulation associated with the constrained circumstances of lockdown. The kind of ‘art therapy’ this paper has in mind is more accurately described as ‘art engagement’ as it concerns individuals actively engaging with art. Art engagement is taken as self-administered utilising the time-out imposed by lockdown as an opportunity to take stock and reset. I will argue that to be of optimal benefit to people in lockdown, the art engagement model should support art practices that are easily accessible to a wide range of people, and be broadly scoped regarding areas to explore. Finally, because the benefits flowing from art engagement are central to this quest, our art engagement model will need to be able to track how art enriches or impoverishes its practitioners. This paper will set up a framework for art engagement that provides an apt account of art practices suited to people in lockdown. I will examine how the resolution of two art puzzles point the way forward in developing an art engagement model. Adventitiously, understanding these puzzles will also prove useful for art making in constrained living arrangements. Managing the first of these puzzles requires a rejection of the notion that art can be determinately defined. Instead we opt for a model that privileges practices and products that enrich the lives of practitioners. The second puzzle assumes creativity relies to varying degrees on appropriation and so appropriation acts need to be included in the model. However, this comes at a cost. Appropriation disrupts any notion that art works are stable things situated forever in the realm of art. It will be shown that appropriation causes us to adopt a more expansive view about the fluidity of what counts as an artwork. This fluidity may take us into and out of the realm of what is traditionally thought of as ‘art’ entirely and leads us to abandon any dependency on art masters and art institutions in our artmaking quests. The paper will conclude by using the model described to outline three art engagement examples that demonstrate how sometimes ordinary everyday experiences can be enriched by taking an art-engaging stance even in the highly constrained environment of lockdown. (shrink)

This review has direct bearing on a COVID 19 world and uses Blackburn's understanding of ontotheology to foreground a critique not only of narcissism but also of the novel coronavirus. This book is a gem which reviewed in India during early COVID 19 lockdown is now all the more important since COVID 19 changes the way we approach Blackburn.

Control measures, such as “lockdowns”, have been widely used to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic. Under some conditions, they prevent illness and save lives. But they also exact an economic toll. How should we balance the impact of such policies on individual lives and livelihoods (and other dimensions of concern) to determine which is best? A widely used method of policy evaluation, benefit–cost analysis (BCA), answers these questions by converting all the effects of a policy into monetary equivalents and then summing (...) them up. A different method, social welfare analysis, proceeds by determining the effects of a policy on individual wellbeing and then applying an aggregation formula to them to evaluate the overall effects of a policy. In this chapter, we survey these methods and argue that social welfare analysis has important advantages. One crucial advantage is that it enables ethical considerations relating to the impact of policies on individual wellbeing and its distribution to be incorporated into policy assessments in a transparent way. We illustrate this with a simple numerical model for evaluating pandemic policies that vary in terms of the stringency of the controls that they impose on individual behaviour, showing how the evaluation depends on the ethical significance accorded to their impact on the wellbeing of different age and income groups. (shrink)

A common argument against lockdowns is that they restrict freedom. On this view, lockdowns might be effective in protecting public health, but their impact on freedom is purely negative. This article challenges that view. It argues that while lockdowns restrict freedom, so too do viruses. Since viruses restrict freedom and lockdowns protect us from viruses, lockdowns can protect us from the harmful effects that viruses have on freedom. The problem we face is not necessarily freedom versus public health. Sometimes it (...) is freedom itself—or its value or distribution—that provides reason for lockdowns. (shrink)

Since the first lockdown in March 2020, time seems to have slowed to a continuous present tense. The Greek language has three words to express different experiences of time: aion, chronos and kairos. If aion is the boundless and limbo-like time of eternity, chronos represents chronological, sequential, and linear time. Kairos, however, signifies the rupture of ordinary time with the opportune moment, epiphany and redemption, revolution, and most broadly, crisis and emergency. This paper argues that the pandemic is impacting (...) how individuals perceive time in two ways: first, as a distortion of time in which individuals are caught between linear time (chronos) and rupture (kairos) invoking the state of emergency and second, as an extended present that blurs the passing of chronological time with its seeming eternity (aion). As a result of the perceived suspension of ordinary time, temporal understandings of the future are postponed, while the past hovers like a ghost over the present. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic we increasingly turned to technology to stay in touch with our family, friends, and colleagues. Even as lockdowns and restrictions ease many are encouraging us to embrace the replacement of face-to-face encounters with technologically mediated ones. Yet, as philosophers of technology have highlighted, technology can transform the situations we find ourselves in. Drawing insights from the phenomenology of sociality, we consider how digitally-enabled forms of communication and sociality impact our experience of one another. In particular, we (...) draw attention to the way in which our embodied experience of one another is altered when we meet in digital spaces, taking as our focus the themes of perceptual access, intercorporeality, shared space, transitional spaces, and self-presentation. In light of the way in which technological mediation alters various dimensions of our social encounters, we argue that digital encounters constitute their own forms of sociality requiring their own phenomenological analysis. We conclude our paper by raising some broader concerns about the very framework of thinking about digitally and non-digitally mediated social encounters simply in terms of replacement. (shrink)

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, stringent lockdowns and sudden adjustments were enacted, both of which had a devastating effect on the economy of the Philippines and the method of education that was in place at the time. This resulted in shifts and serious challenges for everyone, particularly pupils from marginalized homes. Hence, this study employed a correlational design to determine if there is a significant relationship between academic burnout and academic procrastination among 150 grade 12 senior high school (...) students. The researchers used two instruments: Academic Procrastination Scale (APS) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to measure the variables. Moreover, the statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.80 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between procrastination and academic burnout among grade 12 senior high school students. (shrink)

Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for Covid-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints—such as quarantine, isolation and ‘lockdown’—that have already been authorised to control the pandemic. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for Covid-19 has been justified, then there is a case for a similarly permissive (...) approach to compulsory medical interventions. (shrink)

Contributions to COVID-19 vaccination programmes promise valuable collective goods. They can support public and individual health by creating herd immunity and taking the pressure off overwhelmed public health services; support freedom of movement by enabling governments to remove restrictive lockdown policies; and improve economic and social well-being by allowing businesses, schools, and other essential public services to re-open. The vaccinated can contribute to the production of these goods. The unvaccinated, who benefit from, but who do not contribute to these (...) goods can be morally criticised as free-riders. In this paper defends the claim that in the case of COVID-19, the unvaccinated are unfair free-riders. I defend the claim against two objections. First, that they are not unfair free-riders because they lack the subjective attitudes and intentions of free-riders; second, that although the unvaccinated may be free-riders, their free-riding is not unfair. (shrink)

The global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has led to the imposition of severely restrictive measures by governments in the Western hemisphere. We feel a contrast between these measures and our freedom. This contrast, we argue, is a false perception. It only appears to us because we look at the issue through our contemporary moral philosophy of utilitarianism and an understanding of freedom as absence of constraints. Both these views can be (...) substituted with more sophisticated alternatives, namely an ethics of virtue and a notion of freedom of the will. These offer a fuller picture of morality and enable us to cooperate with the current restrictions by consciously choosing to adhere to them instead of perceiving them as draconian and immoral. We ask whether we should collaborate with the restrictions and argue that considerations of virtue will lead to an affirmative answer. More broadly, virtue ethics permits to deal with the practical concerns about how an individual should behave during this pandemic, given the current lockdown measures or lack thereof. -/- In section 1, we present how utilitarianism and a notion of freedom as negative liberty support the opposition to restrictive measures. In section 2, we outline an alternative based on an ethics of virtue and a more elaborated notion of free will. In the concluding section 3, we argue that considerations of virtue should guide the individual and public response to the emergency. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

This commentary further explores some of the ethical issues raised by Prof. Peter Singer in his Lanson Lecture “Pandemic Ethics: Five Lessons”. In the first part, I distinguish a prioritarian approach to the allocation of scarce medical resources, from the utilitarian one advocated by Singer. I suggest that the prioritarian view better matches common intuitions about fair distribution, even though it likely needs to be balanced with other principles if it is to have plausibility in contexts like vaccine allocation. In (...) the second part of the commentary, I take a global perspective (as Singer himself does regarding the ethics of lockdowns), and highlight the controversial implications of adopting a fully cosmopolitan ethical outlook when deciding how to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. I also raise justice-related concerns about Singer’s proposal to use well-being as a single metric for evaluating public health policies. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has imperatively shaken the behavior of the global financial markets. This study estimated the impact of COVID-19 on the behavior of the financial markets of Europe and the US. The results revealed that the returns of the S&P 500 index have been greatly affected by a lockdown in the US owing to COVID-19. However, the health crisis generated due to the novel coronavirus significantly decreased the stock returns of the Nasdaq Composite index. The results also (...) showed that the economic crisis generated from the pandemic in Spain has had more impact on the IBEX 35 as compared to the health crisis itself. On the other hand, in the long-run, Italy’s stock markets are more affected by the health crisis as contrasted with the economic crisis, while, in the short-run, both lockdown conditions and economic instability lower the stock returns of FTSE MIB. The UK stock markets witnessed that in the short-run, deficiency of health management systems imperatively damaged the stock returns of the London Stock Exchange. The investigation revealed that deficiency of health systems and lockdown conditions have imperatively damaged the structure of financial markets, inferring that sustainable development of these nations is at risk due to COVID-19. The study suggested that governments should allocate more of their budget to the health sector to overcome a health crisis in the future. (shrink)

The results revealed that students who remained in China experienced challenges which included anxiety, closure of campuses, lockdown, their parents’ concern regarding health issues, and not being able to meet with friends. On the other hand, students who had left China during the pandemic were confined to their home countries. This group of students experienced more severe problems than the students who remained in China. Since the transition to home countries was “unplanned,” they were not ready to readjust to (...) their native culture and were vulnerable to severe reverse culture shock. Upon returning to their home countries, international students faced a number of challenges, including readjustment to their home countries and changes in their lives in host and home countries. In addition, they lost social and academic resources, such as the disruption of study environment, losing important group memberships, financial constraints, visa expiry, graduation delay, and academic suspension. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

Zu Beginn der Pandemie im Frühjahr 2020, und nach einem weitreichenden Lockdown, ruhten große Erwartungen auf Corona-Warn-Apps, um einen erneuten Lockdown zu verhindern. Diese Erwartungen haben sich nicht erfüllt; stattdessen wurden in Deutschland als Reaktion auf erneute Wellen von COVID-19 weitere Kontaktbeschränkungen verordnet. Wie hätte die digitale Kontaktverfolgung wirksamer gestaltet werden können? Wir argumentieren, dass es ein Spannungsfeld zwischen der Datensparsamkeit und einer wirksamen Bekämpfung der Pandemie besteht. Im Gegensatz zur deutschen Corona-Warn-App wäre eine Variante der App, in (...) der pseudonymisierte Kennungen zentral gespeichert werden, in der Lage gewesen, die Effektivität der Kontaktverfolgung entscheidend zu erhöhen. Schließlich argumentieren wir, dass das Spannungsfeld zwischen Datensparsamkeit und einer wirksamen Pandemiebekämpfung sich jedoch nicht in einen Wertekonflikt übersetzt, weil zentrale Systeme uns trotz ihrer erhöhten Wirksamkeit nicht vor deutlich gravierendere Probleme beim Datenschutz stellen als dezentrale Systeme. Zentrale Möglichkeiten der digitalen Kontaktverfolgung wären daher ethisch gerechtfertigt, um auf weitere Wellen von COVID-19 oder auf zukünftige Epidemien effektiv zu reagieren. (shrink)

Her heart shared between Iran and Italy, while Asma Mehan makes peace with lockdown in her current home in Porto, Portugal, her thoughts stray to those familiar places. In those distant horizons there is heartache, but also the unexpected promise of different futures.

In August 2021, Froese et al. published survey data collected from 2,543 respondents on their subjective experiences living under imposed social distancing measures during COVID-19 (1). The questionnaire was issued to respondents in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. By combining the authors’ expertise in phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychopathology, and enactive cognitive science, the questions were carefully phrased to prompt reports that would be useful to phenomenological investigation and theorizing (2–4). These questions reflected the various author’s research interests (e.g., technology, grief, (...) time). Between April 7th and July 31st, 2021, a second questionnaire with the same question set was issued to respondents of the original who had agreed to do a follow-up. This was intended to capture subjective reports of life under social distancing measures a year after the initial survey. By this time–depending on their country of residence and health status–respondents had potentially lived with repeated and prolonged lockdowns and a variety of other restrictions on their social lives. When taken together, Survey I and Survey II provide a cross-cultural and longitudinal dataset that allows for analysis of longer-term impacts of imposed social distancing measures on people’s experiences. For researchers working in diverse disciplines, this dataset offers a rich resource that reflects people’s reactions to the imposition of different social restrictions in different countries and over different time periods. (shrink)

This paper aims to measure the quality of all Romanian cities’ websites in 2019 and 2022, before and after the disruptive event of COVID-19. Since the official websites are the core instrument of e-governance, the changes in the quality of Romanian cities’ websites reflect the changes in the development of urban e-governance in Romania. The COVID-19 lockdowns and contact restrictions and the moving of most activities into the online environment had the potential to impact the performance of Romanian cities’ websites (...) significantly and catalyze the progress of local e-governance. The quality of Romanian cities’ official websites was measured using an adapted survey instrument proposed by Holzer and Kim and Manoharan, Melitski, and Holzer. The tool covers five critical criteria of website quality or performance: personal data security, usability, content, services, and citizen participation. The research results may seem contrary to expectations: the improvements of websites have been incremental rather than transformational. Although our research provides only a case study, we may assert that the reform of traditional administration remains a step-by-step process. Our study’s main contribution consists in showing that the progress of e-governance is an incremental process even in a situation of emergency that requires the moving of most activities into the online environment. (shrink)

This paper takes under consideration a piece by Roger Crisp in which he questions what the problem of moral luck can teach us about COVID-19 lockdown rule-breakers. Taking the position that although such rule-breakers might seem to be new examples of moral luck, Crisp ends up denying the existence of moral luck and argues that moral luck is an outdated notion in so far as it relies on other questionable aspects of morality, that is, retributivist punishment and blame. Although (...) the author agrees with Crisp that pandemic rule-breaker cases are putative examples of resultant moral luck, he proposes that Crisp has misconstrued what moral luck is and the paper examines in detail what he sees as the numerous problems with Crisp’s claims. The author concludes that Crisp’s analysis of pandemic rule-breaking does not shed any new light on the moral luck debate, and the difficult questions of luck, moral responsibility, and desert are not so easily resolved. -/- . (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that causes respiratory illness in human and has now become a major challenge for all over the world. In spite of all their efforts to restore the nature during the last few decades, humans could only move a few steps forward. But during the last few months, consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic have successfully recovered the environment to a large extent that should definitely set positive impact on global climate change. The COVID-19 (...) spread around the world and severely affected the world's education, economy, social interactions and other global impacts. We have come across one of the most daunting problems of the modern times, which is, educational crisis. One of the many challenges faced by the students due to COVID-19 is loss of learning. Distance learning has been a failure throughout this period, due to the fact that the educators are unsupported and they lack the practical experience of teaching online through technology. On the other hand, not all students have the technology infrastructure at home to support their ongoing learning. Many of them are economically backward and find it difficult to support their education without internet or a learning tablet. (shrink)

Background: In the first few months of 2020, information and news reports about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were rapidly published and shared on social media and social networking sites. While the field of infodemiology has studied information patterns on the Web and in social media for at least 18 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been referred to as the first social media infodemic. However, there is limited evidence about whether and how the social media infodemic has spread panic and affected (...) the mental health of social media users. Objective: The aim of this study is to determine how social media affects self-reported mental health and the spread of panic about COVID-19 in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Methods: To carry out this study, an online questionnaire was prepared and conducted in Iraqi Kurdistan, and a total of 516 social media users were sampled. This study deployed a content analysis method for data analysis. Correspondingly, data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results: Participants reported that social media has a significant impact on spreading fear and panic related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a potential negative influence on people’s mental health and psychological well-being. Facebook was the most used social media network for spreading panic about the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq. We found a significant positive statistical correlation between self-reported social media use and the spread of panic related to COVID-19 (R=.8701). Our results showed that the majority of youths aged 18-35 years are facing psychological anxiety. Conclusions: During lockdown, people are using social media platforms to gain information about COVID-19. The nature of the impact of social media panic among people varies depending on an individual's gender, age, and level of education. Social media has played a key role in spreading anxiety about the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraqi Kurdistan. (shrink)

As governments around the world imposed lockdowns or stay-at-home measures, people began to feel the stress as time dragged on. There were already reports on some individuals committing suicide. How do governments respond to such a phenomenon? Our main focus is the Philippine government and how it responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we argue that the problem with COVID-19 went forth just dealing with physical health. First, people suffer not just from being infected but the psychological stress (...) of possibly getting the virus and the toll of the government lockdown or quarantine. Second, the Philippine Bayanihan ‘We Heal As One Act’ lacks focus on mental health issues while the government's response seemed to focus on security issues. Third, there are countries around the world that have acted effectively in protecting people’s mental health. Lastly, we propose appropriate measures to help address the people's mental health while still in the pandemic and for a future one. (shrink)

The year 2020 was arguably the most disruptive in modern history. It has a profound impact on research and pedagogy. There was a dramatic increase of COVID-19 scholarship within the areas of health science, social science, and humanities. Slavoj Zizek, a radical philosopher, was one of the first scholars to write a book on pandemic outside of natural and pure science (Zizek 2020). The book was published approximately 100 days after China informed the World Health Organization that the then-unnamed virus (...) was detected in Wuhan. Other writers like Bill Hayes (2020), Jennifer Haupt (2020), and Mark Siegel (2020) also contributed on COVID-19 discourse in the fields of literature and humanities. Many buzzwords like anti-vax, variants, lockdowns, social distancing, protocols, video conferencing, zoom, new normal, hybrid education, new form of communism, dystopia, etc. were generated because of this rich and ever-growing literature. (shrink)

contents -/- i. death and the mask ii. shifts in the TTC ad-space iii. a virus in a superposition iv. this virus has totally hacked us v. a test of Bayesian competence vi. a siege on the Local, by the Global vii. re lab-leak theory: God did it viii. we held ourselves apart by this telescope ix. Google knows we'll all be dead x. Uber gets us all to surveil xi. Netflix pretends to be my friend xii. can teleCOMM map (...) my interior? xiii. Library's a hi-rise, in lockdown xiv. so could the A.I. announce itself xv. N_BossTRON, Surveillance Daemon xvi. prediction markets make War Profiteers xvii. hide Fish in sea, Bird in forest xviii. the DJ and the human, too much credit xix. dumb TV, an ingenious production xx. WE THE NORTH xxi. Debt: The First 5,000 Years xxii. Theses on Kingship xxiii. when i google Zeus xxiv. your Hardcore History xxv. consumerism a pacification campaign xxvi. fascism is quiet now xxvii. a Chomsky need keep record. (shrink)

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)

Connecting with others online is not a new practice, of course. However, with lockdown measures in place across much of the globe, our social lives have been forced to migrate online to an even greater degree and intensity than ever before. While many decry the poverty of online social encounters, what underlies this debate is a philosophical question about how it is we encounter one another online. Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, I explore how, in many cases, we directly perceive others (...) and their experiences online, despite the fact that we are mediated by technology. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled indignation. People have been indignant about the breaking of lockdown rules, about the mistakes and deficiencies of government pandemic policies, about enforced mask-wearing, about vaccination programmes (or lack thereof), about lack of care with regards vulnerable individuals, and more. Indeed, indignation seems to have been particularly prevalent on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, where indignant remarks are often accompanied by variations on the hashtag #WTF?! In this paper, I explore indignation’s distinctive (...) character as a form of moral anger, in particular suggesting that what is characteristic of indignation is not only that it discloses moral injustices but betrays our disbelief at the very occurrence of the offence. Having outlined the character of indignation, I consider how the structure of indignation impacts how we do, respond to, and receive indignation. I explore indignation in action, so to speak, in the context of Covid-19, with a particular emphasis on how indignation occurs ‘on the internet’. (shrink)