Vaccine Morality

[GeoffF100]

It has been suggested by some that Britain should block the export of Covid vaccine components to the EU. That would reduce the overall supply of vaccine in the world and lead directly to loss of life. I consider that be immoral. It is the moral equivalent of going out into the street and shooting people. It would be an act of war. Targeting civilians in this way would be illegal even in war:

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/isrl-p ... 002-04.htm

We have had the the suggestion in another thread that India is right to stop Covid vaccine exports, because it has a duty to look after its own citizens first. That sounds reasonable, but is it right?

A more clear cut case is our own. We will very soon have vaccinated all our over 50s (or at least those over 50s who are willing to be vaccinated). The EU counties are well behind us. Vaccinating the over 50s on the continent would save many more lives than vaccinating the under 50s here. The morally right thing for us to do would appear to be to hold up our vaccination program and help the continentals catch up.

[dealtn]

It has been suggested by some that Britain should block the export of Covid vaccine components to the EU. That would reduce the overall supply of vaccine in the world and lead directly to loss of life. I consider that be immoral. It is the moral equivalent of going out into the street and shooting people. It would be an act of war. Targeting civilians in this way would be illegal even in war:

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/isrl-p ... 002-04.htm

We have had the the suggestion in another thread that India is right to stop Covid vaccine exports, because it has a duty to look after its own citizens first. That sounds reasonable, but is it right?

A more clear cut case is our own. We will very soon have vaccinated all our over 50s (or at least those over 50s who are willing to be vaccinated). The EU counties are well behind us. Vaccinating the over 50s on the continent would save many more lives than vaccinating the under 50s here. The morally right thing for us to do would appear to be to hold up our vaccination program and help the continentals catch up.

How does that reduce supply of vaccine at a global level? If vaccines are not being exported, but used domestically (and similar occurs in other countries), supply isn't reduced but reallocated. That might be less efficient, and might affect mortality in some countries (possibly in both directions), which might "net" marginally change deaths. I don't see how this is the moral equivalent of "shooting people" though, or an act of war.

I am not making a judgement here, merely trying to understand what is your moral concern.

Is this the appropriate board for such debate, when it is clearly labelled as "non-political"?

[Nimrod103]

Just for clarification, I didn't want to suggest that the UK should block lipid package exports, on which the Pfizer vaccine depends. Some newspapers had said that the UK might be justified in retaliation if the EU blocked Pfizer vaccine exports to the UK (thus preventing UK second Pfizer jabs*).
Personally I think the UK should maintain the moral high ground and abide by contracts.

*such an act could be construed to being more serious even that preventing export of jabs, since it would mean preventing completion of treatment already underway.

[GeoffF100]

How does that reduce supply of vaccine at a global level?

If we block the export of a component that is need to make vaccines in the EU, less vaccines will be made in the EU, and there will be less vaccine the world.

[dealtn]

How does that reduce supply of vaccine at a global level?

If we block the export of a component that is need to make vaccines in the EU, less vaccines will be made in the EU, and there will be less vaccine the world.

Thank you I misread what you wrote initially, apologies.

[vagrantbrain]

So we should scrap the existing contracts that were freely made between governments and private companies because one customer has now realised what they'd actually agreed to?? Lets not forget the EU is one of the largest and most powerful organisations on the planet and freely entered into these contracts with significant legal advice. Lets also not forget the EU insisted that an EU supply chain is created for their vaccines, the delayed commissioning of which is one of the principal causes of the shortfall on the continent.

On a purely selfish level - I'm 41. Worked and paid tax in the UK all my adult life. Been to war twice for the UK. I'd be annoyed if the UK government prioritised an older citizen of a foreign country above me and put me and my family at risk longer than necessary simply because other developed countries governments couldn't get their house in order through playing petty politics. The primary role of a government is to protect it's own people, not bail out others for their poor decision making.

If we've got spare capacity or product them IMHO the morally correct choice would be give supply these to developing countries who lack the capacity and resource to manufacture their own.

[UncleEbenezer]

The narrow issue of the vaccination programme is one of very few areas where it seems the UK government is doing morally the Right Thing:

- Its primary responsibility is to its own citizens, and it's vaccinating us rapidly. With the proviso that it may be jeopardising the whole programme by failing to follow instructions re: second doses at three weeks.

- A moral responsibility to help the world should not create a conflict of interest with that primary responsibility. The UK government's solution to that is to separate off the latter by contributing to a third-party programme: covax. Though we might argue over whether covax itself is any more than tokenism, as other countries (like China and Russia) make much greater international efforts through other channels.

- Government's most important role is not to put hurdles in the way of those who develop and produce vaccines, and possibly to offer active support if areas can be identified where that does more good than harm. Some of the press may be spouting crap, but (apart from some nonsense last year) government seems to be behaving sensibly.

[GeoffF100]

Much of this sounds more like politics than morality. Let's focus on the moral issue. What is the moral imperative here? Is it to save as many lives as possible? We seem to have a definite "no" from some people. Let's ignore the details here. Suppose you had a choice between saving one British life, or two French lives. Do you believe that the moral imperative is to save the one British life, rather than the two French lives? Is a British life worth more than a French life?

[Lootman]

Much of this sounds more like politics than morality. Let's focus on the moral issue. What is the moral imperative here? Is it to save as many lives as possible? We seem to have a definite "no" from some people. Let's ignore the details here. Suppose you had a choice between saving one British life, or two French lives. Do you believe that the moral imperative is to save the one British life, rather than the two French lives? Is a British life worth more than a French life?

It is normal and customary for people to care more about a life that is closer to them, than about one or more lives that are not close to them. So for example when a friend, neighbour or family member dies we are typically more upset than when we read that 100 people died in a flood in Bangladesh. So far, so good.

Now, France is closer to us than Bangladesh, or at least most Brits would think. But even so it might be reasonable to want our government's policy to be to put its own citizens and residents first, and above other nations.

In other words, to answer your question, if there were a referendum on whether to export vaccines to France, if that meant Brits going without, then I believe that the vote would be strongly against sacrificing British lives to save French lives.

Given the inherent subjectivity of moral viewpoints, the best way to answer your question is to ask: "what would the voters decide?" And I think they would decide that if our government won't put us first, then no other government is likely to.

[Dod101]

Much of this sounds more like politics than morality. Let's focus on the moral issue. What is the moral imperative here? Is it to save as many lives as possible? We seem to have a definite "no" from some people. Let's ignore the details here. Suppose you had a choice between saving one British life, or two French lives. Do you believe that the moral imperative is to save the one British life, rather than the two French lives? Is a British life worth more than a French life?

It is not for the British Government to take the moral stand; its responsibility is to its citizens. End of.

Obviously it would not be right to deliberately starve the EU of vaccines but the fact is everyone should be sticking to the letter of the contracts signed. Just as it is for the British Government to protect its citizens it is for the EU or more properly the national governments in the EU to look after their citizens. They collectively gave the bureaucrats in Brussels the authority for supply of the vaccines and they must live with the consequences of that.

Your second post is irrelevant for this discussion and I see no parallels.

Dod

[9873210]

What's happened since March 2020 also matters.

Pouring massive resources into early development of vaccines was a moral action and surely gives some extra moral entitlement to those vaccines. Some of this is embodied in contracts, so contracts do have some moral standing.

Failing to deploy known, effective public health measures to limit the damage so you now have a massive but avoidable problem was a massive moral failure and gets you no extra credit (e.g. US, UK, EU, there's a pretty long list of abject failure).

[vagrantbrain]

Much of this sounds more like politics than morality. Let's focus on the moral issue. What is the moral imperative here? Is it to save as many lives as possible? We seem to have a definite "no" from some people. Let's ignore the details here. Suppose you had a choice between saving one British life, or two French lives. Do you believe that the moral imperative is to save the one British life, rather than the two French lives? Is a British life worth more than a French life?

Thats the imperative of a national government, yes. Private individuals, companies, charities etc can do whatever they feel is appropriate. If we were in the situation where UK government was the only one with the secret formula was extorting other countries then I can see the argument. But as we've effectively funded it's development, agreed to share it with the world at cost price, and (for once) made some good public procurement decisions I can't see any justification for withholding it from still-vulnerable UK citizens in favour of those elsewhere. These citizens are still getting vaccinated but at a rate consummate with their own governments decisions.

What about the morality of diverting stocks to some EU countries only for it to be destroyed in the end because they don't have sufficient infrastructure to distribute it, or their people just won't take it as they think it's dangerous?

By this logic the UK police should be deployed to the US to help out as their murder rate is far higher than the UKs so they clearly need the officers and detectives more than the UK does.

[1nvest]

The EU does not make the vaccines, multi-nationals with some of their 'factories' within the EU do. If the EU blocks the ability for those multinationals to export their products then they should look to move their domicile to elsewhere. Nor should the UK support such blockade policies i.e. respond appropriately by redirecting the components of the vaccine that the UK would otherwise supply to the EU instead to others, perhaps India for instance.

The EU has 7 million Oxford vaccines in storage, not being deployed, others would rather they be deployed asap rather than stockpiled. The failure is purely the EU's and its common mismanagement and corruption, where as a excuse it is looking to blame/hurt the UK. That deserves a responsive re-action and ending export of vaccine components is a reasonable response.

Such has been the EU's political standing that many in the EU now have little/no faith in the Oxford vaccine anyway. Better to direct the vaccines to other non-EU where they would be both accepted and injected sooner rather than later.

[vagrantbrain]

Thinking about it, starvation killed 9 million people last year so we should be stopping covid vaccinations and diverting national resources to feeding people instead if the objective is to save as many lives as possible!

[XFool]

Such has been the EU's political standing that many in the EU now have little/no faith in the Oxford vaccine anyway. Better to direct the vaccines to other non-EU where they would be both accepted and injected sooner rather than later.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

All along it has been the EU who have been recommending continuing use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, against decisions by individual nation states - some in the EU, some not. Recently it was an EU body, the EMA, who declared it safe and effective, leading to it's reinstatement by nation states who had suspended it.

Over and over on here this matter has been falsely portrayed. Presumably by ideologically fixated, anti-EU Leave voters. I wonder where the "Morality" is in that?

[1nvest]

With no vaccine 0.7% of the population might die. For many there are mild/no symptoms from contraction. Each year around 800,000 might be expected to die through natural/other causes anyway. Covid with no vaccine has been pretty much been the case for the last year and 125,000 deaths having Covid on the death certificate i.e. 15% of all deaths mentioning Covid.

With the first dose providing a 60% protection level the number is near halved (0.28%). At the second dose providing 90% protection the numbers, in the scale of things, fades into relatively insignificance (0.07%).

Countering that, many many more lives have been devastated one way or another due to lockdown. Be it the elderly living locked in and not seeing their family/friends for what little time they had remaining, or average-joe just existing between work and a 'cell'. All for the sake of a relatively small percent, many of whom may have been close to death anyway.

If you care so much about the few then you should ban driving cars in order to protect the few that might be severely injured or die from RTA's. Ban cigarettes, bank beer ...etc.

Morally its wrong how the media have driven a frenzy and how the state has used it as a excuse to impose restrictions and change laws that demise freedoms.

[1nvest]

Presumably by ideologically fixated, anti-EU Leave voters. I wonder where the "Morality" is in that?

Remainer's preaching moralities ain't worth the pixels.

[XFool]

...QED.

[redsturgeon]

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