With few rules left to govern our Covid behaviour, we’ll increasingly take on the pleasure, or burden, of working out the right thing for ourselves
So the prime minister says that with the removal of Covid restrictions we will now be able to make our own “informed decisions” about what we will and will not do. Generally, we might feel it’s a sign of a good government and a good society that it allows and enables its members to make their own informed decisions about how they want to live their lives. But it’s hard to rejoice at the removal of most Covid restrictions with the current dramatic rise in new infections. When more than 100 experts have signed an open letter in the Lancet calling the full easing of restrictions “dangerous and premature”, it can feel less like relief and freedom, and more like we’re being released into a wild unknown – and one that comes with ever-increasing ethical burdens on us as individuals.
For in this new chapter, we need to recognise that the transfer of decision-making powers from government to us is not just about practical decisions but also about important ethical ones. We’ll make decisions about what we choose to do as we continue to spread a harmful new disease to one another causing various kinds of harms. And the risk of dangerous variants increases with each new infection. Let’s not forget that the Alpha variant was created in the UK and quickly spread around the world. So the possibility of us creating new variants also has global implications.
