Masks, Morality & Mandates: The Rules, Rights & Protections of Pandemic Vaccination
The global pandemic has produced unprecedented suffering. Moral division over what we are obligated to give up has framed our experience through the loss of loved ones, employment, personal independence, and the collapse of industry. Sacrifice has defined our global experience over the past two years, with vaccination and the protections of individual freedom acutely divided across one’s politics, race, gender, age, education, and income level. Vaccination has motivated arguments of moral consequence and the universalizability of mandates and has been the source of conflict concerning protected values, potentiality, and which decisions produce the best futures for the most people.
We will begin by applying Singer’s utilitarian thoughts on sacrifice to the pandemic, specifically the discussion of what’s significant or comparable within our disagreements on vaccination, and frame them in terms of Parfit’s theory of desire fulfillment. We will contrast this with Arthur’s consequentialist views on the inconsistencies between our rights as individuals against broader protections for the communities in which we live. We will then move to more deontological-leaning perspectives on the universalizability of broader protections through mandates, and the extent to which we are morally compelled to take communal protective decisions out of the hands of individuals, leaning on Korsgaard’s views that in doing so we might be treating people as means rather than ends. Finally, we will frame both consequentialist and deontological arguments in the context of Marquis’ views on potentiality, and who has the better future based on our individual and collective moral decisions.
Consequentialism holds that what’s right is a matter of promoting what’s good. But it doesn’t mean that such actions must always benefit the greatest number of people (Lord, 2022a). The moral egalitarianism and aspiration towards impartiality also holds that such maximization is a balancing function between positive outcomes and suffering. That in order to produce the most positive outcomes, we are required to sacrifice something important to us, even if such sacrifice produces harm (Lord, 2022a).
Singer’s original argument concerning charitable donation links the ideas of promoting good and weighing it against personal sacrifice (Singer, 1972). In today’s context, we intuitively believe that people dying from the COVID-19 virus is a bad thing, and we do not argue for this premise as we similarly hold it as indisputable. Where Singer’s argument diverges is between notions of what we must sacrifice to prevent such loss and suffering. The stronger version of his argument motivates that sacrificing something of comparable moral importance is required, where his weaker argument proposes that such sacrifice need only be something of significant moral import (Lord, 2022b). But in the context of vaccination, what might these things be?
For many, vaccinations are an invasive, physically harmful, unnatural violation, and conflict with the individual autonomy of how we view our own wellness. As Parfit suggests, the only desires which are relevant to us are the ones about our own lives but concedes that events we never know about may also be either good or bad for us (Parfit, 2012). That our desire for both those around us and beyond our immediate social circle not to get the virus has impact upon our welfare just as much as our own views on individual protection. This approach is less about seeking hedonic pleasure than it is about pain avoidance and reducing risk of suffering, but how we think about these risks is inconsistent between individuals and frustrated by broader intervention seeking to protect entire communities.
While it’s uncomfortable to think that not doing something would make us all unnecessarily worse off if we all didn’t do it, for example resisting vaccinations at scale across entire communities, such views concerning not getting vaccinated motivate an argument about rights (Lord, 2022c). As Arthur suggests in his response to Singer, we believe that our individual freedoms also afford us negative rights (Arthur, 1981). To forbid state or federal interference with our bodies, even if such mandates are informed by empirically based evidence of reduced transmission. Arthur argues that such inconsistency within our moral code motivates negative consequences such as guilt, inter-group conflict between those who have or haven’t chosen to become vaccinated and questioning of the effectiveness of such programs in the first place (Lord, 2022d). As such, these perspectives are highly partial, and frustrate the moral impartiality core to the consequentialist maximization of the good.
To return to the notions of significant and comparable sacrifice, many pro-vaccination individuals believe that receiving the vaccination is a sufficiently significant sacrifice to make in order to protect themselves, those they value, and society more broadly. By contrast, those who see vaccination as comparable sacrifice often choose the path of risk management, vaccination aversion and the holding fast of individual freedoms in the face of broader mandate, especially from those whom they didn’t vote for. Such sacrifices might be viewed as overdemanding, and in conflict with the expected positive consequences they may believe come from remaining unvaccinated.
The universalizability of mask mandates, vaccination programs and social distancing also motivates a deontological discussion of the extent to which we are, according to Kant, morally compelled to treat others as ends rather than means (Shafer-Landau, 2010). But what if those means are protection against contagion? And which ends hold most promise?
To treat someone as an end is to respect their dignity. To treat another as a mere means is to behave towards them in a way that is inconsistent with respecting their dignity (Lord, 2022e). Kant argues that because we are rational and value individual autonomy, dignity and respect are non-negotiable, and we can see how the mandating of vaccination may frustrate this by transgressing one’s right to choose. However, as Korsgaard argues, self-preservation is itself an end, and through implementing rules which minimize risk, we rightfully ought to constrain what we can do (Denis, 2007). We see this elsewhere in the widely held communally mandated protections of seat belts, traffic lights and law enforcement. If humanity is an end in itself, it must exist independently from one’s individual contingent inclinations, and trump the worth of anything with conditional value, potentially including autonomous rights (Lord, 2022f).
But is to do so to act unfairly, and therefore wrongly? What if everyone resisted the vaccine? Would the virus simply run its course, or create even greater prolonged and unnecessary suffering? Such rule consequentialism holds that an act is right if it is sanctioned by the set of rules which maximize goodness over time. This allows the view to hold that some things are always wrong, the things that are never sanctioned by the rules (Lord, 2022g). But if we believe we have authority over what’s good for us as individuals, and that the positive satisfaction of our desires are a function of what’s good for us, we can see how such behavior frustrates the maximization of the greater good. Good for us as individuals is not always the same thing as good for us more broadly as a society, even if sacrificing something individually may make us all better off.
Shafer-Landau raises four problems concerned with getting what we want (Lord, 2022h). We may get what we want but become disappointed. For example, we may get the vaccination but get sick from it or be frustrated by others we value not getting it. We may never find out if our desires are satisfied. For example, we never truly know if the sacrifice of our resistance or adherence to vaccination programs makes a material difference. We may have deficient desires, such that our desire to not get vaccinated is related to our curiosity to see what the experience of contagion is like. Or it may be the psychologically disturbing case that our masochistic desire to die from the virus is compelling enough to produce anti-vaccination behavior (Lord, 2022h).
So, who has the better future? Those who do or don’t get vaccinated? To answer this, we can motivate an argument around potentiality, expected good, and thoughts around the frustration of maximized good. In vaccinating ourselves do we deprive ourselves of the freedoms inherent in the autonomy of resisting the social mandate to comply? Or by not vaccinating do we increase the risk of prolonged contagion and increased suffering? Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ theory argues that the person who dies is always deprived of a great good, and therefore that depriving one of a future conscious life filled with meaning is sufficient for making a killing wrong (Marquis, 1989). Therefore, we can argue that if we resist vaccination, we deprive others of a future like ours. Marquis contends that the theory aligns with our existing moral contentions around the wrongness of killing, appeals to the worst of crimes argument, adheres to an appeal to cases argument, and explains why it is wrong to kill others, including non-humans. But its success hinges on what it takes to have a valuable future (Marquis, 1989).
For the non-vaccinated, that valuable future asserts the individual freedom not to be vaccinated, and the potentiality which comes from the non-consumption of chemicals into one’s body. It’s a perspective of purity which comes from the rejection of the unnatural, and as such, is closer to one’s values of divinity. For the vaccinated, it’s the belief that the potential of a vaccinated society accelerates the return to a previous non-pandemic life, and the lifting of the individual and societal restrictions which have diminished our collective welfare. One looks to resume societal normality and life as it was before. The other seeks to protect one’s values of individual freedom. Both interpret the values of autonomy, community, and divinity differently.
But if everyone’s welfare matters equally to morality (Jeske, 1997), how can we reconcile such highly partial and partisan views? If everyone’s interests are equally deserving of being cared about, where is the constructive limbic space where we reduce the duration of the restrictions which arise because of the pandemic, while maintaining the sufficient and necessary freedoms which can cause conflicts between us? Such questions clearly remain uncomfortable and unresolved as we emerge into the post-pandemic world of surges, variants, and optional masking.
In conclusion, the highly divisive subject of vaccination motives a moral argument where what one is required to sacrifice is motivated by the degree to which one asserts autonomy over one’s moral decisions, and the relationship one has to societal mandate and the welfare of those we don’t know. These decisions may be influenced by the values of those we value, by our beliefs of purity, or our belief that the potential moral future unlocked by not vaccinating is brighter and healthier for all. Both hold that their perspectives maximize good for the most people, but they disagree on timing and the autonomous, communal consequences of the other’s action, which diverge along highly partial and often discriminatory lines. But if we continue to treat those who do not adhere to our moral view as mere means, and disrespect their dignity, we will only prolong our disagreements, long after the virus has been cured.
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