Quarantine, isolation and the duty of easy rescue in public health

Giubilini, Alberto; Douglas, Thomas; Maslen, Hannah; Savulescu, Julian

We will take it that quarantine and isolation can be justified, and indeed morally mandatory, when the expected benefit to others and to society, in terms of infectious disease prevention or limitation, outweighs the expected costs, including the moral costs of coercion and compulsion, and satisfies three further constraints. However, we will argue that authorities ought to implement quarantine and coercion in such a manner that they have the strongest justification possible for those measures. Further, we take it that the justification for these measures is, other things being equal, stronger when quarantined or isolated individuals have a moral duty to submit to those measures. We argue that individuals fall under a duty of easy rescue, i.e. a moral obligation to benefit others, or to prevent harm to others, when doing so entails a small cost to them. We distinguish two types of easy rescue that have been presented in the philosophical literature, namely a comparative and an absolute type; we argue that individuals have an uncontroversial duty of easy rescue of a third type, and that, in certain circumstances, such duty implies that individuals have a duty to submit to quarantine or to isolation. Thus, the state can in some cases fulfil its requirement to act with the strongest justification possible by ensuring that the cost individuals bear for being quarantined or isolated is small, so that their submitting to quarantine or isolation fulfils the conditions of an easy rescue. Finally, we outline how, in concrete terms, this could be achieved, with particular reference to the ethical obligations of local authorities and of the international community in the case of quarantine and isolation measures implemented in poor countries.