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

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

But what about the moral obligations of each single individual to contribute to protecting public health? The question is relevant in discussing the justification for coercive or compulsory state interventions for the following reason. We can assume that the state should have the strongest justification possible for implementing restraining measures that temporarily infringe upon certain individual rights. But it is doubtful that the (constrained) consequentialist considerations we have provided so far, by themselves, represent the strongest justification possible for restricting freedom of movement and association, although they may be strong enough to support a duty to implement quarantine and isolation in certain circumstances. To see this, notice that, in cases where our above constrained consequentialist justification applies, the individuals who are coerced or compelled may have no moral duty to submit to such measures.