Having first emerged in high and upper-middle income countries (China, Europe, USA), the dominant response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been to try to ‘flatten the curve’ through social distancing, while buying time to develop vaccines and cures. Almost all affected countries in the global north have pursued this strategy, with only a few exceptions such as Sweden, which has refused to order social distancing. It is too early to tell if Sweden will pay a heavy price for its heterodox approach, just as it is too early to know the social and economic costs of social distancing edicts in the north. However, at a moment when the pandemic has begun to shift to the global south, it is appropriate to reflect on the trade-offs of the social distance-dominated mitigation model, as well as its applicability across all environments.

In a recent article, University of Johannesburg academics Alex Broadbent and Benjamin Smart argue that exporting the ‘one-size-fits-all’ social distancing model to African countries ‘will lead to malnutrition and starvation for millions of people’ and that children and especially infants will be the most at risk. Pursuing this argument, Broadbent and Smart provocatively ask: ‘Suppose you had the choice between two health policies, A and B. Policy A would result in the death of a lot of elderly people. Policy B would result in the death of a lot of children, especially infants. Which would you choose?’

In this context—regardless of whether in the global north or south—governments will have to make devastating choices about who to prioritise and how. Please join CHRGJ’s panel of public health, medical ethics, philosophy and epidemiologist experts for a discussion on the ‘The Ethics and Applicability of the Social Distancing model in the Global South,”

Panelists

Moderator

Professor Jackie Dugard, Scholar in Residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law; Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Join the Zoom webinar using this link.

Related Reading

The following readings are intended to inform and foster discussion. Views and opinions within do not necessarily reflect CHRGJ’s views.

• “Lockdown Decisions Lie Between a Rock and a Hard Place” by Paula Armstrong

• “The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?“by Hannah Beech, Alissa J. Rubin, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Ruth Maclean

• “Actuaries Warn Ramaphosa of a ‘Humanitarian Disaster to Dwarf COVID-19′ if Restrictive Lockdown is not Lifted” by Terry Bell
• “Why a One-size-fits-all Approach to COVID-19 Could Have Lethal Consequences” by Alex Broadbent and Benjamin T. H. Smart
• “Lockdown is Wrong for Africa” by Alex Broadbent

• “Social Distancing and ‘Flatten the Curve’: Africa Can Do It” by Chambi Chachage

• “Lockdown Blues: Covid-19 in a Place of Inequality – Towards a Spatially Contextualised Mitigation Plan” by Jackie Dugard

• “A Novel Idea: Integrating Urban and Rural Safety Nets in Africa during the Pandemic” by Astrid Haas and Rachel Strohm

• “Do Not Remove the People, Bring Services to Them” by Jesse Harber

• “Overlooking the Missing Millions—Another ‘Stain on our National Conscience’” by Mark Heywood
• “State of our Covid-nation: The Matter of Trust and Lockouts” by Mark Heywood

• “The Science is Becoming Clear: Lockdowns are no Longer the Right Medicine” by John Ioannidis and Rohan Silva

• “Coercion or the Social Contract? COVID-19 and Spatial (in)justice in African Cities” by Caroline Wanjiku Kihato and Loren B Landau
• “The World is Doing Lockdowns All Wrong” by Sami Mahroum

• “The Impact of COVID-19 in Informal Settlements – Are we Paying Enough Attention?” by Annie Wilkinson

• “Human Rights and Coronavirus: What’s at Stake for Truth, Trust, and Democracy?” by Alicia Ely Yamin and Roojin Habibi

• COVID-19 Control in Low-income Settings and Displaced Populations: What can Realistically be Done?

• Key Considerations: COVID-19 in Informal Urban Settlements