I am opposed to enforced lockdowns to protect us against viruses.

Don't get me wrong: if there's a dangerous virus on the loose, then I highly recommend locking yourself down (other things being equal, that is - if it'll cost you your livelihood, then it may be wiser not to, depending on how dangerous the virus is.....but you're probably in the best position to make that judgement).

And if you know that you have a dangerous virus - or even if it is reasonable to believe you do (and the reasonableness of believing you have it may sometimes depend on just how dangerous it is) - then I think you have a duty to lock yourself down and that others may be entitled to make sure you lock yourself down (so, if you have - or, depending on how dangerous the virus is, reasonably believe you have it, then you no longer have the right not to be locked down).

What I am opposed to - and I think careful ethical reflation vindicates my position - is forcing those who do not have a virus, or who reasonably believe themselves not to have it, to lock down. What I am opposed to, then, is what's happened and happening in response to the covid virus. What has muddied the moral waters in this particular case and blinded many to the injustice of it all, is that governments have made us do what it was probably sensible for many of us to do (though by no means most - for many the lockdowns have made their situations considerably worse than it would have been had they caught the virus.....especially if they've caught it anyway!). (An aside: most of those making these decisions are in jobs that are among the safest - the experts...and they're not ethics experts.....are academics in tenured positions).

Anyway, here's why I think these lockdowns are unjust. The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson came up with a famous thought experiment involving a violinist. There's a violinist who needs the use of someone else's kidneys - yours, specifically - for 9 months or he'll die. The society of music lovers take it upon themselves to kidnap someone - you - and hook you up to this violinist. When you come around the doctor who hooked you up explains the situation. Are you entitled to unhook yourself and leave?

Virtually everyone's intuitions deliver the same verdict: of course you can. It would be very generous of you to stay for 9 months and allow the violinist the use of your kidneys. But it is well beyond the call of duty and you're within your rights to leave. The violinist is innocent and his life is in danger. But nevertheless, he's not entitled to restrict your freedom for 9 months so that he may live.

Now imagine you get pregnant through no fault of your own - you have been raped, say. Do you have to go through with the pregnancy, at considerable cost in terms of your own comfort and freedom, or are you entitled to abort? Well, the situation seems relevantly analogous to the previous one. Yes, the child (if child it be) is innocent and depends for its life upon your body, but that was true of the violinist as well. And so it seems that we can reasonably take the judgement about the violinist case and apply it to this one: you are obviously entitled to abort. The innocent foetus is not entitled to the use of your body for 9 months - not, then, entitled to restrict you for 9 months, even though its life depends on it.

What's the moral of these cases? Well, that a person's right to life does not amount to a right to restrict the freedom of another person for 9 months. YOu could save a life by restricting your freedom for 9 months. But you do not have to - no one has the right to make you. If you unhook, then your behaviour has resulted in an innocent person dying who otherwise would have lived; but your behaviour did not violate that person's right to life. My right to life does not give me a right to restrict your freedom for 9 months.

Apply that to lockdowns. There's a virus on the loose. And it kills some of those who get it. Well, do we have to give up 9 months freedom in order to prevent those people from being killed? Is that what having a right to life amounts to? No, that's what we just learned from Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiments.

If it helps, just imagine that pregnancies are like viruses and can be caught just by going out and going about your everyday business. Would women who go out now have to endure their pregnancies or would they be entitled to abort? I think they'd obviously be entitled to abort. And it'd be quite unjust to insist that women lock themselves down or else go through pregnancies to avoid innocent people from being killed. Again: an innocent person's right to life is not a right to have from others everything they need to stay alive. Among us there are those who, through no fault of their own, are liable to die if they get covid. I may be one of them. But my right to life does not extend to entitling me to restrict your freedom so that I may not get covid and die from it, anymore than a foetus's right to life extends to restricting the freedom of the woman it is inhabiting.

Thus, as I see it widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist and abortion cases imply that enforced lockdowns are unjust. They violate our rights. They greatly restrict our freedom and impose costs and burdens on us for the sake of preventing innocents from dying. We have a right to life, but my right to life does not entitle me to restrict your freedom to go about your life as normal for months on end, even if your doing those things means I may die, as seems obvious in the pregnancy case (where it will definitely result in a death!). It is not my fault there is a virus on the loose. And it is not yours either. And even if I happen to have given it to you while freely going about my business - so, not intentionally or knowingly - and you die from it, then I did not violate your right to life (and nor you mine if the reverse happens), anymore than a woman who is pregnant by rape violates the right to life of the unborn child inside her if she decides to have an abortion.

Note Thomson's position is not absolutist (and nor is mine). If you only have to give up, say, 10 minutes of your time to save the violinist, then probably you ought and maybe others can make you stay; so she is not saying that the right to life of another doesn't place any restrictions on our freedom. The point is that there are limits - even if we can't come up with a crystal clear rule that describes them - on the amount of restriction, cost and burden another person's right to life can impose on another. And it seems pretty obvious that the costs and burdens of a pregnancy exceed that limit, as - I think even more plausibly - do the costs and burdens of lockdowns.