Sustaining Livelihoods or Saving Lives? Economic System Justification in the Time of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, "What about the risk to human life?" Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern "What about people's livelihoods and individual freedoms?" A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional govern

SUBMITTER: Jain SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8964385 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature