Journal article
Beyond good and bad: rethinking solidarity and coercion in public health
- Abstract:
- We often use certain terms as if, in using them, they contain a decided moral judgement of an action. Especially in public health ethics, this is not always the case, as shown most starkly by recent (mis)use of the terms ‘solidarity’ and ‘coercion’ to label, and thereby judge, public health actions responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse the terms solidarity and coercion, and argue that they cannot be used alone as moral judgements of public health actions. Rather, they are better considered as descriptive terms that are merely frequent proxies for normative terms such as justice or utility. We illustrate our argument by reference to three case studies: school reopenings in the USA, mandatory isolation measures in the UK, and vaccine distribution within the EU.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.6MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/15265161.2026.2632018
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 221719/Z/20/Z
- 320225/Z/24/Z
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis
- Journal:
- American Journal of Bioethics More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-02-27
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-02-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1536-0075
- ISSN:
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1526-5161
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2368421
- Local pid:
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pubs:2368421
- Deposit date:
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2026-02-06
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Johnson et al
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & francis Group, llc. This is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricteduse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of theAccepted manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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