Abstract
On the 5th of May 2020, a group of modellers, epidemiologists and biomedical scientists from the University of Edinburgh proposed a "segmenting and shielding" approach to easing the lockdown in the UK over the coming months. Their proposal, which has been submitted to the government and since been discussed in the media, offers what appears to be a pragmatic solution out of the current lockdown. The approach identifies segments of the population as at-risk groups and outlines ways in which these remain shielded, while 'healthy' segments would be allowed to return to some kind of normality, gradually, over several weeks. This proposal highlights how narrowly conceived scientific responses may result in unintended consequences and repeat harmful public health practices. As an interdisciplinary group of researchers from the humanities and social sciences at the University of Edinburgh, we respond to this proposal and highlight how ethics, history, medical sociology and anthropology - as well as disability studies and decolonial approaches - offer critical engagement with such responses, and call for more creative and inclusive responses to public health crises.
Highlights
Authors: Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, Ingrid Young, Lukas Engelmann, Ian Harper, Donna McCormack, Rebecca Marsland, Lotte Buch Segal, Nayha Sethi, Ellen Stewart, Marlee Tichenor
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The “Edinburgh Proposal,” as the Guardian[2] describes it, highlights how narrowly conceived scientific responses may result in unintended consequences and repeat harmful public health practices
Summary
As the authors note, they are 'unaware of segmenting and shielding' being proposed as a major public health initiative previously Not using this precise terminology, the practices and policies suggested have a long history in colonial and 20th century responses to pandemics. One could consider the history of cordon sanitaires drawn around white colonial hill stations in India and African countries, designed to protect white settlers from malaria.[4] Or we could look to the histories of social segregation in the nineteenth century history of cholera in the UK, of quarantining San Francisco’s Chinatown during the third plague pandemic in the US and, perhaps most obviously, of risk grouping along the lines of sexual identity in HIV:[5] questions of segmenting populations along measures of perceived vulnerability have always informed public health practices. It means being left unable to protect oneself and others against harm, as a result of social and structural inequalities, historical and current oppression and marginalisation
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