Melbourne’s lockdown has been described as one of the harshest in the world. And jurisdictions outside Australia have taken other measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 once case numbers have eased.

So, in the absence of a reliable COVID-19 treatment or licensed vaccine, is lockdown still worth it?

To answer this, we not only need scientific evidence, we need ethics to decide which factors should weigh most heavily in our decision-making.

Some of these factors are not so obvious.