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Leslie Cannold has had enough of being even-handed and presenting Both Sides Now. Now she’s cutting to the chase: what’s the right way to go? In Everyday Dilemmas, Dr Cannold brings her ethical training to your problems. Send your questions to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line. She might even reply…

Dear Leslie, 

Can I get your take on social media cancellations and pile-ons? I’m thinking about the recent one with Sam Frost, but before that was Jessica Rowe, Louis CK, etc. It seems like mob rule to me. What am I missing? 

Confounded in Sandringham

Dear Confounded, 

I can’t walk past such a great opportunity to talk about something so important, but be warned: a proper answer would be book-length, and I’ve only got 300 words. 

I’m terrified of mobs. They lack a brain and any of the processes that — in a civilised society — at least attempt to have regard to accuracy and context (including whether someone really did it), fairness (including the opportunity to correct the record and respond) and proportionality (whether the punishment fits the crime and takes mitigating factors like age and remorse into account). In short, ask anyone whether they’d prefer to be judged by a mob or a court, and they’ll pick a court every time. 

Are Twitter cancellations like mobs? In general, I’d say yes. But having said that, I want to follow up by saying that mobs or other forms of peer-to-peer regulation arise where formal regulation is absent or failing.

For example, the Me Too movement arose because the absence of real-world policing of sexual harassment had allowed generations of women’s careers and lives to be crippled or destroyed. The ability of women and their sympathisers to band together online, draw attention on the issue, and demand overdue accountability for abusers who’d been allowed to get away with it for far too long was rough justice, but justice nevertheless. 

The upshot? If you don’t like cancel culture, throw your weight behind ensuring other accountability mechanisms for wrongdoers exist, and are enforced, online and off. That way the need for rough justice, including Twitter cancellation mobs, fades away.

Dear Leslie, 

The Victorian premier says I have to stay in lockdown until 2022 because I’m not vaccinated, but if I lived in NSW I would be free in a few weeks. How can this be fair? 

Worried in Williamstown

Dear Worried, 

Thanks for writing in. I’m fascinated by where your eye is drawn when it comes to fairness. My gaze goes elsewhere. Namely, the fairness of your decision not to vaccinate when you are unwilling to accept the known consequences of that choice designed to protect the rest of us. 

Let’s go through it. 

When you don’t vaccinate, there are negative consequences for other people. This is different to most other choices we make about our health, where the consequences of those choices — to take statins, or radiation therapy, or a knee replacement — only impact us. 

There are two ways your choice not to vaccinate hurts me. One, you’re more likely to get infected with COVID, which means you’re more likely to infect me and those I love, some of whom are older or burdened by chronic illness. Two, you’re more likely to be hospitalised with COVID and to end up in ICU, which makes it harder for me and my loved ones to get a bed if we need one because we’re unlucky enough to get a serious breakthrough infection — or need one to meet our other health needs. 

The morality of the choice you’ve made to put my health and that of my loved ones and other Victorians at risk by not getting vaccinated is questionable. But what’s unquestionably wrong is for you to refuse to accept the consequences of your choice designed to keep me and mine safe. 

Far from being unfair, the Victorian premier’s approach is designed to ensure the voluntarily unvaccinated take responsibility for their choices. Specifically, it’s meant to ensure I don’t have to wear a greater risk of getting seriously ill from COVID or endure another lockdown because you wouldn’t take one for the team. 

Why NSW isn’t doing the same is a mystery to me. 

Send your dilemmas to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line and you could get a reply from Dr Cannold in this column. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity.