Social theory is developing in response to the coronavirus (COVID) crisis. Fundamental questions about social justice in the relationship of individuals to society are raised by Delanty in his review of political philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault and Žižek. However, the focus on the libertarian critique of authoritarianism is not enough. The social democratic critique of neoliberalism lies at the centre of the contesting responses to the COVID crisis. A social democratic perspective on public health, democracy and state action (...) is contrasted with the anti-statists of left and right. This is addressed in debates on the relationship between science and governance, the place of crisis in theories of change and the conceptualisation of alternative forms of social formation. The crisis initiated by the pandemic, cascading through society, from health to economy, to polity and into violence, includes a contestation between social democratic and neoliberal visions of alternative forms of society. (shrink)

The complexity and inefficiency of the U.S. health care system complicates the distribution of life-saving medical technologies. When the public health is at stake, however, there are alternatives. The proposal for a national PrEP program published in this issue of the Journal applies some of the lessons of the national COVID vaccine campaign to HIV prevention. In doing so, it draws on other examples of public health approaches to the financing of medical technology, from vaccines for children to hepatitis (...) C treatment. (shrink)

New York City hospitals expanded resources to an unprecedented extent in response to the COVID pandemic. Thousands of beds, ICU beds, staff members, and ventilators were rapidly incorporated into h...

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is inappropriate as an aid to Covid policy-making because the plural, incommensurable values at stake are not all amenable to monetary measurement. CBA for Covid policy is also undermined by pervasive uncertainty and ignorance, and has some troubling distributional implications. However, non-consequentialist alternatives to CBA tend towards implausibly absolutist prohibitions on risk imposition. Arguments for setting aside consequentialism for special circumstances (the precautionary principle, or a medical rule of rescue) are also problematic when applied to (...) Covid policy. A broad consequentialist approach to policy guidance is defended, one which does not demand commensuration on a common monetary scale. Despite the absence of commensuration, policy guidance is still possible. (shrink)

The paper argues that one of the reasons the suppression of scientific dissent during the Covid pandemic has been so severe was because the dominant scientific Covid narrative has been turned into a political myth, i.e. a narrative mobilizing groups in support of key moral values. Taking the example of Covid vaccination, I show the key values with which it became linked in Czechia. Questioning vaccination came to be seen as endangering these values, which made scientific dissent (...) appear as particularly dangerous. I further analyse how this schematic discourse dealt with “free-vax” scientists, who were not against Covid vaccination as such but only against its blanket application. I show that their discreditation was mainly carried out by various fact-checking NGOs or social media influencers, who attempted to delegitimize them not by scientific arguments but rather by associating them with more dubious groups of social actors, or labelling their views as “disinformation”. This discrediting strategy was largely successful, but it also had some undesirable social and political backfire effects, in that it pushed some of the free-vaxxers out of the liberal democratic mainstream and forced them to seek alliance with more anti-systemic segments of the population in attempts at political resistance. (shrink)

This article examines the nature of individual goods, public goods, and the common good in the context of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID). ‘Common’ in ‘common good’ is what applies to all persons without exception, and ‘good’ is what contributes to human flourishing. The common good is regarded as the communion of persons in good living. Addressing the relationship between the economy and society, it is proposed that the marketplace subsists within society. Acknowledging that we are deeply connected, the (...) article employs the philosophies of MacIntyre, Maritain and Sandel to highlight the importance of reciprocity, relationships, and generosity as characteristics of the common good. Two narratives in the public discourse are observed in these COVID days – one characterised by fear and selfishness, the other by hope and generosity. The author recognises that this pandemic can be conceived as a ‘wicked’ problem in a ‘volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous’ world, and implications for leaders and citizens in managing COVID are suggested. (shrink)

contents -/- i. death and the mask ii. shifts in the TTC ad-space iii. a virus in a superposition iv. this virus has totally hacked us v. a test of Bayesian competence vi. a siege on the Local, by the Global vii. re lab-leak theory: God did it viii. we held ourselves apart by this telescope ix. Google knows we'll all be dead x. Uber gets us all to surveil xi. Netflix pretends to be my friend xii. can teleCOMM map (...) my interior? xiii. Library's a hi-rise, in lockdown xiv. so could the A.I. announce itself xv. N_BossTRON, Surveillance Daemon xvi. prediction markets make War Profiteers xvii. hide Fish in sea, Bird in forest xviii. the DJ and the human, too much credit xix. dumb TV, an ingenious production xx. WE THE NORTH xxi. Debt: The First 5,000 Years xxii. Theses on Kingship xxiii. when i google Zeus xxiv. your Hardcore History xxv. consumerism a pacification campaign xxvi. fascism is quiet now xxvii. a Chomsky need keep record. (shrink)

Since the World Health Organization first declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, diverse strategies have emerged to address it. This paper focuses on two leading strategies, elimination and mitigation, and examines their ethical basis. Elimination or ‘Zero-COVID’ dominates policies in Pacific Rim societies. It sets as a goal zero deaths and seeks to contain transmission using stringent short-term lockdowns, followed by strict find, test, trace and isolate methods. Mitigation, which dominates in the US and most European nations, sets targets (...) for community transmission and lifts restrictions once targets are met. This approach takes calculated risks and regards a certain amount of disease and death as ethically justified. Section I examines different societal responses to risk that underlie these different policy approaches. Section II focuses on ethical arguments favouring Zero-COVID and raises health equity objections. Section III proposes a long-term strategy that balances the twin goals of promoting population health and health equity. There are no data available for this work. (shrink)

elaine and i were in mexico city following the 2020 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. From our Airbnb, we walked everywhere—to El Zocalo, to museums and restaurants, and through neighborhoods. We followed the news of increasing concern about the COVID outbreak in Europe and the United States, but it seemed like news from a distant planet. Until we flew home, that is, and the airport was deserted. My college paused classes after Spring break, and (...) the NCAA basketball tournament was canceled—that is when we knew it was serious. My father was released from the hospital after a brain biopsy on March 17, and we drove to Pennsylvania from Kentucky. The highway was deserted, the food and... (shrink)

It is a thrill to have two scholars whom I admire greatly commenting on my own work. I want to thank Professors Miriam Solomon and Inmaculada de Melo-Martin for their careful reading and attention to the book. I found their positive evaluation of the research very encouraging and still both commentaries offer critical challenges that warrant attention. This response will address two points of discussion: normative theorizing on trust; whether the conceptual resources, specifically the crisis of trust framework, can address (...) the present situation of COVID vaccine hesitancy.Solomon and de Melo-Martin question the limited attention I give to evaluating the propositional claims and the... (shrink)

O texto parte de um diagnóstico fenomenológico: o de que toda emergência pandêmica (como a da covid, por exemplo) é o sintoma fatídico de um estado de crise motivado nas entranhas mesmas ontológicas da racionalidade tal qual toma forma em nossa cultura no Ocidente. A tarefa do pensamento não consiste em destruir a razão, mas salvaguardá-la ante o perigo, sempre iminente, do irracionalismo. Assim, toda forma de obscurantismo emerge como uma figura decadente tendo como pano de fundo sintomático a (...) crise da própria razão; crise essa instalada pela distinção de princípio entre cultura e natureza tão bem prefigurada por Marx e aprofundada por Merleau-Ponty. O texto examina esse ponto nevrálgico e termina realçando o caráter essencial e, portanto, inalienavelmente político desse fenômeno. (shrink)

A pesar de algunos antecedentes dispersos y excepciones, existe una manifiesta laguna en la literatura sobre el concepto de cultura científica comunitaria. Con esa expresión nos referimos a situaciones en las cuales unos ciudadanos perciben un problema, se agrupan, organizan, comunican y ponen en común sus recursos para buscar, evaluar y producir conocimiento científico con el fin de encarar dicho problema. En este trabajo realizamos una propuesta de caracterización de la cultura científica comunitaria. Posteriormente, procedemos a aplicarla y contrastarla respecto (...) del caso de los colectivos de afectados por la COVID persistente. La metodología empleada se ha basado en el análisis documental. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 153-155.

A gestão da Covid no Brasil está entre as piores do mundo, com número de óbitos inaceitavelmente alto. É inclusive estranho que esses resultados não tenham sido capazes de disparar entre os brasileiros nenhuma mobilização social mais decisiva. Não obstante o reconhecimento da importância do debate mais estritamente político, o objetivo deste artigo é ensaiar uma reflexão fenomenológica sobre a respiração, tendo Heidegger como referência principal. A Covid é afinal uma doença respiratória, que nos convida – ou deveria (...) convidar – a pensar sobre a respiração sob perspectivas históricas, ontológicas e existenciais. São dois os temas a discutir: nossa empobrecida relação com o respirar, e a dificuldade de, mesmo diante de mais de 600 mil mortes direta ou indiretamente causadas no Brasil por asfixia – e mais de 5 milhões no mundo –, encontrarmos caminho para discutir o assunto com mais profundidade. (shrink)

Recent increases in inflation rates around the world has lead to many discussions on the causes of such rapid adjustments, some suggesting that higher profits are responsible driving force behind inflation. Here we will focus on the United States case and demonstrate why quantity theory of money is relevant to explain what has been going on with inflation after 2020 rather than profit based theory of inflation. First section introduces the argument. Second section restates quantity theory of money with relevance (...) to the empirical literature. Third section shows why quantity theory despite some suggestions works to explain the current levels of inflation. Fourth section notices why increases in nominal profits during inflation are part of the natural adjustment path. Last section offers concluding comments. (shrink)

The COVID world is just like it was before, only more so. Every problem that already existed is worse. What can philosophy do in such a world? I think there are at least two opportunities for philosophy today. The first is that philosophers can seize this historical moment to intervene in almost every sector of social, political, and ethical life. The second unique opportunity I think philosophers have is to create new concepts in response to new phenomena. New events (...) call for new ways of thinking and being that change our world-view. COVID is not just an amplification of existing power structures. It has also changed our relationship to and awareness of the importance of social and viral mobilities. Might the concept of “motion” offer us a new perspective on the world? (shrink)

This essay explores the problem of trust and truth in states of emergency. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s theory of biopolitics and his objections to political managerialism I argue that the real problem exposed by the pandemic was not a lack of trust in authority but an unscientific and uncritical attachment to expertise.

ABSTRACT:As Vice Chair of Clinical Services of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, I choose to work where clinical services need most attention. As a woman, I want to show up where we can be seen and show up in the best possible way. Just as COVID began, I found myself doing clinical shifts in the newly created psychiatry emergency room. I became part of a front-line team, where “I” became “We,” facing an unknown enemy. Not only was my (...) work life upended, but my personal life was too, as I rushed to help my daughter, a medical student, care for her son when his day-care closed. My commentary highlights the increased burden experienced by women during this time, an example of systemic bias in medicine. (shrink)

This article brings into relief two desiderata in childrearing, the importance of which the pandemic has made clearer than ever. The first is to ensure that, in schools as well as outside them, children have ample opportunities to enjoy goods that are particular to childhood: unstructured time, to be spent playing with other children, discovering the world in company or alone, or indeed pursuing any of the creative activities that make children happy and help them learn. I refer to these (...) as “special goods of childhood.” The second desiderata is to turn childrearing into a more communal practice, with lesser parental monopoly of care. For this, we need to give children access to multiple caring adults, and thus more opportunities to form secure and protected relationships. (shrink)

The last 15 years have seen a remarkable set of changes in the global business environment. Established companies and start-ups alike have been subjected to some fundamental shifts in the very way that we conceptualize business. Together with some generational challenges we have seen myriad calls for a new narrative about business. And, even more recently, the COVID pandemic has reinforced a number of these shifts and led to even more fundamental change. The purpose of this essay is to (...) outline these challenges to the dominant narrative about business and to suggest that it is no longer a useful way to think about value creation and trade (business). (shrink)

This article focuses on the experiences of social care workers during the first wave of the Covid pandemic. The method involved analyzing diaries kept by 65 professionals in 8 French regions during the first lockdown in France in the spring of 2020. As a form of non-binding, narrative expression, keeping diaries breaks with traditional models of reporting common in social care structures and allowed professionals to reflect on the experience as it was lived. In the diaries, professionals explored how (...) the crisis disrupted and challenged their personal and professional values but also allowed innovation in care practices for vulnerable populations that will continue beyond the pandemic period. Five care values were put to forefront by professionals: (1) spontaneity/flexibility; (2) respect for persons; (3) team reflexivity; (4) innovation; (5) solidarity. Mobilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ideas on recognition, Payet and Laforgue’s analysis of weak actors, as well as research on moral distress, we discuss how these values were tested during the crisis and what effect they had on professionals’ and users’ vulnerabilities. We will also elaborate the interest of keeping account of social care work through narrative methods. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, large food banks that collect, warehouse, and redistribute food have become institutionalized across Europe. Although food banks gained increased visibility as important food relief mechanisms during the covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the crisis also highlighted their structural weaknesses and the fragility of the charity-based emergency food system. In particular, many European food banks faced higher costs, lower food stocks, uneven food donations, and lower numbers of volunteers and personnel as demand for food (...) relief increased sharply. Also, many food banks lacked personal health and safety equipment for front-line staff and volunteers, many of whom were vulnerable or aged, thus forcing the closure of some charities due to health concerns. Yet, the impact of the pandemic was uneven across the continent as the covid pandemic strengthened some food banks while others were weakened. To explore these dynamics in detail, this paper utilizes in-depth interviews and surveys of key food bank operators in the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece to analyze how and why European food bank systems fared so differently from the pandemic. In short, the findings in this paper reveal how the Norwegian food bank system leveraged its position to increase fundraising and visibility, while the Netherlands food bank system suffered from long-term structural weaknesses, and the Greek food bank system was further embroiled in government tensions that threatened its existence. The preexisting structure of food bank systems, broader political economy, and historical context significantly impacted how food relief networks fared during the pandemic. (shrink)

Like every country in the past two years, the United Kingdom has seen its fair share of COVID fake news in circulation. An early example in the first days of the pandemic was the rumor that the dis...

This article examines two interrelated aspects of Mexican regional music response to the coronavirus crisis in the música huasteca community: the growth of interactive huapango livestreams as a preexisting but newly significant space for informal community gathering and cultural participation at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and the composition of original verses by son huasteco performers addressing the pandemic. Both the livestreams and the newly created coronavirus disease verses reflect critical improvisatory approaches to the pandemic in música huasteca. The (...) interactive livestreams signaled an ad hoc community infrastructure facilitated by social media and an emerging community space fostered by Do-It-Yourself activists. Improvised COVID-related verses presented resonant local and regional themes as a community response to a global crisis. Digital ethnography conducted since March 2020 revealed a regional burst of musical creativity coupled with DIY intentionality, a leveling of access to virtual community spaces, and enhanced digital intimacies established across a wide cultural diaspora in Mexico and the USA. These responses were musically, poetically, and organizationally improvisational, as was the overall outpouring of the son huasteco music inspired by the coronavirus outbreak. Son huasteco is a folk music tradition from the Huasteca, a geo-cultural region spanning the intersection of six states in central Mexico. This study examines a selection of musical responses by discussing improvisational examples in both Spanish and the indigenous language Nahuatl, and in the virtual musical communities of the Huasteca migrant diaspora in digital events such as “Encuentro Virtual de Tríos Huastecos,” the “Huapangos Sin Fronteras” festival and competition, and in the nightly gatherings on social media platforms developed during the pandemic to sustain the Huastecan cultural expression. These phenomena have served as vibrant points of transnational connection and identity in a time where physical gatherings were untenable. (shrink)

Given the abrupt global disruption caused by SARS-CoV-2, one might think that the COVID pandemic was an unpredictable event. But in the years leading up to the emergence of the COVID pandemic, several documents had already been warning of the increasing occurrences of new disease outbreaks with pandemic potential and lack of corresponding policies to promote pandemic preparedness and response. In this article, we call these documents “early warnings”. We argue that a survey of early warnings can help (...) science communicators to promote the public understanding of evidence-based pandemic preparedness and response policies at local or international level. Our proposal differs from other approaches to pandemic preparedness and response in that it highlights the relevance of documents published before the COVID outbreak. We show that the early warnings did not become outdated after the COVID outbreak, but, rather, that they are even more pressing now. (shrink)

Written in the early months of the COVID pandemic, and in the midst of the second wave of Black Lives Matters protest, this article suggests that Americans experienced these shocking social events as a double-whammy cultural trauma, as deeply troubling to their collective identity as nation. How the trauma played out would determine the near-term future of American politics. Were the poor and non-white the principal victims of the double whammy, or were white Americans and the ‘hard-working middle class’ (...) actually the injured parties? Who was the trauma’s perpetrator? Was it China, inadequate healthcare, government bureaucracy, or Trump and ‘know-nothing’ populism? The performances that provided the most felicitous answers to such questions would determine whether the country moved to the left or the right in the months before the Presidential election that would take place before year’s end. (shrink)

PurposeWe explored two complex phenomena associated with effective education. First, teachers’ professional agency, the volitional actions they take in response to perceived opportunities, was examined to consider individual differences in its enactment. Second, “strong” emotions have been proposed as important in teaching and learning, and we wished to clarify which basic emotions might be involved, besides curiosity, which is a known emotional factor in engagement in teaching. We also explored how agency and basic emotions might be related.ApproachThirteen teachers working in (...) Scottish secondary schools were interviewed at the start of the covid pandemic in 2020 to discuss relevant feelings, thoughts and actions arising from unprecedented changes in their lives and professional practices. Thematic analysis was used to identify aspects of agentic behavior and basic emotions expressed.FindingsTeacher agency was expressed through adaptability, collective agency, constrained agency, and non-action. Four basic emotion percepts were identified, which we label as “CARE”, “CURIOSITY”, “COOPERATION”, and “CHALLENGE”.OriginalityWe extend the definition of agency to include volitional non-action as a response to opportunity. In contrast to prior research emphasizing emotions as an outcome of volitional behavior, we explore emotions preceding agency. We develop four theoretical propositions related to teacher emotions. Four emotion percepts substantially influence teachers’ voluntary motivated behavior. The amount and proportion of emotions experienced varies between individual teachers. The four percepts are experienced concurrently or in rapid succession in engaged teaching contexts. Professional experience and specific situational factors also influence teachers’ behavioral choices. For future consideration, we suggest that awareness of emotion percepts may encourage both teachers’ engagement and their professional agency for the benefit of their pedagogical practice and outcomes for their students. (shrink)

If good ethics is the process of ongoing dialogical deliberation on basic normative questions for the purpose of instituting principles for action, then the COVID crisis, or any crisis, is not a good time for developing ethical precepts on the run. Given dominant ethical trends, such reactive ethics tends to lead to either individualized struggles over the right way to act or hasty sets of guidelines that leave out contextualizing questions concerning regimes of care. Good people will find themselves (...) suggesting strange things, from setting up lifeboat scenarios to supporting structural racism. This essay argues against both these paths—crisis-ridden agonism or algorithmic resource-allocation—and turns instead to a form of ethics of care which takes its departure from older forms of ethics, while recognizing that modern and postmodern challenges no longer allow their grounding in animated relations, natural rights, or cosmological truths. (shrink)

The paper argues that the large extent of disinformation has increased the number of deaths from coronavirus due to the proliferation of hoaxes spread via digital tools and media. It is noted that this problem could worsen in the post-COVID society and as such should be understood as having significant political import. Moreover, the phenomenon of disinformation has raised ethical questions around how to actively prevent deaths indirectly caused by hoaxes, as well as epistemological questions around maintaining criteria of (...) truthfulness. (shrink)

We agree with Alfandre and colleagues that ethics guidance for contingency conditions in public health emergencies is urgently needed. The Minnesota COVID Ethics Collabora...

The coronavirus pandemic has shattered our world with increased morbidity, mortality, and personal/social sufferings. At the time of this writing, we are in a biomedical race for protective equipment, viral testing, and vaccine creation in an effort to respond to COVID threats. But what is the role of health humanities in these viral times? This article works though interdisciplinary connections between health humanities, the planetary health movement, and environmental humanities to conceptualize the emergence of “planetary health humanities.” The goal (...) of this affinity linkage is to re-story health humanities toward promotion of planetary health and community well-being. Wellbeing is critical because the main driver of environmental destruction and decreasing planetary health is coming from non-sustainable definitions of wellbeing. We need the arts and humanities to help reimagine the possibility of a sustainable community wellbeing. For health humanities, a basic role and narrative identity starts to emerge—we should become a planetary health humanities. (shrink)

Proportionality matters. Intuitively, proportionality sets the ceiling on the amount of defensive violence that is permissible. A plausible view is that what justifies proportionality also justifies other defensive-violence requirements—for example, discrimination and necessity—and shows why other purported requirements are mistaken—for example, imminence. I argue that if defensive-violence proportionality is a part of moral reality, then there is a systematic justification of it. If there is a systematic justification of proportionality, then there is an adequate equation for it. There is no (...) adequate equation for proportionality. Hence, proportionality is not part of moral reality. As a result, non-consequentialism does not justify defensive violence. The last part of this paper briefly applies these findings to vaccine mandates. (shrink)

The current pandemic represents unprecedented times in medical education. In addition to the already strenuous demands of medical school, the SARS-CoVid-2 pandemic introduced a new source of ethical and moral pressure on students. Medical students navigated finishing their didactic years in isolation and initiated their clinical rotations in a pandemic environment. Many medical students found themselves in the frustrating position of being non-essential healthcare workers but still wanting to help. This paper follows the personal and shared experiences of a (...) second-year medical student transitioning to their third year. In particular, this paper examines the author’s personal ties to the disability community through their family, and how this impacted their approach in striving to aid in the pandemic. (shrink)