COVID-19 has crowned1 a number of other disasters (wildfires in Australia, Desert Locusts in Kenya, an imminent WWIII merging Iran and the US), causing panic to click into place and horror to become our global predicament, making us realize that we live in the illusion of the permanence of things, of mastery, and of immortality. People’s turning to social media for trans-local news on COVID-19 has stirred great ire in the world. This led to the proliferation of dark (...) images that associate the viral catastrophe with the end as we know it. To problematize the idea of the apocalypse (or the end) this paper speaks of three moments of survival in human existence: the beneath, the behind and the beyond. We argue that the apocalyptic nature of the pandemic and its global horrorism are part of a congeries of apocalyptic simulations that have always been part of the narrative with which we try to define ourexistence on earth. This paper masks itself against perfunctory examinations of the term apocalypse, and offers instead an understanding that runs along the lines of its Greek etymological sense as apokalyptein (revelation). It offers what Foucault calls an ontology of the present, that interrogates the history of COVID -19 with an emphasis neither on its origin nor on its telos. As beyondists, the COVID-19 catastrophe has revealed to us that 1) we have ‘access to knowledge beyond knowledge’ (see Gumpert Citation2012), and therefore that 2) our modern predicament is not very modern. The end, (not) to be sure, has been lived and relived in the boundary between reality and simulation. After all, the end of something comprises the beginning (in reverse) of that which “endeth”, throwing the beyond, behind and beneath in the Ferris wheel of epistemological and existential entanglement. (shrink)

Highly committed teachers spend more effort helping their schools achieve the academic goals. The Covid-19 pandemic had a dire effect on education worldwide. However, just after a few semesters, teachers were asked to return back to schools to teach in person. This study aims to analyze the organizational commitment levels of school teachers before and after the implementation of the Covid-19 pandemic measures that resulted in a two semester break in face-to-face teaching. In this study, a quantitative research (...) method was utilized. A total of 300 teachers’ commitment levels were assessed in a longitudinal test by using a popular tool in order to see the relative change as result of Covid-19 pandemic in Cyprus. The study mainly focuses on gender, marital status, education levels, job experience, and duration of work in the organizations in which the information from responses were statistically analyzed. According to the results of the quantitative analysis, the organizational commitment sampling average were determined to be at medium-high levels. The commitment levels of teachers were observed to decrease after the Covid-19 pandemic measures came to be implemented in schools. A detailed investigation of the school teachers’ commitment levels corresponding to the different demographic characteristics before Covid-19 and after the implementation of normalization measures is presented herein. (shrink)

Background The wide proliferation of Covid-19 has impacted billions of people all over the world. This catastrophic pandemic outbreak and ostracism at work have posed challenges for all healthcare professionals, especially for nurses, and have led to a significant increase in the workload, several physical and mental problems, and a change in behavior that is more negative and counterproductive. Therefore, leadership behaviors that are moral in nature serve as a trigger and lessen the adverse workplace effects on nurses’ conduct. (...) Aim this research is directed to explore the impact of post-COVID-19 workplace ostracism on nurses’ counterproductive behavior and examine the role of moral leadership as a mediating factor in post-COVID-19 workplace ostracism and nurses’ counterproductive behavior. Ethical consideration Ethical review and approval Was received from Ethical Committee at the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University, Egypt. Methods A cross-sectional and correlation study was implemented in all units of medical, surgical, critical and intensive care units by using three tools; moral leadership questionnaire, Workplace Ostracism Instrument (WOS), and Counterproductive Work Behaviors Questionnaire (CWBs). A convenient sample of 340 from 699 bedside nurses was granted. Results This study revealed that nurses’ perceived moderate mean percent (55.49 ± 3.46) of overall workplace ostracism and counterproductive behavior (74.69 ± 6.15). However, they perceived a low mean percentage of moral leadership. There was a significant positive correlation between workplace ostracism and counterproductive behavior. Otherwise, a significant negative correlation was found between moral leadership, workplace ostracism and counterproductive behavior. Also, this study proved the mediating effect of moral leadership in decreasing workplace ostracism by 79.3% and counterproductive behavior by 36.7%. Conclusion Hospital administrators need to be aware of the significance of moral leadership and apply integrity in the clinical setting to reduce the drawback of isolation on nurses' conduct and increase value for the organization as a whole and nurses in particular. (shrink)

In the intricate tapestry of Iran’s geopolitical, cultural, and economic landscape, the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed profound changes. This essay delves into the multifaceted impact of the pandemic on Iranians’ lives, dissecting the specific nuances shaped by the complex biopolitical environment. We unravel the subtle imprints of COVID-19 on the biopolitical discourse, exploring how it intricately intertwines with daily life, social interactions, and the nation’s health system.

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for (...) the belief that they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has highlighted many of the difficult ethical issues that health care professionals confront in caring for patients and families. The decisions such workers face on the front lines are fraught with uncertainty for all stakeholders. Our focus is on the implications for nurses, who are the largest global health care workforce but whose perspectives are not always fully considered. This essay discusses three overarching ethical issues that create a myriad of concerns and will likely affect nurses (...) globally in unique ways: the safety of nurses, patients, colleagues, and families; the allocation of scarce resources; and the changing nature of nurses’ relationships with patients and families. We urge policy‐makers to ensure that nurses’ voices and perspectives are integrated into both local and global decision‐making so as to minimize the structural injustices many nurses have faced to date. Finally, we urge nurses to seek sources of support throughout this pandemic. (shrink)

Tüm dünyayı etkisi altına alan koronavirüs pandemisinin siyasi tutumlarla ilişkisini öğrenmek ve siyasetin kriz durumlarında halkın tutum ve davranışlarını yönlendirip yönlendirmediğini öğrenmek amacıyla 767 kişiyle çevrimiçi anket yapılmıştır. Yapılan nicel araştırma sonucunda, alınan önleyici tedbirlere uymanın, bu tedbirlerin yerinde oluşuna/haklılığına olan tutumun, aşı olma niyetinin ve aşının koruyuculuğuna olan inancın siyasi görüşlere göre farklılaştığı bulunmuştur. Ayrıca katılımcıların yapılan Covid-19 açıklamaları bakımından siyasi partilerine, parti temsilcilerinden daha çok güvendikleri, alınan önlem ve tedbirleri kısmen yerinde/haklı buldukları ve çok büyük çoğunluğun bu (...) önlemlere uyduğu görülmüştür. Araştırma sonucunda virüsün kökenine yönelik inançlar bakımından virüsün gerçek olduğuna inanıldığı, ortaya çıkış nedeni bakımından ise ülkelerin ekonomilerini kötüleştirmek ve dünya nüfusunu azaltmak için ortaya çıktığına inanıldığı görülmüştür. Araştırmadan çıkan bir başka sonuç ise katılımcıların televizyon, dergi ve gazetelerin ideolojik nedenlerle ve siyasi yanlılıklarına bağlı olarak virüs haberlerini halka farklı yansıttığını düşündükleridir. Sosyal medyadaki haberlerin ise yanıltıcı, yanlış olduğu görüşündelerdir. Bu çalışma sonucunda salgın hastalık, afet, savaş, ekonomik krizler gibi olağanüstü durumlarda siyasetin, siyasi görüşlerin dikkate alınmasının hem krizin üstesinden gelmede hem de toplumun tüm üyelerini kapsamada önemli bir rol oynayacağı vurgulanmaktadır. (shrink)

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate is being introduced for health and social care workers in England, and those refusing to comply will either be redeployed or have their employment terminated. We argue th...

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved (...) voluntarily as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

The disability viewpoint is the fundamental for understanding social justice in a given population. Disability rights need to be obeyed in the inclusive preparedness and response to all the disasters or during the crisis period including COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 pandemic jeopardized the health and rehabilitation services globally. The impact is much more in low resource developing countries like Bangladesh. In general, people with disability (PWD) suffer from multiple medical and rehabilitation complications and they need frequent rehabilitation consultations or (...) hospital admissions in comparison to people without disability. As a developing country, Bangladesh has poor ratios of doctors, nurses and technologists of 1:0.4:0.24 (WHO: 1:3:5) to face the COVID-19 challenge. Rehabilitation services have been disrupted in almost two-thirds (63%) of countries of the world. Even though rehabilitation is the key to recovery following severe illness from COVID-19. There are many concerns and debates about the preparedness, response and mitigation the process of COVID-19 on the part of the national government. According to recent study reports, the lives of about 100% of PWD have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 National Technical Advisory Committee is working for strategic planning, response and mitigation process but omission of a representative of PWD or a rehabilitation physician in the committee has created much dissatisfaction. The difficult COVID-19 testing process due to country wide shutdown of rehabilitation essential services and central pulling of rehabilitation physicians have side lined the PWD inclusiveness. It is expected that the rehabilitation preparedness, response and mitigation of the pandemic should be based on an ethics driven process. (shrink)

This article discusses the triage response to the COVID-19 delta variant surge of 2021. One issue that distinguishes the delta wave from earlier surges is that by the time it became the predominant strain in the USA in July 2021, safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 had been available for all US adults for several months. We consider whether healthcare professionals and triage committees would have been justified in prioritising patients with COVID-19 who are vaccinated above those (...) who are unvaccinated in first-order or second-order triage. Given that lack of evidence for a correlation between short-term survival and vaccination, we argue that using vaccination status during first-order triage would be inconsistent with accepted triage standards. We then turn to notions of procedural fairness, equity and desert to argue that that there is also a lack of justification for using vaccination status in second-order triage. In planning for future surges, we recommend that medical institutions base their triage decisions on principles meant to save the most lives, minimise inequity and protect the public’s trust, which for the time being would not be served by the inclusion of vaccination status. (shrink)

The global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has led to the imposition of severely restrictive measures by governments in the Western hemisphere. We feel a contrast between these measures and our freedom. This contrast, we argue, is a false perception. It only appears to us because we look at the issue through our contemporary moral philosophy of utilitarianism and an understanding of freedom as absence of constraints. Both these views can (...) be substituted with more sophisticated alternatives, namely an ethics of virtue and a notion of freedom of the will. These offer a fuller picture of morality and enable us to cooperate with the current restrictions by consciously choosing to adhere to them instead of perceiving them as draconian and immoral. We ask whether we should collaborate with the restrictions and argue that considerations of virtue will lead to an affirmative answer. More broadly, virtue ethics permits to deal with the practical concerns about how an individual should behave during this pandemic, given the current lockdown measures or lack thereof. -/- In section 1, we present how utilitarianism and a notion of freedom as negative liberty support the opposition to restrictive measures. In section 2, we outline an alternative based on an ethics of virtue and a more elaborated notion of free will. In the concluding section 3, we argue that considerations of virtue should guide the individual and public response to the emergency. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are (...) unconvincing, we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic may affect the world severely in terms of quality of life, political, environmental, and economic sustainable development, and the global economy. Its impact is attested to by the number of research studies on it. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the psychology of sustainability, on sustainable development, and on the global economy. A computerized literature search was performed, and journal articles from authentic sources were extracted, including MEDLINE, (...) Google Scholar, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Emerald Insight. The references in selected articles were screened to identify any relevant studies. The following inclusion criteria were followed: research articles based on the COVID-19 pandemic, and articles, research papers, journals, and news articles published 2010 to 2020. The exclusion criteria were as follow: psychology research, articles, and journals published before 2010 and research articles having no link with the current pandemic’s impact on the psychology of sustainability, quality of life, and the global economy. Of the initial 350 articles identified, only 61 studies were found to be relevant and meet the inclusion criteria. Based on these articles, the review highlights that compared to developed countries, the developing nations and poor nations such as African countries with compromised health structures have been greatly affected. There are close associations between health, economic, environmental, and political issues globally. The pandemic can be managed if we follow new policies that implement economic and public health changes worldwide. A planned, coordinated approach between the public-private sector is required, designed according to each country’s health system and economy. We can come out of this crisis if we work together and support both developed and developing nations. (shrink)

The pre-conditions and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are inter-connected with those of climate change, prompting reflection on how to re-think the relations between human and non-human on a changing planet. This essay considers that issue with reference to the contrasts between the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza, who offered radically different approaches to the conceptualization of human presence in Nature.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Cross-sector relationship building is an important strategy in corporate social responsibility initiatives, and communicating cross-sector relationships on social media can help raise the visibility of collaborative relationships. A noticeable gap in the literature is how social media enables and constrains the formation patterns of cross-sector connections. To understand how businesses communicate their relationships with government agencies and nonprofits about social issues on social media, we propose a theoretical framework that centers public attention as a critical resource and considers different sectors' (...) interests in the COVID-19 issue. We tested this framework with a nationally representative sample of 1,980 organizations on Twitter. The analysis reveals that the increase in public attention to the COVID-19 issue was accompanied by a greater likelihood of cross-sector ties. Specifically, firms severely affected by COVID-19 were more likely to build ties with government agencies, and the increase in public attention also drove firms to build more ties with nonprofits, especially advocacy nonprofits. Our findings suggest managers of social media communication should observe the volatile public attention and design communicative strategies accordingly. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, (...) equity, and international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

Solidarity between more and less vulnerable groups is fundamental to an effective public health response to a global pandemic. Yet in the case of COVID-19, a focus on deciding who can and who cannot be protected from harm has shaped the pandemic experience and continues to determine the post-pandemic trajectory of life with SARS-CoV-2. In this paper I discuss how this has affected our understanding and acceptance of solidarity.

This monograph evaluates public policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic through a public choice lens. The book compares two prominent, albeit mutually exclusive, theories in social sciences—public interest theory and public choice theory—and explores how their predictions perform within the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapters present different pandemic policies alongside empirical data in order to draw conclusions about their efficacy, and, in turn, draw conclusions about the veracity of each theory. By the end of the volume, (...) the reader will be able to draw their own conclusions about whether the pandemic policy responses served the public interest, as public interest theory suggests, or the personal interests of the politicians who implemented them, as public choice theory holds. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first appeared in China in late 2019 and since then it has become a pandemic. Various countries, in accordance with their cultures, have adopted different approaches to deal with the spread of this disease. The dimensions of this disease and its global spread are such that it will certainly have enormous effects on various aspects of human life for many years. One of these issues is examining the approach of religious countries in dealing with this (...) crisis. The issue of science and religion is one of the main issues in the philosophy of religion. A historical event that human society is struggling with today is the COVID-19 crisis. The issues of religion and science were intertwined during the COVID-19 outbreak, contrary to what some thought. This shows that the opposition between religion and science is not real but aims to attack religion without a valid reason. Given the importance of the subject, this article addresses two aspects of people’s exposure to religion during the COVID-19 period. On the one hand, the researchers’ field observations indicate that group of citizens has turned towards religious teachings since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. On the other hand, another group of citizens have distanced themselves from religiosity, raising the duality of science and religion.Contribution: This article describes the dual attitude of citizens towards religiosity due to the occurrence of COVID-19, which has not been previously considered in research. (shrink)

Contributions to COVID-19 vaccination programmes promise valuable collective goods. They can support public and individual health by creating herd immunity and taking the pressure off overwhelmed public health services; support freedom of movement by enabling governments to remove restrictive lockdown policies; and improve economic and social well-being by allowing businesses, schools, and other essential public services to re-open. The vaccinated can contribute to the production of these goods. The unvaccinated, who benefit from, but who do not contribute to these (...) goods can be morally criticised as free-riders. In this paper defends the claim that in the case of COVID-19, the unvaccinated are unfair free-riders. I defend the claim against two objections. First, that they are not unfair free-riders because they lack the subjective attitudes and intentions of free-riders; second, that although the unvaccinated may be free-riders, their free-riding is not unfair. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the academe was introduced to online education, which is complicated. The sudden shift of traditional face-to-face classes to digital learning impacted every student's self-efficacy and motivation towards their studies. This study investigates the relationship between the self-efficacy and academic motivation of the 304 freshmen college students from private higher education institutions in the Philippines. Based on the data gathered, the participants' level of self-efficacy (x̄ = 3.27) and academic motivation (x̄ = 5.93) is high. (...) Further, the statistical analysis concluded a relationship between self-efficacy and academic motivation (r=.002, at 0.05 level) among the graduating college students. Implications of the study were discussed, and recommendations for future research were suggested. (shrink)

Amid the current COVID-19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics that can inform our experiences today. Others argue that there are informative analogies between specific past epidemics (...) and our present crisis, for instance between COVID-19 and prior outbreaks of SARS or influenza. Both strategies can be pursued, but each must be done with care. It is certainly possible to map COVID-19 onto the classic dramatic structure of an epidemic, but we cannot yet know how it will end, a failure of prognostication that constrains the advice we can offer. It is likewise possible to draw on the history of medical therapeutics and public health interventions to identify the risks we face of both underuse and overuse of our remedies, but we cannot yet judge whether our current commitment to heroic social distancing is warranted. While historians can offer insight, we must temper our contributions with humility. (shrink)

John Rawls begins a Theory of Justice with the observation that 'Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought… Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override'1. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in lock-downs, the restriction of liberties, debate about the right to refuse medical treatment and many other changes to the everyday behaviour of persons. The justice issues it raises are (...) diverse, profound and will demand our attention for some time. How we can respect the Rawlsian commitment to the inviolability of each person, when the welfare of societies as a whole is under threat goes to the heart of some of the difficult ethical issues we face and are discussed in this issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. The debate about ICU triage and COVID-19 is quite well developed and this journal has published several articles that explore aspects of this issue and how different places approach it.2–5 Newdick et al add to the legal analysis of triage decisions and criticise the calls for respecting a narrow conception of a legal right to treatment and more detailed national guidelines for how triage decisions should be made.6 They consider scoring systems for clinical frailty, organ failure assessment, and raise some doubts about the fairness of their application to COVID-19 triage situations. Their argument seems to highlight instances of what is called the McNamara fallacy. US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara used enemy body counts as a measure …. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the healthcare issues raised by COVID-19 in Pakistan’s scenario. Initially, Pakistan lacked “standard operating procedures,” and the government had to ship testing kits from China and Japan. Moreover, due to violations of the lockdown and standard operating procedures (SOPs), the rapidly increasing number of cases created a burden on the healthcare system. More and more, this pandemic and its impact have grown. As vaccine development has not been successful yet, “herd immunity” can only be (...) achieved if about three quarters of the population contract the virus—requiring immuno￾compromised citizens to be sacrificed for the sake of the country. Moreover, Pakistan has limited testing capacity, so most COVID-19 tests are missing their mark even as the virus spreads. The current scenario is also raising several concerns about the capacity of the government to tackle the prevailing healthcare crisis. In this regard, healthcare professionals suggest that the government must act responsibly to ensure better security provided to healthcare professionals. Identifying suspected cases, introducing personal protective equipment, and taking administrative measures to ensure that better security is provided to healthcare professionals are the needs of the hour to improve outcomes of COVID-19 patients. Testing, tracking, and lockdowns must be focused on areas where clusters are detected. The healthcare professionals must be given utmost protection before this pan￾demic could wreak havoc in terms of fatalities. Investing in the chronically underfunded healthcare system is needed, so that Pakistan can build capacity to fight the pandemic. (shrink)

COVID-19 is a very complex pandemic. It has affected individuals, different countries and regions of the world equally in some senses and differently in other senses. While sub-Saharan Africa has weathered a range of outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, the manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved necessitates some observations, remarks and conclusions from our own situated observation point. Compared to previous epidemics/pandemics, many African countries have displayed a sense of solidarity in the face of (...) COVID-19 that convincingly demonstrates that an Ubuntu ethic is viable and globalizable. The African continent seems, at last, to have realized that ethics dumping must be avoided and has made strides in defining its COVID-19 research agenda and strengthening its epidemic response for both public health and health research. More needs to be done in terms of public engagement, funding and technical support for research on potential therapies/candidate vaccines that are a product of scientific studies on the continent. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic that struck New York City in the spring of 2020 was a natural experiment for the clinical ethics services of NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP). Two distinct teams at NYP’s flagship academic medical centers—at NYP/ Columbia University Medical Center (Columbia) and NYP/ Weill Cornell Medical Center (Weill Cornell)—were faced with the same pandemic and operated under the same institutional rules. Each campus used time as an heuristic to analyze our collective response. The Columbia team compares consults during the pandemic (...) with the same period during the year prior. The Weill Cornell service describes the phases of the pandemic to depict its temporal evolution and subsequent ethical challenges. Both sites report that the predominant ethical challenges centered around end-of-life decision making, setting goals of care, and medical futility, all complicated by resource allocation questions and the ambiguity of state law under crisis standards of care. The Columbia campus saw a statistically significant increase in ethics consultations provided to Hispanic patients, perhaps reflective of the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 suffered by this demographic. While Weill Cornell and Columbia saw a surge in clinical ethics consultations, the two services assumed a more expansive role than one normally played in institutional life. Serving as intermediaries between frontline clinicians and senior hospital administrators, consultants provided critical intelligence to hospital leadership about the evolution of the pandemic, disseminated information to clinicians, and attended to the moral distress of colleagues who were asked to provide care under truly extraordinary circumstances. The COVID-19 surge in New York City revealed latent capabilities in ethics consultation that may prove useful to the broader clinical ethics community as it responds to the current pandemic and reconceptualizes its potential for future service. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis opened up discussions on using online tools and platforms for academic work, e.g. for research (management) events that were originally designed as face-to-face interactions. As social scientists working in the domain of responsible research and innovation (RRI), we draft this paper to open up a dialogue on Responsible online Research and Innovation (RoRI), and deliberate particular socioethical opportunities and challenges of the onlineification in collaborative theoretical and empirical research. An RRI-inspired ‘going online’ approach would mean, we (...) suggest, trying to make academic events and research activities more inclusive, researchers’ attitude to their work more reflective and suggest processes that are more responsive to societal needs and ethical concerns. For such systematic reflection, we suggest using the RRI-heuristic provided by Owen et al., and applying the dimensions of ‘Anticipation, Inclusion, Reflection and Responsiveness’ (AIRR) in order to identify and reflect on the dilemmas involved in ‘going online’ in one’s research. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been overwhelming public health-care systems around the world. With demand exceeding the availability of medical resources in several regions, hospitals have been forced to invoke triage. To ensure that this difficult task proceeds in a fair and organised manner, governments scrambled experts to draft triage guidelines under enormous time pressure. Although there are similarities between the documents, they vary considerably in how much weight their respective authors place on the different criteria that they propose. Since (...) most of the recommendations do not come with ethical justifications, analysing them requires that one traces back these criteria to their underlying theories of distributive justice. In the literature, COVID-19 triage has been portrayed as a value conflict solely between utilitarian and egalitarian elements. While these two accounts are indeed the main antipodes, I shall show that in fact all four classic theories of distributive justice are involved: utilitarianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, and communitarianism. Detecting these in the documents and classifying the suggested criteria accordingly enables one to understand the balancing between the different approaches to distributive justice—which is crucial for both managing the current pandemic and in preparation for the next global health crisis. (shrink)

Many Catholics have expressed hesitancy or resistance to being vaccinated for COVID-19, with magisterial authorities and influential Catholic organizations advocating divergent views regarding the moral liceity of the vaccines, the justification of vaccination mandates, and whether such mandates should include religious exemptions. We address each of these disputed points and argue that vaccination for COVID-19 falls within the definition of being an ordinary—and thereby morally obligatory—treatment. To that end, we offer a brief overview of the Catholic moral tradition (...) regarding the development of the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary treatment, show how the Church morally evaluates vaccination as a good act, and underline the importance of positive witnessing in supporting vaccination. (shrink)

In the ongoing pandemic, death statistics influence people’s feelings and government policy. But when does COVID-19 qualify as the cause of death? As philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual clarification, we address the question by analyzing the World Health Organization’s rules for the certification of death. We show that for COVID-19, WHO rules take into account both facts and values.

Abstract2020 saw the rapid onset of a global pandemic caused by the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus. For healthcare systems worldwide, the pandemic called upon quick organization ensuring treatment and containment measures for the new virus disease. Nurses were seen as constituting a vital instrumental professional component in this study. Due to the pandemic's unpredictable and potentially dangerous nature, nurses have faced unprecedented risks and challenges. Based on interviews and free text comment from a survey, this study explores how ethical challenges related to (...) “being a nurse” during the COVID‐19 pandemic was experienced and understood by Danish hospital‐based nurses. Departing from anthropologist Jarett Zigon's notion of moral breakdown, the study demonstrates how the rapid onset of the pandemic constitutes a moral breakdown raising ethical demands for nurses. Analytically we identify three different ethical demands experienced by the nurses. These ethical demands are Nursing and societal ethical demands, Nursing and personal ethical demands, and Nursing and conflicting ethical demands. These demands represent not only very different understandings of ethical demands but also different understandings of ethical acts that are seen as necessary to respond to these demands. (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...

Is there such a thing as corona solidarity? Does voluntary mutual aid solve the problems caused by COVID-19? I argue that the answer to the first question is “yes” and to the second “no.” Not that the answer to the second question could not, in an ideal world, be “yes,” too. It is just that in this world of global capitalism and everybody looking out for themselves, the kind of communal warmth celebrated by the media either does not actually (...) exist or is too weak to rule out the uglier manifestations of group togetherness, driven partly by the pandemic. I make my point by offering two approaches to understanding what solidarity is. According to the first, it is essentially partiality: “us” against “them.” According to the second, it can be many things, including the impartial promotion of the good of others. I show that the second reading would make it possible for mutual aid to solve the problems caused by COVID-19 and other crises. This would happen at the expense of conceptual clarity, but that is a minor concern. The major concern is that the more natural manifestations of group togetherness are incited by negative feelings. This is par for the course within the narrower reading of solidarity, but it means that the potentially positive ideas of identity, care, communal values, and special relations are displayed in violent confrontation instead of a calm recognition of the threats that most of us face together. (shrink)

The rare but severe cerebral venous thrombosis occurring in some AstraZeneca vaccine recipients has prompted some governments to suspend part of their COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Such suspensions have faced various challenges from both scientific and ethical angles. Most of the criticisms against such suspensions follow a consequentialist approach, arguing that the suspension will lead to more harm than benefits. In this paper, I propose a rights-based argument against the suspension of the vaccine rollouts amid this highly time-sensitive combat of (...) COVID-19. I argue that by suspending a vaccine rollout, a government infringes people's right to take the risks they deem worth taking for their health. I also consider four potential objections to my argument and explain why none of them undermines my argument. (shrink)

The necessity of wearing masks in response to the spread of the Covid-19 took Europe and the USA by surprise. Legislation needed to be enacted to enforce the obligation on citizens not used to such practices. The authors investigate the semiotic function of masks, legislations enacted to enforce their usage in public places, and the mask-related discourse with a view to seeing how societies reacted to this imposition. A broad semiotic perspective is provided to analyze different attitudes and types (...) of MRD that have emerged in Poland, France, and the USA. (shrink)

COVID-19-related controversies concerning the allocation of scarce resources, travel restrictions, and physical distancing norms each raise a foundational question: How should authority, and thus responsibility, over healthcare and public health law and policy be allocated? Each controversy raises principles that support claims by traditional wielders of authority in “federal” countries, like federal and state governments, and less traditional entities, like cities and sub-state nations. No existing principle divides “healthcare and public law and policy” into units that can be allocated (...) in intuitively compelling ways. This leads to puzzles concerning (a) the principles for justifiably allocating “powers” in these domains and (b) whether and how they change during “emergencies.” This work motivates the puzzles, explains why resolving them should be part of long-term responses to COVID-19, and outlines some initial COVID-19-related findings that shed light on justifiable authority allocation, emergencies, emergency powers, and the relationships between them. (shrink)

The modern ethical framework demands informed consent for research participation that includes disclosure of material information, as well as alternatives. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic (COVID-19) results in illness that often involves rapid deterioration. Despite the urgent need to find therapy, obtaining informed consent for COVID-19 research is needed. The current pandemic presents three types of challenges for investigators faced with obtaining informed consent for research participation: (1) uncertainty over key information to informed consent, (...) (2) time and pressure constraints, and (3) obligations regarding disclosure of new alternative therapies and re-consent. To mitigate consenting challenges, primary investigators need to work together to jointly promote urgent care and research into COVID-19. Actions they can take include (1) prior plan addressing ways to incorporate clinical research into clinical practice in emergency, (2) consider patients vulnerable with early deliberation on the consent process, (3) seek Legally Authorized Representatives (LARs), (4) create a collaborative research teams, (5) aim to consent once, despite evolving information during the pandemic, and (6) aim to match patients to a trial that will most benefit them. The COVID-19 pandemic both exacerbates existing challenges and raises unique obstacles for consent that require forethought and mindfulness to overcome. While research teams and clinician-investigators will need to be sensitive to their own contexts and adapt solutions accordingly, they can meet the challenge of obtaining genuinely informed consent during the current pandemic. (shrink)

This paper has two objectives 1) to study the influence of digital and new technology on COVID-19 diagnosis and healthcare 2) To propose the integral guideline solutions of the infectious disease for the future. COVID-19 stands for corona (CO), virus (VI), disease (D), or SARS-CoV-2, is a respiratory virus first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China(WHO, 2019). It is an epidemiological crisis that caused the deaths and sudden destruction of wealth and health of people around the world. (...) Many countries responded to the crisis with what could only be called urgent prevention and treatment. In the 21st century, our society is based on digital and new technology that can control and prevent the COVID-19 pandemics. However, these ways for solving the problem of COVID-19 pandemics are rising an epistemological crisis too. There are some problems with the COVID-19 diagnosis. From Buddhist philosophy perspective, COVID-19 teaches us the coronavirus is causing us to experience some heightened forms of the three marks of our existence which are the impermanence (aniccā), the suffering (duḥkha), and the non-self (anatta). The establishment of scientific expertise and innovation has shown its value and educating the public about testing, diagnosis, communication, treatment, and vaccine development technology for prevention the of infectious diseases in the future. (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)

COVID-19 continues to dominate 2020 and is likely to be a feature of our lives for some time to come. Given this, how should health systems respond ethically to the persistent challenges of responding to the ongoing impact of the pandemic? Relatedly, what ethical values should underpin the resetting of health services after the initial wave, knowing that local spikes and further waves now seem inevitable? In this editorial, we outline some of the ethical challenges confronting those running health (...) services as they try to resume non-COVID-related services, and the downstream ethical implications these have for healthcare professionals’ day-to-day decision making. This is a phase of recovery, resumption and renewal; a form of reset for health services.1 This reset phase will define the ‘new normal' for healthcare delivery, and it offers an opportunity to reimagine and change services for the better. There are difficulties, however, healthcare systems are already weakened by austerity and the first wave of COVID-19 and remain under stress as the pandemic continues. The reset period is operating alongside, rather than at the end, of the pandemic and this creates difficult ethical choices. ### Balancing the greater good with individual care Pandemics—and public health emergencies more generally—reinforce approaches to ethics that emphasise or derive from the interests of communities, rather than those grounded in the claims of the autonomous individual. The response has been to draw on more public health focused ethics, ‘if demand outstrips the ability to deliver to existing standards, more strictly utilitarian considerations will have to be applied, and decisions about how to meet the individual's need will give way to decisions about how to maximise overall benefit’.2 Alongside this, effective …. (shrink)

Lockdowns and related policies of behavioral and economic restriction introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are criticized, drawing on three sets of ideas and arguments that are organized in accordance with the likely degree of controversy associated with their guiding assumptions. The first set of arguments makes use of cost–benefit reasoning within a broadly utilitarian framework, emphasizing uncertainty, the role of worst-case scenarios, and the need to consider at least the medium term as well as immediate effects. The (...) second draws on assumptions about the political value of basic liberties. The third draws on ideas about the roles of different stages within human life. (shrink)

This critical essay evaluates the potential integration of distinct kinds of expertise in policymaking, especially during situations of critical emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This article relies on two case studies: herd immunity and restricted access to ventilators for disabled people. These case studies are discussed as examples of experts’ recommendations that have not been widely accepted, though they were made within the boundaries of expert epistemic authority. While the fundamental contribution of biomedical experts in devising public health (...) policies during the COVID-19 pandemic is fully recognized, this paper intends to discuss potential issues and limitations that may arise when adopting a strict expert-based approach. By drawing attention to the interests of minorities, the paper also claims a broader notion of “relevant expertise.” This critical essay thus calls for the necessity of wider inclusiveness and representativeness in the process underlying public health policymaking. (shrink)

The article entitled “Post-COVID-19: Education and Thai Society in Digital Era” has two objectives: 1) to study digital technology 2) to study the living life in Thailand in the digital era after COVID-19 pandemics. According to the study, it was found that the new digitized service is a service process on digital platforms such as ordering food, hailing a taxi, and online trading. It is a service called via smartphone. The information is used digitally. Public relations, digital marketing, (...) and living in cyberspace play an increasingly digital role. People have communication skills, use Line, Facebook, social media, have tools to search for knowledge, learn and improve themselves. People in the new era of life have a new way of life therefore there is social life in the cyber world. There should be ethics, attitudes, values, and click-on images that are linked to digital use. For a good time life, It is important to have digital intelligence (Digital Quotient) to live after post-COVID19, the digital era. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has brought bioethics back to five topics—justice, autonomy, expert authority, religion, and judicial decisions—that were central during its formative period but has cast a new light on each, while also tangling public health policy in the current, rather radical, reshaping of the role of organized religion in society.

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.

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el impacto del aprendizaje adaptativo ante Covid-19 en la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas Administrativas de la Universidad Autónoma del Carmen.Para este estudio se realizó una revisión documental de los conceptos teóricos abordados y posteriormente se hizo un análisis descriptivo de una muestra de 291 estudiantes.Los resultados muestran que la mayoría de los estudiantes logró un desempeño satisfactorio, usando de manera preferente la plataforma Teams, aunque también se utilizaron otras plataformas como apoyo. Con (...) esto se concluye que la comunidad universitaria se adaptó rápidamente al entorno virtual impuesto por la pandemia. (shrink)