By Ezio Di Nucci How does pursuing herd immunity compare with lifting lockdowns, from an ethical point of view? The (moral) problem with the pursuit of herd immunity under a pandemic such as COVID-19 is that getting more than half of the population infected (the herd immunity threshold is at least 60%), given a CFR […]
Category: Journal of Medical Ethics
Death during COVID-19: Redefining terminal illness
By Samantha W. Stein and Justin T. Clapp IDENTIFYING A GAP IN TRIAGE MODELS As floodwaters rose and resources dwindled inside Memorial Medical Center in the days following Hurricane Katrina, patient Emmett Everett pleaded with nurses: “Don’t let them leave me behind.” Everett sought to be evacuated to the safety of another hospital alongside nearly […]
Supra-institutional transparency: a first step towards recovering from the COVID-19 wound
By Benjamin Herreros, Pablo Gella, Diego Real de Asúa In the wake of the first COVID-19 wave, the latest news media cycles in Spain have been filled with alarming headlines on the need to investigate the triage criteria used during the epidemic. The State’s Attorney’s Office is undertaking preliminary investigations into several hospitals in the […]
Why praising healthcare workers as ‘heroic’ is not the best way to support them
By Caitríona Cox. “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy” – F. Scott Fitzgerald In recent weeks praise for ‘Healthcare Heroes’ has been plentiful in the media, with The Mirror even launching a campaign for all healthcare workers to receive a medal for their work. The weekly ‘Clap for Carers’ in the […]
Is it wrong to prioritise patients who have the highest chance of survival during Covid-19?
Alaa Daoud and Ezio Di Nucci. Wilkinson proposed that health systems should aim to prioritise patients who have the highest chance of survival, based on Taurek’s ‘lifeboat’ experiment, where the general public chose to save five patients instead of one patient. This is no more or less true of saying that the current approaches are […]
Accepting trust for pandemic response: we need leaders to think twice
By Samia Hurst. Many pandemic response measures, from physical distancing to confinement, rely on cooperation by members of the public for their implementation and effectiveness. In requiring such cooperation, these measures all rely on the public investing sufficient trust in scientific and/or political authorities to follow instructions and recommendations. Trust in medical and political authorities […]
Don’t blame the science
By Jonathan Michaels When I wrote about the potential for injustices to arise in evidence-based healthcare policy, the COVID-19 pandemic had not begun. Since then, numerous government agencies and academic bodies have rapidly produced policy, claiming legitimacy because it is “evidence-based” or “follows the science”. However, science cannot determine policy, and the failure to distinguish […]
A Crisis in Care: Pandemics and Patients in Care Homes
By Ayesha Ahmad As a philosopher by training, specialising in ethics and working in global health, I research vulnerability in complex conflicts, humanitarian crises and disasters in contexts besieged by silencing and marginalisation. When the COVID-19 outbreak began, my priority was the impact of the public health burden on weak and fragile systems in my […]
Maximizing outcomes in triage of critical care resources—is there a consensus?
By Lynette Reid My university told us to work from home in mid-March; public health asked us to limit shopping and travel—but to get outdoors for exercise—soon after. I can’t complain. I have secure employment; my partner and I live outside the city in a fishing village with protected wilderness all around. It was like […]
The Cost of Society: Considering Social Distancing Beyond COVID-19 to Save Lives
By Michael J. Rigby The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious challenge to our existing healthcare infrastructure. Rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 can easily overwhelm healthcare capacity, which can exceed the number of intensive care unit beds and ventilators. Once this threshold is surpassed, any serious yet treatable disease becomes life-threatening. Without a vaccine or other preventive […]