By Nancy S. Jecker, Caesar A. Atuire With rare exceptions, many people around the world have gleefully shed masks and with them, any lingering concerns about catching the novel coronavirus. Maskless and nonchalant, we are boarding planes, shopping, showing up at parties, enjoying entertainment, and going to in-person classes. Proof of vaccination has also fallen […]
Category: Pandemic
Including Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities as partners in the planning and implementation of Long COVID-19 responses: recommendations for enhancing health equity
By Michelle Medeiros, Hillary Edwards, Claudia Baquet. COVID-19 data, where are the holes and what does this mean for Long COVID? As the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic progresses, the impact of persistent, long-term respiratory, functional, and psychological comorbidities becomes more evident in the general population, and particularly within Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities. Black, Indigenous, and […]
Pandemic political strategy – an impossible comparison?
By Rhea Mittal. One of the greatest assets of a nation is the health of its citizens, and this is inextricably linked with governance. In a COVID-19 era, the impact and diversity of political strategy in relation to health outcomes has been demonstrated on a global level. The 2019 Varsity Medical Ethics Debate was on […]
Securing a future without COVID-19: The need to prioritise concerted global action on global access to vaccines
By Dr Aisling McMahon & Prof Susi Geiger In the last number of weeks, many emergency pandemic related health measures were removed in Ireland and the UK, and there is an expectation in many other high-income countries that remaining measures will end in the very near future. This news has been greeted with understandable relief […]
Was Djokovic unethically blamed and shamed?
By Dominic Wilkinson, Julian Savulescu and Jonathan Pugh. [Cross post from Practical Ethics blog] The decision about whether to grant tennis star Novak Djokovic a visa allowing him to stay in Australia to compete in the Australian Open Championship has generated significant controversy. Last week, the Australian Immigration minister exercised his power to cancel the player’s […]
The cost of preventing pediatric influenza deaths
By Dianela Perdomo. How much is the life of one child worth? That is part of the question I asked myself when reflecting on influenza’s latest disappearance. In the U.S., the past three flu seasons have resulted in 144 to 199 pediatric deaths from influenza infection. Strikingly, only one pediatric flu death was recorded during […]
We can’t just follow the science
By Franklin G. Miller. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a common refrain voiced by many public health experts and government officials in the U.S. is that public policy should “just follow the science.” For example, consider the following statement by Anthony Fauci, the chief scientific spokesperson for the Biden administration, in an interview published in The […]
The ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of PPE in COVID-19
By Cliff Shelton, Kariem El-Boghdadly, John B Appleby. Personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a frequent source of controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic. At times, supplies have run short, leading individuals to purchase (and sometimes improvise) their own PPE; debate has raged over what PPE should be worn in different circumstances; and pictures of healthcare […]
Global vaccine equity for COVID-19: A myriad of proposals, but are there too many cooks or too many recipes?
By Susi Geiger & Aisling McMahon. As we are nearing the second year-end in the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine inequity is a stark global reality: on December 13th 2021, while global vaccine coverage stands at 56% of the population, this figure drops to 7.1% for low-income countries. In addition, new variants such as Omicron threaten to […]
Regulating strain-specific vaccines – speed, rigour and challenge trials
By Jonathan Pugh and Dominic Wilkinson. The emergence of the Omicron variant has prompted a great deal of uncertainty. One significant area of uncertainty is the the extent to which the variant can escape the protection afforded by current vaccines. One early South African pre-print suggests that Omicron has more extensive Pfizer vaccine escape than […]