By Nancy S. Jecker, Aaron G. Wightman, Douglas S. Diekema Why should high-income nations help their global neighbors during a pandemic emergency? If they help, what is a just way to distribute the goods and services they make available? In “Vaccine Ethics: An Ethical Framework for Global Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines,” we take up these […]
Category: Pandemic
Lessons from pandemic priority-setting
By Keegan Guidolin, Jessica Marangos, Fayez Quereshy University Health Network (UHN) is the largest hospital system in Canada and delivers health services ranging from primary to quaternary care to over six-million people in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, like many other hospitals and in response to […]
Why we agreed to review the first COVID-19 human challenge study
By Simon E. Kolstoe, Tony Lockett and Hugh Davies Reliable information is essential for good decision making. This is particularly true when complex medical situations are combined with political and social ramifications, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last two years have been revealing from the perspective of seeing how societies rely upon, but […]
Delaying COVID-19 Boosters: the Duty to Vaccinate the World
By Nancy S. Jecker The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged a temporary halt to COVID-19 boosters to enable 10% of the people of every nation to be vaccinated. Despite solid ethical backing for this stance, a spate of countries has gone full steam ahead with booster shots. Israel was the first, […]
Will vaccine passports make skies friendly?
By Nancy S. Jecker Should we use vaccine passports for global or domestic travel? Before answering, ask yourself this: Do we have fair, equitable access to vaccines? Until we can say yes, arguments in support of vaccine passports fail the test. For international travel, we have a long way to go. Just 85% of shots […]
The irresponsibility of “personal responsibility”
By Franklin G. Miller. In the face of another surge in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S., 9 of 10 states with the highest number of cases per capita voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election and are headed by Republican governors. A common refrain of Republican politicians and those on the […]
Does the public think age matters in COVID-19 triage?
By Margot N I Kuylen On what basis should we allocate resources when resources are scarce? The COVID-19 pandemic has made this complex ethical question extremely salient, as newspapers reported at various points that critical care units across the world were reaching, or even exceeding, their capacity. A wealth of triage guidance has been published […]
How should we ration care during the COVID-19 pandemic?
By Liam Butchart, Kristin Krumenacker, Aymen Baig. As we have all seen over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic so far, our healthcare systems are not built for the stress of the deluge of patients who have presented with illness from the virus. Therefore, institutions and governments have had to come up with ways to […]
Is vaccination status an acceptable factor in triage?
By Angela Wentz Faulconer. More than 625,000 people in the United States and over 4.4 million people worldwide have died from Covid-19. As the Delta variant surges, many hospitals find themselves caring for patients in hallways, with no ECMO available and every ICU bed taken. A growing number of physicians have suggested that as hospitals become overwhelmed, we might weigh vaccination status as […]
Social, ethical, and behavioral factors that influence COVID-19 outcomes in medically underserved rural populations: Through the lens of narrative bioethics
By Sara K Shaw Green and Claudia R Baquet. The impact of COVID-19 on the United States has been and continues to be devastating. While the scientific community has advanced research to identify and combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus at an astounding rate, data continue to emerge that reflect how COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact our […]