Ethical Implications Of Covid 19 Management

After this period of living with COVID-19, we have reached the point where we can start evaluating its management. This edited collection focuses on the exploration of the ethical implications of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. It looks into how the decisions on lockdowns, vaccination, masks and QR codes have impacted our lives, our societies and our future. The contributions examine our work habits, our human relationships, our trust in governments and health expertise, resource distribution, the prosperity and leadership of businesses, and the prospective traumas of our children. This is a companion book to The COVID-19 Pandemic: Ethical Challenges and Considerations, also published by Ethics International Press.

The COVID-19 Pandemic will be seen as having had a profound effect on how we live and work, as well its economic and health repercussions. But it also brought ethical issues and challenges into focus, from ‘Fake News’ to issues of individual freedom. This edited collection addresses these issues and others, including vaccine distribution, incentivization, administration, and mandates; the unprecedented challenges faced by healthcare workers; crisis communication and response conundrums: and societal burdens. This is a companion book to Ethical Implications of COVID-19 Management: Evaluating the Aftershock, also published by Ethics International Press.

This book explores the ethical implications of managing uncertainty in clinical decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. It develops an ethics of clinical uncertainty that brings together insights from the clinical and biomedical ethical literatures. The book sets out to recognize the central role uncertainty plays in clinical decision-making and to acknowledge the different levels, kinds, and dimensions of clinical uncertainty. It also aims to aid clinicians and patients in managing clinical uncertainty and to recognize the ethical duty they have to manage clinical uncertainty. The book addresses four ethical duties related to clinical uncertainty: (1) to advance the welfare of those in clinical medicine, (2) to respect the rights of those in clinical medicine, (3) to promote just access to health care, and (4) to care for one another in clinical medicine. These duties took on select urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic because clinical risk assessments about COVID-19 were limited, we were asked to give informed consent in the context of limited and changing knowledge, the pandemic unearthed myriad problems about the distribution of health care, and the pandemic raised questions about how we care for each other in medicine. An Ethics of Clinical Uncertainty will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and medical professionals working in philosophy of medicine, biomedical ethics, clinical medicine, nursing, public health care, and gerontology.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has infected people in 212 countries so far and on every continent except Antarctica. Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning and relations between countries have swept the world in a few months and are difficult to hold in one’s mind at one time. That is why a collaborative effort such as this edited, multidisciplinary collection is needed. This book confronts the vulnerabilities and interconnectedness made visible by the pandemic and its consequences, along with the legal, ethical and policy responses. These include vulnerabilities for people who have been harmed or will be harmed by the virus directly and those harmed by measures taken to slow its relentless march; vulnerabilities exposed in our institutions, governance and legal structures; and vulnerabilities in other countries and at the global level where persistent injustices harm us all. Hopefully, COVID-19 will forces us to deeply reflect on how we govern and our policy priorities; to focus preparedness, precaution, and recovery to include all, not just some. Published in English with some chapters in French.

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing’s professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called “heroic” by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide? And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is “fair, good and right” in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves? This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses.

This book is for readers who wish to understand the ethical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic — holistically — on communities, politics, the economy, the environment, international relations, public health, and, most importantly, on their own lives and their own futures. It also helps readers to think through the wide-ranging ethical implications of the new age of global pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed all of our lives to such an extent that no single publication will ever be able to capture its complexity. The book acknowledges this complexity by embracing interdisciplinary dialogue. It is open to diverse points of view, different ethical systems, and a wide variety of academic disciplines. It suggests three broad avenues to exploring the subject: Ethics for Pandemics: What ethical theories are useful for pandemic living? Ethics in Pandemics: How are long-standing ethical dilemmas revealed in pandemics? Ethics of Pandemics: How should politicians and public health professionals create ethical systems of pandemic management? Interdisciplinary perspectives are another key feature of the book and reflect the important insights that many academic disciplines — medical ethics and public health, history, political science, economics, behavioral and evolutionary psychology, and climate science — bring to bear on the subject. In the chapters, the author joins theory and practice, providing an overview of the major ethical theories: Kant and Deontology Utilitarianism and Consequentialist Ethics Social Contract Theory Egoism and Altruism Virtue Ethics It then uses these theories to analyze both COVID-19 and also historical pandemics, including typhus, smallpox, the Black Death, HIV/AIDS, and polio. Ethics and Pandemics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on COVID-19 and Future Pandemics prepares readers to better understand ethical living during times of crisis. While written for students pursuing any discipline, it is particularly suited for those seeking degrees in public health, health care, political science, and philosophy. Furthermore, non-specialized readers and members of the general public will find the book of interest.

At the end of 2019, the world came across a virus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes a disease classified as COVID-19. The virus is highly transmissible and causes an acute respiratory syndrome that ranges from mild symptoms in about 80% cases to very severe symptoms with respiratory failure in 5% to 10% of cases. The epicenter of the outbreak of this pandemic was Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be a pandemic and classified it as a high global risk. Human health risk assessment for COVID-19 depends on the characteristics of the virus and includes the process of gathering and analyzing environmental and health information using specific techniques to support decision making, systematically taking actions, and articulating the collected information within and between sectors for promoting health and improving the social and living conditions of populations. To assess COVID-19 risk factors, it is important to consider and document all relevant information available at the time of assessment. In this way, decision making will get a direction and the assessment process will get recorded, which includes evaluation of the risk factors, control measures, methods used for evaluation, why they were considered important, and their order of priority. This book addresses in detail the challenges posed by the virus and presents up-to-date knowledge on safety risk assessment and economics, as well as ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of COVID-19.