The Covid-19 pandemic has left a trail of untold damage in many countries, and there is no foreseeable end to its spread. Besides the loss of life, the impact of the virus on the economy and small businesses, in particular, is not yet clear. Even so, the policies aimed at containing the spread of the virus have exerted further pressure and uncertainty on the survival of small businesses in general and immigrant-owned businesses in particu­lar. This study explored the pockmark of (...) C0VID-19 on immigrant retail businesses in selected outlets in West Rand, Johannesburg. A qualitative research approach was adopted as it best supports the exploratory intent of the study. The purposive sampling technique was utilised to draw participants for the study until a saturation point was attained. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews using unstructured, open-ended questions, with interviews recorded and transcribed. Atlas-ti 8 software was used to code, categorise and analyse the data to form themes and patterns, which helped to inform the outcome of the study. Findings indicate that none of the immigrant businesses was prepared for the pandemic and lockdown. Furthermore, it was found that most of the businesses may cease to exist due to cash fragility should the lockdown be extended for a longer period and the pandemic not abate soon. Despite the government having announced some palliative measures to help reduce the impact of the pandemic and lockdown on small businesses, results from this study indicate that immigrant businesses received no such support from the government. (shrink)

이 글은 전세계적으로 문제가 되고 있는 코로나19를 베트남이 어떻게 성공적으 로 대처할 수 있었는지에 대한 궁금증을 다루고 있다. 베트남의 코로나19 대응과정 을 좀 더 면밀히 살펴보면서, 전시상황과 견주 할 정도로 빠르고 강력한 봉쇄를 어 떻게 진행할 수 있었고, 전국민의 동의는 어떻게 얻을 수 있었는지 분석한다. 메타포, 과학저널리즘, 애국을 위한 사회적 격리와 감시는 베트남의 코로나19 대응에서 중요한 지점이다. 물론 봉쇄와 격리가 가져온 정치경제적 결과도 분명하다. 아세안의장국으로서의 지위와 국가위기를 성공적으로 이겨내고 있는 정부의 역할이 돋보 였지만, 마이너스 경제성장과 실업 문제는 해결이 시급하다. 또한 (...) 이러한 봉쇄조치가 한국인 격리 사건을 발생시키는 등 국가적인 외교문제로까지 커지게도 만들면서베트남 내 중요한 경제외교국인 한국과의 관계도 소원하게 될 뻔 하기도 하였다. 그렇지만 이러한 위기는 베트남 내 한국기업, 교민의 노력으로 일부 해소되는 등 코로나19로 인해 만들어진 이슈를 통해 한국기업의 역할을 다시 한 번 생각해 볼수 있는 계기가 되었다. (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)

이 연구는 현재까지 성공적이라 평할 수 있는 베트남의 코로나19 대응 상황 을 파악하고 그 원인을 찾는 데 목적이 있다. 첫째, 베트남의 코로나19 대응이 성공적일 수 있었던 이유와 코로나19 대응과정에서 나타나는 여러 특징을 살 펴봤다. 베트남의 코로나19 대응은 국경 봉쇄로 이야기되는데, 극단적이리만 큼 강력한 대처를 어떻게 진행할 수 있었는지 대응과정을 짚어봤다. 베트남의 코로나19 대응과정을 좀 더 면밀하게 살펴보면서, 전시상황과 견줄 정도로 빠 르고 강력한 봉쇄를 어떻게 진행할 수 있었고, 국민적 동의는 어떻게 얻을 수 있 었는지 분석했다. 메타포, 과학적 사실 공유, 애국을 (...) 위한 사회적 격리와 감시 는 베트남의 코로나19 대응에서 중요한 지점이었다. 둘째, 강력한 국경 봉쇄로 대변되는 베트남의 코로나19 대응전략이 사회경제적으로 어떤 영향을 미쳤으 며, 이러한 영향이 베트남의 코로나19 대응에 어떻게 반영되고 있는지를 살펴 봤다. 베트남의 코로나19 대응 방식과 관련해서 첨예한 갈등이 촉발되었던 사 건인 베트남의 ‘대구발(發) 비행기 탑승객 격리조치’가 베트남 내 한국 및 한국 기업에 대한 부정적인 반응을 확산시켰고, 이 문제를 해소하는데 베트남 현지 기업과 교민사회의 민간 연대가 중요한 역할을 하였다. 이 연구에서는 이러한 내용을 중심으로 국가 차원에서의 봉쇄가 국민적 합의를 얻어냈고, 그것은 베 트남 정부의 권위주의적 성향에 동조한다는 단순한 논리로 설명될 수 없음을 밝히고 있다. 이는 코로나19 상황을 해결하기 위한 국가의 리더십과 사회적 신 뢰가 바탕이 된 국가의 역량은 ‘감시’와 ‘통제’라는 권위주의적 성향의 아이디 어로만 평가되기에는 부족하다는 것을 의미한다. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought science to the fore of public discourse and, considering the complexity of the issues involved, with it also the challenge of effective and informative science communication. This is a particularly contentious topic, in that it is both highly emotional in and of itself; sits at the nexus of the decision-making process regarding the handling of the pandemic, which has effected lockdowns, social behaviour measures, business closures, and others; and concerns the recording and reporting of (...) disease mortality. To clarify a point that has caused much controversy and anger in the public debate, the first part of the present article discusses the very fundamentals underlying the issue of causative attribution with regards to mortality, lays out the foundations of the statistical means of mortality estimation, and concretizes these by analysing the recording and reporting practices adopted in England and their widespread misrepresentations. The second part of the article is empirical in nature. I present data and an analysis of how COVID-19 mortality has been reported in the mainstream media in the UK and the USA, including a comparative analysis both across the two countries as well as across different media outlets. The findings clearly demonstrate a uniform and worrying lack of understanding of the relevant technical subject matter by the media in both countries. Of particular interest is the finding that with a remarkable regularity (????>0.998), the greater the number of articles a media outlet has published on COVID-19 mortality, the greater the proportion of its articles misrepresented the disease mortality figures. (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)

What the COVID-19 pandemic serves to reveal is the inherent limitations and contradictions of a symbolic order that must now be perceived via an “impossible subjectivity”: what this essay will refer to as the “in-human.” (Zizek, 2020). Indeed, this in-human perspective transpires not through our fetishization of the virus, as some form of justification for humanity’s impact on the world, but from a position of impossibility that renders “the whole situation into which we are included.” (Monbiot, 2020; Zizek, 2020). It (...) is on this basis that the virus confers a confrontation with the Real: an antagonism steered by the isolation of an “impossible phenomenon,” grounded in a certain level of “disengagement” that obliges us to “perceive reality as it were viewed from outside.” (Zizek, 2020). Importantly, this “view from outside” does not—and now, cannot—avoid our engagement with the impossible, but must instead be rendered via a form of approachment that conceives of the “virus” as an in-human phenomenon that is our universal condition. The following sections will serve to clarify this in-human approach. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), tremendous efforts have been made by scientists, health professionals, business people, politicians, and laypeople around the world. Covid-19 vaccines are one of the most crucial innovations that help fight against the virus. This paper attempts to revisit the Covid-19 vaccines production process by employing the serendipity-mindsponge-3D creativity management theory. Vaccine production can be considered an information process and classified into three main stages. The first stage involved the processes of absorbing information (...) (e.g., digital data and open science) and rejecting unhelpful information (e.g., misinformation and fake news) for effectively acquiring useful insights. Useful insights were later employed by experts, enterprises, governments, and international organizations through interdisciplinary coordinated efforts for developing vaccines within a short period. Finally, the appearance of multiple types of vaccines enabled more strategic options for vaccine distribution and administration. Findings from this vaccine creativity management process could be used as critical lessons for further improvements of vaccination programs. (shrink)

As governments around the world imposed lockdowns or stay-at-home measures, people began to feel the stress as time dragged on. There were already reports on some individuals committing suicide. How do governments respond to such a phenomenon? Our main focus is the Philippine government and how it responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we argue that the problem with COVID-19 went forth just dealing with physical health. First, people suffer not just from being infected but the psychological stress (...) of possibly getting the virus and the toll of the government lockdown or quarantine. Second, the Philippine Bayanihan ‘We Heal As One Act’ lacks focus on mental health issues while the government's response seemed to focus on security issues. Third, there are countries around the world that have acted effectively in protecting people’s mental health. Lastly, we propose appropriate measures to help address the people's mental health while still in the pandemic and for a future one. (shrink)

This article approaches the COVID-19 pandemic as an inherently antagonistic phenomenon. To do so, it carries forward the philosophical contentions that Žižek outlines in his Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World, as well as his wider work. With reference to the parallax Real and McGowan’s Hegelian contradiction, it is demonstrated that Žižek’s philosophical premises hold a unique importance in politically confronting COVID-19. Indeed, by drawing specific attention to the various ways in which our confrontations with the Real expose the limitations of (...) our socio-ideological orders, it is argued that it is in these very limitations that the limits of the Real are transposed through the various “fictions” we employ to fight and perceive it. In outlining this confrontation, a focused discussion on the Real as “impossible” – a “characteristic” that affords an important political significance for the present context and its ongoing limitations – is provided. In conclusion, if the COVID-19 pandemic demands a new “commons”, and if our response to the crisis should be one where the desires of the nation-state are regulated and controlled, then, it may not simply be enough that we “demand the impossible”. Instead, it is today that the impossible demands a new “us”. (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)

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)

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to global healthcare systems, necessitating accurate and timely forecasting of cases for effective mitigation strategies. In this research paper, we present a novel approach to predict COVID-19 cases using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), harnessing the power of machine learning for epidemiological forecasting. Our ANNs-based forecasting model has demonstrated remarkable efficacy, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 97.87%. This achievement underscores the potential of ANNs in providing precise and data-driven insights into the dynamics (...) of the pandemic. However, this paper underscores the critical importance of a comprehensive evaluation beyond accuracy, including metrics such as sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC-ROC), to assess the model's performance robustness. The research paper offers detailed insights into the architecture of the ANN model, encompassing critical hyperparameters, data preprocessing techniques, and regularization strategies employed to optimize model accuracy. Ethical considerations surrounding data privacy and potential biases within the COVID-19 dataset are also addressed. While the achieved accuracy is a significant milestone, this study underscores the dynamic and evolving nature of the pandemic, necessitating continuous model refinement and validation. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of considering false positives and false negatives in the context of public health decision-making. In conclusion, this research contributes to the arsenal of tools available for pandemic management by showcasing the potential of ANNs in COVID-19 case forecasting. It encourages ongoing exploration and adaptation of predictive models to enhance their applicability in real-world public health scenarios, ultimately contributing to more effective pandemic control and response efforts. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic, like its predecessors - AIDS, Ebola, etc., is evidence of the evolutionary instability of the socio-cultural and ecological niche created by mankind, as the main factor in the evolutionary success of our biological species and the civilization created by it. At least, this applies to the modern global civilization, which is called technogenic or technological, although it exists in several varieties. As we hope to show, the current crisis has less ontological as well as epistemological roots; its (...) reason lies in the main evolutionary trends in the development of science as a social institution. It was only later that epistemological factors were transformed into existential-ontological factors associated with the asymmetry of the existence of civilization and our biosocial nature. The perception or ignorance of a risk factor as a real fact is determined by the presence or absence of knowledge about it. In other words, risk is the result of the integration of the corresponding ontological concept into the general categorical structure. The plurality of such structures is a hallmark of multidisciplinary ontologies, each of which is associated with its own factual continuum. The aim of this study was to conceptually model for support relativistic parameter of evolutionary efficiency of stable evolutionary human strategy (SESH) in its techno-rationalistic module. The meaning of this term is equivalent to the category of scientific and technological development. (shrink)

Nos meses de Junho/Julho - 2019, houve relatos de vazamento de patógenos do Fort Detrick, instalação do Comando Médico do Exército dos EUA, conhecido por desenvolver armas biológicas e que abriga um dos muitos laboratórios BSL-4 do país. Em agosto de 2019, a instalação foi fechada para investigação e a imprensa não teve acesso a informações detalhadas. -/- Em setembro de 2019, um vírus mortal começou a se espalhar nos EUA infectando 26 milhões de pessoas naquele outono, com pelo menos (...) 250.000 hospitalizadas e 20.000 mortes. Posteriormente o Dr. Robert Redfield, diretor do Centro de Controle e Prevenção de Doenças dos EUA, reconheceu perante o Comitê do Congresso, que algumas mortes por influenza foram mais tarde diagnosticadas como de Covid-19. -/- Em 18 de outubro de 2019, dia do início dos Jogos Mundiais Militares em Wuhan, que contou com a presença de militares americanos, a Fundação Bill & Melinda Gates e o Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security em parceria com o Fórum Econômico Mundial, promovem uma simulação de pandemia de coronavírus em Nova York, reunindo líderes empresariais e agentes do governo. -/- Em novembro de 2019, o prefeito de Belleville, Nova Jersey, Michael Melham, passou mal e seu diagnóstico foi uma grave pneumonia posteriormente confirmado como sendo Covid-19. Falei com Michael sobre a veracidade dos fatos e ele me confirmou o diagnóstico. Disse que possui dois testes de anticorpos positivos para a Covid-19. -/- Em janeiro de 2019 a revista Science publicou um artigo questionando a teoria oficial de que o vírus havia sido transmitido de um animal para um ser humano no mercado de Wuhan e outro estudo publicado na revista The Lancet, concluiu que 13 das primeiras 41 pessoas diagnosticadas com Covid-19 não tiveram nenhum contato com o mercado de Wuhan, além disso, o Dr. Daniel Lucey, professor de doenças infecciosas da Georgetown University Medical Center, disse baseado em evidências, que o "paciente zero", foi infectado antes de dezembro de 2019, mais precisamente entre outubro e início de novembro de 2019, mas o diagnóstico era de pneumonia e assim o vírus começou a se espalhar por Wuhan. -/- Agora, não é porque o novo coronavírus surgiu na China, que sua origem seja o laboratório de Wuhan, a gripe espanhola por exemplo, se disseminou no mundo a partir da Europa matando 50 milhões de pessoas e sua origem estava no Fort Riley, em Kansas, EUA. (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)

Ageing is one of the main risk factors for Covid-19. In this paper, we delineate four alternative conceptualisations of ageing, each of which determines different understandings of its causal role to the susceptibility to Covid-19 as well as to the severity of its symptoms and adverse health outcomes.

This paper attempts to bring the traditional theodicy on the question of evil and the Divine Providence, to its logical conclusion, in such a way that a believer is challenged to totally accept the implication of his or her faith in God. To have faith is to completely surrender to Divine Providence. It is to completely surrender ones free will to the rational conclusions or consequences of faith in the Divine Providence. Hence, this paper is for those who are perplexed (...) due to the Pandemic. Especially for Christians whose faith in God is perplexed because of their existential experience of the COVID 19 pandemic as evil. The existential reality of dread and misery caused by this pandemic is globally and more subjectively experienced due to the digitalization of this age. This shows how disastrously powerful the digitalization of our world can be in the proliferation of dread, misery and hopelessness. (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)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of challenges to the globalized world. Globally, it has decimated over six million lives. Since 2019, it has shook the world in many respects, especially, it disrupted economies and societies and halted the majority of human endeavor. Commentaries and reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the media showed an alarming situation that could be damning in low and middle income countries. Economic pundits and global public health experts also anticipated doom and (...) gloom for African countries. However, in terms of mortality, the Americas, Europe and Asia have suffered more losses. Irrespective of these loses in Europe, Africa’s case needs better appreciation within our contemporary historical discourse. The burgeoning challenge of the COVID disease and mortalities arising thereby, among other things, necessitated the introduction of policies based on the WHO’s historical understanding of how the world has dealt with pandemics in the past. Some of the strategies that were deployed to fight the pandemic included hand washing under running water with soap, the use of alcohol based hand sanitizers, the wearing of nose masks, social distancing, self isolation as well as partial and complete lockdowns of states and communities. The major economic disruption really came about as a result of many lockdown policies that were implemented by several countries in Africa without proper reference to their own societal contexts. These issues notwithstanding, it is important to emphasize that the extent of the impact on different communities differed to a large extent, even though there were similar levels of the nature of the infection and the general economic outlook among the global community. This current contribution on the COVID-19 discourse used political economy and economic shock as bases to highlight the extent of the impact of the disease by highlighting examples from respective countries in Africa, namely, Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa. In particular, the impact of policies like lock-down on some of these African countries are highlighted for further discussions in future empirical research. The study relied on contemporary historical evidence from multidisciplinary sources on health, economics, policy, and other related studies on epidemiology, public health, health education and promotion, reports and sources from the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, the authors have used published research in Lancet, the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, BMJ Global Health, Frontiers in Public Health and the Pan African Medical Journal. The others were African Development Review, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Africa Spectrum and International Journal of Financial Research including several other empirical research. In attempting a social and economic interpretation based on contemporary historical sense, the findings of this present study suggest that African political actors or leaders should make persistent or steady efforts to strengthen the economies of their states to lessen economic shocks and social costs that come about as a result of pandemics such as the COVID-19. It also identified the fact that within the globalized space, application of policies from other countries including international organizations should not be devoid of context. -/- . (shrink)

Previous research has shown that women are disproportionately negatively affected by a variety of socio-economic hardships, many of which COVID-19 is making worse. In particular, because of gender roles, and because women’s jobs tend to be given lower priority than men’s (since they are more likely to be part-time, lower-income, and less secure), women assume the obligations of increased caregiving needs at a much higher rate. This unfairly renders women especially susceptible to short- and long-term economic insecurity and decreases in (...) wellbeing. Single-parent households, the majority of which are headed by single mothers, face even greater risks. These vulnerabilities are further compounded along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and geography. Drawing upon the philosophical literature on political responsibility and structural injustice (specifically, the work of Iris Marion Young), I argue that while the state may not have had either foresight into, or control over, the disproportionate effect the pandemic would have on women, it can nonetheless be held responsible for mitigating these effects. In order to do so, it must first recognize the ways in which women have been affected by the outbreak. Specifically, policies must take into account the unpaid labor of care that falls on women. Moreover, given that this labor is particularly vital during a global health pandemic, the state ought to immediately prioritize the value of this work by providing financial stimuli directly to families, requiring employers to provide both sick leave and parental leave for at least as long as schools and daycares are inoperational, and providing subsidized emergency childcare. (shrink)

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with Covid-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders (...) who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing Covid policies may seem to fail to show respect for the autonomy of those who lack the relevant religious commitments, and—especially when a leader herself rejects the religious commitments she makes reference to to persuade others—her appeals to religious reasons may seem to constitute ethically problematic exercises of manipulation. This essay draws on the resources of contemporary political philosophy to analyze and respond to these concerns and concludes that they are not sufficiently well-founded. To the contrary, it contends that there are good moral grounds for leaders to appeal to religious reasons as (partial) bases of justification for why followers should accept Covid policies. In the course of the argument, this essay also highlights how contemporary political theory can enrich discussions about the distinctions between coercion, manipulation, and leadership, and thereby give insight not only into the ethics of leadership but also—at least by the lights of central theories of leadership like that of James MacGregor Burns (1978)—into whether and how appeals to religious reasons can figure into genuine exercises of leadership, in contrast with mere instances of the wielding of social power. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, public policy was not driven by findings from public health research, but by politicians’ desire to pursue their own interests. The media and politicians inflamed mass hysteria and then imposed ill-considered lockdowns to “solve” the problem. Lockdowns not only failed to protect those at risk from the virus, but also caused enormous collateral damage. Public choice theory helps explaining this decision-making. -/- .

By 20 October 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had amended its Emergency Use Authorizations for immunocompetent adults who previously received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. For the 2-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for adults aged 65 years or older and adults aged 18 to 64 years at high-risk for severe COVID-19 or at high risk for occupational or institutional COVID-19 exposure. For the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (...) vaccine, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for all adults aged 18 or older. These eligibility schemes were endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortly after FDA approval. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how different (even conflicting) interventions on nature can be scientifically justified: interventions can be deemed "effective" only in relation to specific target variables - in relation to variables the values of which we seek to control. Choosing the "right" target variables, in turn, depends on our values and pragmatic aims. This essay is based on a presentation given at the symposium "Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the COVID-19 Pandemic", organised at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on (...) 16 June 2020. (shrink)

La pandemia de la COVID-19 ha recordado la importancia de prevenir y planificarse ante eventos altamente desastrosos para la salud comunitaria. Varios fenómenos emergentes suponen amenazas prospectivas para la Salud Pública. Sin embargo, el carácter mayormente futuro de problemas como la resistencia antibiótica, el impacto del cambio climático en la salud o la bioingeniería de patógenos genera dificultades de análisis. ¿Cuáles son los desafíos éticos y epistemológicos que suscitan los problemas futuros para la Salud Pública? ¿Cómo deben abordarse los problemas (...) morales de escenarios futuros, potencialmente catastróficos? En este artículo se defiende la necesidad de adoptar enfoques éticos anticipativos desde la ética de la Salud Pública. En primer lugar, se argumentará que el abordaje de estos problemas futuros requiere reflexionar sobre el futuro como problema ético y epistémico. En segundo lugar, se analizarán las características de la incipiente ética anticipatoria en los ámbitos de la ética de la tecnología y la bioética. En tercer lugar, se defenderá la aplicación de metodologías de previsión y anticipación en debates sobre la ética de la Salud Pública. Finalmente, se ofrecerán algunas reflexiones para fortalecer los análisis normativos anticipativos a fin de prevenir y atajar de antemano los efectos adversos de las futuras crisis sanitarias. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of challenges to the globalized world. Globally, it has decimated over six million lives. Since 2019, it has shook the world in many respects, especially, it disrupted economies and societies and halted the majority of human endeavor. Commentaries and reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the media showed an alarming situation that could be damning in low and middle income countries. Economic pundits and global public health experts also anticipated doom and (...) gloom for African countries. However, in terms of mortality, the Americas, Europe and Asia have suffered more losses. Irrespective of these loses in Europe, Africa’s case needs better appreciation within our contemporary historical discourse. The burgeoning challenge of the COVID disease and mortalities arising thereby, among other things, necessitated the introduction of policies based on the WHO’s historical understanding of how the world has dealt with pandemics in the past. Some of the strategies that were deployed to fight the pandemic included hand washing under running water with soap, the use of alcohol based hand sanitizers, the wearing of nose masks, social distancing, self isolation as well as partial and complete lockdowns of states and communities. The major economic disruption really came about as a result of many lockdown policies that were implemented by several countries in Africa without proper reference to their own societal contexts. These issues notwithstanding, it is important to emphasize that the extent of the impact on different communities differed to a large extent, even though there were similar levels of the nature of the infection and the general economic outlook among the global community. This current contribution on the COVID-19 discourse used political economy and economic shock as bases to highlight the extent of the impact of the disease by highlighting examples from respective countries in Africa, namely, Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa. In particular, the impact of policies like lock-down on some of these African countries are highlighted for further discussions in future empirical research. The study relied on contemporary historical evidence from multidisciplinary sources on health, economics, policy, and other related studies on epidemiology, public health, health education and promotion, reports and sources from the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, the authors have used published research in Lancet, the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, BMJ Global Health, Frontiers in Public Health and the Pan African Medical Journal. The others were African Development Review, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Africa Spectrum and International Journal of Financial Research including several other empirical research. In attempting a social and economic interpretation based on contemporary historical sense, the findings of this present study suggest that African political actors or leaders should make persistent or steady efforts to strengthen the economies of their states to lessen economic shocks and social costs that come about as a result of pandemics such as the COVID-19. It also identified the fact that within the globalized space, application of policies from other countries including international organizations should not be devoid of context. (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)

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)

Today's academia is obsessed about writing and speaking gobbledygook. At least most of the time. It has little time in sitting still and actually reading fiction, poetry and say, Wittgenstein. One pretends to say fancy things about these authors but one does not actually read books anymore. COVID 19 Lockdown prompted this author to answer queries from students and peers about a reading list. So prepare a wide ranging list he did which covers everything from the version of Mahabharata one (...) ought to read to novels on celibacy. But then he chose to publish at Prabuddha Bharata over all other platforms because the Ramakrishna Mission has the finances to keep this list alive 200 years hence. This was written during COVID 19 Lockdown in India at the end of April, 2020. Nirad C Chaudhuri insisted on making a good bibliography in his magnum opus. This author follows Nirad C Chaudhuri in quietly speaking about how Harold Bloom plagiarised the Late Professor John Senior's reading list. The list also comments on Romanticism and the art of writing itself. The list on Hinduism is truly contrarian. One hopes that this list survives when GoodReads and other Listopias are no longer. -/- Today's academia is obsessed about writing and speaking gobbledygook. At least most of the time. It has little time in sitting still and actually reading fiction, poetry and say, Wittgenstein. One pretends to say fancy things about these authors but one does not actually read books anymore. COVID 19 Lockdown prompted this author to answer queries from students and peers about a reading list. So prepare a wide ranging list he did which covers everything from the version of Mahabharata one ought to read to novels on celibacy. But then he chose to publish at Prabuddha Bharata over all other platforms because the Ramakrishna Mission has the finances to keep this list alive 200 years hence. This was written during COVID 19 Lockdown in India at the end of April, 2020. Nirad C Chaudhuri insisted on making a good bibliography in his magnum opus. This author follows Nirad C Chaudhuri in quietly speaking about how Harold Bloom plagiarised the Late Professor John Senior's reading list. The list also comments on Romanticism and the art of writing itself. The list on Hinduism is truly contrarian. One hopes that this list survives when GoodReads and other Listopias are no longer. -/- These COVID 19 days, while the First world is mooning over syllabi for their kids and third and fourth world folks like me are tackling Umphan; I chose to prepare a new kind of syllabus. A syllabus which is not merely a list. In these days of incessant and meaningless webinars which my students can only spread memes about and only the poor and doctors will actually travel to white nations which are killing their own; here's a list which ends with Hindu classics which are contrarian. Nirad C Chaudhuri, a much maligned man in India and a forgotten polyglot in white privileged academia said we must first prepare a bibliography. So, Figure it out. I used some of the Hindu resources on recognition mentioned here and tried to work on Stephen King; a privileged white tenure track person from Trumpland just snowballed me. Now, this list is syllabi and also just a list of a bunch of books to read during Lockdowns which will be more common in the future because COVID 19, as Dr Fauci tells us; is here to stay. Even if one COVID 19 person is there; then along with Ebola, my white privileged tenure track fiends; off you go to gagaland. We in India already know these diseases. Go figure it out. (shrink)

Trans healthcare and thus trans people have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trans people’s healthcare situations have turned out to be so vulnerable in this crisis because they have been precarious to begin with. There are multiple ways in which trans healthcare has been affected: Surgeries and other procedures have been cancelled or postponed, and mental health services have been paused or moved online. This raises ethical questions around discrimination against trans people in the healthcare system. This article (...) argues that cancelling trans surgeries and procedures in the COVID-19 crisis is made possible through an understanding of trans healthcare as non-essential. The article explores how trans healthcare in particular has been affected by the pandemic. (shrink)

Results: We analyzed 1,402 surveys and 15 in-depth interviews. Many (32%) CL participants reported greater difficulty refilling medications and a minority (14%) reported greater difficulty accessing HIV care during the pandemic. Most (99%) Opt4Mamas participants reported no difficulty refilling medications or accessing HIV/pregnancy care. Among the CL participants, older women were less likely (aOR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.92–0.98) and women with more children were more likely (aOR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00–1.28) to report difficulty refilling medications. Only 2% of (...) CL participants reported greater difficulty managing FP and most (95%) reported no change in likelihood of using FP or desire to get pregnant. Qualitative analysis revealed three major themes: (1) adverse organizational/economic implications of the pandemic, (2) increased importance of pregnancy prevention during the pandemic, and (3) fear of contracting COVID-19. (shrink)

Social Media is a new media of information flow gateway that can be accessed by the public, easily and freely. Social Media is an interactive information technology which not only can netizens access information, but they can also make news (information, comments, etc.) and share it on the internet. Easy access to information has caused ideological effects on society. This research aims to examine the ideological effects of the myths about COVID-19 on social media. The data collection was done through (...) observation and distributing questionnaires online on social media. The data sources were from WhatsApp and Coronavirus cases reported online Indonesia. Researchers used Barthes' mythological theory to answer the research objectives. The results of this research indicated that the spread of myths related to COVID-19 by netizens on social media had caused ideological effects on society, for example, the public refused the coronavirus victims to be buried in public burial because of the corpse considered to infect the residents. This research contributes to the media effects theory development, which can be a policy for the government in fighting against Coronavirus, and netizens who use parrhesia on social media which can contain untrue myths. (shrink)

PhD Researcher Md Mahmudul Hoque (Moni) brings stories of working children from Dhaka. Calling for government, agencies, businesses to further immediate protection for the poor and vulnerable.

The late Robert Veatch, one of the United States’ founders of bioethics, never tired of reminding us that the paradigm-shifting contribution that bioethics made to patient care was to liberate patients out of the hands of doctors, who were traditionally seen to know best, even when they decidedly did not know best. It seems to us that with the advent of COVID-19, health policy has come full-circle on this. COVID-19 gave rise to a large number of purportedly “ethical” guidance documents (...) aiming to assist health care providers and practitioners with responding to the ethical challenges that might arise in their response to the pandemic. Ethics has two primary functions: provide clear action guidance, and provide clear action justification. The documents in question arguably reflect the ultimate policy triumph of bioethical “principlism”, and, perhaps surprisingly, as a corollary, the ultimate triumph of “doctor-knows-best”. (shrink)

COVID-19 not only directly devastated people’s health but also disrupted normal lifestyles and increased the risk of mental health issues. Kim SY, et al. (2022) explored the mental problems further in the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

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)

The shortage conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic have been changing our ordinary way of life around the world since the beginning of 2020. Such conditions pose a challenge for shaping a cohesive theory of justice—one that takes non-ideal circumstances as necessary for the model. These conditions also interfere with agents’ moral capacity in ways that make it difficult for them to tell what is morally relevant, which impairs their ability to identify what actions are just. To shed light on (...) these problems, I turn to David Hume’s theory of justice as a test case to portray how outer conditions shape an agent’s inner conditions and affect the foundation of our moral perception of what is just. (shrink)

A question arising from the COVID-19 crisis is whether the merits of cases for climate policies have been affected. This article focuses on carbon pricing, in the form of either carbon taxes or emissions trading. It discusses the extent to which relative costs and benefits of introducing carbon pricing may have changed in the context of COVID-19, during both the crisis and the recovery period to follow. In several ways, the case for introducing a carbon price is stronger during the (...) COVID-19 crisis than under normal conditions. Oil costs are lower than normal, so we would expect less harm to consumers compared to normal conditions. Governments have immediate need for diversified new revenue streams in light of both decreased tax receipts and greater use of social safety nets. Finally, supply and demand shocks have led to already destabilized supply-side activities, and carbon pricing would allow this destabilization to equilibrate around greener production for the long-term. The strengthening of the case for introducing carbon pricing now is highly relevant to discussions about recovery measures, especially in the context of policy announcements from the European Union and United States House of Representatives. Key Policy Insights: • Persistently low oil prices mean that consumers will face lower pain from carbon pricing than under normal conditions. • Many consumers are more price-sensitive during the COVID-19 context, which suggests that a greater relative burden from carbon prices would fall upon producers as opposed to consumers than under normal conditions. • Carbon prices in the COVID-19 context can introduce new revenue streams, assisting with fiscal holes or with other green priorities. • Carbon pricing would contribute to a more sustainable COVID-19 recovery period, since many of the costs of revamping supply chains are already being felt while idled labor capacity can be incorporated into firms with lower carbon-intensity. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)

The shortage conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic have been changing our ordinary way of life around the world since the beginning of 2020. Such conditions pose a challenge for shaping a cohesive theory of justice—one that takes non-ideal circumstances as necessary for the model. These conditions also interfere with agents’ moral capacity in ways that make it difficult for them to tell what is morally relevant, which impairs their ability to identify what actions are just. To shed light on (...) these problems, I turn to David Hume’s theory of justice as a test case to portray how outer conditions shape an agent’s inner conditions and affect the foundation of our moral perception of what is just. (shrink)

When hospitals face surges of patients with COVID-19, fair allocation of scarce medical resources remains a challenge. Scarcity has at times encompassed not only hospital and intensive care unit beds—often reflecting staffing shortages—but also therapies and intensive treatments. Safe, highly effective COVID-19 vaccines have been free and widely available since mid-2021, yet many Americans remain unvaccinated by choice. Should their decision to forgo vaccination be considered when allocating scarce resources? Some have suggested it should, while others disagree. We offer a (...) framework for evaluating when it is ethical and briefly discuss its legality in American law. (shrink)

Study shows that mask-wearing is a critical factor in stopping the COVID-19 transmission. By the time of this article, most states have mandated face masking in public space. Therefore, real-time face mask detection becomes an essential application to prevent the spread of the pandemic. This study will present a face mask detection system that can detect and monitor mask-wearing from camera feeds and alert when there is a violation. The face mask detection algorithm uses a haar cascade classifier to find (...) facial features from the camera feed and then utilizes it to detect the mask-wearing status. With the increasing number of cases all over the world, a system to replace humans to check masks on the faces of people is greatly needed. This system satisfies that need. This system can be employed in public places like transport stations and malls. It will be of great help in companies and huge establishments where there will be a lot of workers. Alongside this, we have used basic concepts of transfer learning in neural networks to finally output the presence or absence of a face mask in an image or a video stream. Experimental results show that our model performs well on the test data with 100 percent and 99 percent precision and recall, respectively. We are making a savvy framework that will identify whether the specific user has worn the mask or not and further tell the accuracy level of the detection. Our framework will be python and AI-based which will be safe and quick for implementation. This system will be of great help there because it is easy to obtain and store the data of the employees working in that Company and will very easily find the people who are not wearing the mask and a will be sent to that respective person to take Precautions not wearing a mask. Potential delays are analyzed, and efforts are made to reduce them to achieve real-time detection. The experiment result shows that the presented system achieves a real-time 45fps 720p Video output, with a face mask detection response of 0.15s and the accuracy of detection 99%. (shrink)

In “Analyzing COVID-19 Sex Difference Claims: The Harvard GenderSci Lab,” Marion Boulicault and Sarah Richardson summarize some of the groundbreaking work that they’re doing at the Harvard GenderSci Lab. Since March 2020, their lab has been analyzing, interrogating, and critiquing sex essentialist explanations of COVID-19 outcome disparities that are fairly ubiquitous in news media. Using interdisciplinary tools from feminist philosophy, science studies, and critical public health, they work collaboratively with two goals: (i) to critically examine COVID-19 sex difference research and (...) (ii) to explore and elevate the role of social variables in driving biological disparities. They argue that in public health research, media, and messaging, data on sex disparities must be contextualized both to avoid reinforcing harmful sex essentialist assumptions and also to help the public understand the complex ways in which social factors influence these patterns. They argue that within the context of COVID-19, doing so can both clarify risks and save lives. Their contribution to this issue describes their methods and shares some of their findings. (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 interplay between the virus, infected cells and immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 is still under debate. By extending the basic model of viral dynamics, we propose here a formal approach to describe neutralisation versus weak (or non-)neutralisation scenarios and compare them with the possible effects of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). The theoretical model is consistent with the data available in the literature; we show that both weakly neutralising antibodies and ADE can result in final viral clearance or disease progression, but that (...) the immunodynamics are different in each case. As a significant proportion of the world’s population is already naturally immune or vaccinated, we also discuss the implications for secondary infections after vaccination or in the presence of immune system dysfunctions. (shrink)

Technologies to rapidly alert people when they have been in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 are part of a strategy to bring the pandemic under control. Currently, at least 47 contact-tracing apps are available globally. They are already in use in Australia, South Korea and Singapore, for instance. And many other governments are testing or considering them. Here we set out 16 questions to assess whether — and to what extent — a contact-tracing app is ethically justifiable.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) positions itself as an institution primarily dedicated to the health and betterment of “student-athletes” across the country, but in reality it is not so virtuous. This paper will show how decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 undermine the stated purpose of the current intercollegiate sports model in the United States. It will begin by presenting the claimed goals and values of the NCAA. Then, it will show how many decisions made during the (...) COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 are incompatible with these goals. In doing so, it will illustrate that there is one purpose that is far more in line with decisions during the 2020 pandemic: revenue generation through mass entertainment. Even for those who have long bought into the NCAA’s noble rhetoric, COVID-19 is mask off for the NCAA’s “collegiate model” myth. (shrink)