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Public Health

Omicron Travel Restrictions Are Not Ethically Justified

Written by: Alberto Giubilini, Julian Savulescu

*A version of this blogpost appears as an article in the Spectator*

 

Governments are at it again. It has become an involuntary reflex. A few days after South Africa sequenced and identified the new Omicron variant, England placed some South African countries back in the ‘red list’. Quarantine has been imposed on all incoming passengers until they show evidence of a negative test. Some European countries banned incoming flights from that region. Switzerland introduced quarantine for passengers arriving from the UK, but also banned all the unvaccinated passengers from the UK from entering the country. The domino effect we have seen so many times during this pandemic has kicked in again.

Is closing borders ethical? We don’t think so. At the beginning of the pandemic, border closures were, arguably, too little too late. Angela Merkel sealed off Germany’s borders in March 2020 less than a week after having declared that, in the name of solidarity, EU countries should not isolate themselves from one another, as the situation was out of control and extremely uncertain. The UK was also criticized for closing borders and locking down too late. In fact, countries that closed borders relatively early, such as Australia and New Zealand, fared better in terms of keeping the virus at bay.

However, we are at a very different stage of the pandemic now.  The disease is endemic, vaccination has been introduced, and we have treatments available. Why do we think the same measures that might have been appropriate in March 2020 are the best response in this very different context?

Read More »Omicron Travel Restrictions Are Not Ethically Justified

Cross post: Why COVID passes are not discriminatory (in the way you think they are)

Alberto Giubilini

(This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article)
The Conversation

UK health secretary Sajid Javid’s plans for vaccination requirements for frontline NHS workers has reignited the political and ethical debate over COVID passes.

The requirement constitutes a kind of vaccine pass; without proof of vaccination, healthcare workers are prevented from continuing working in the NHS in a frontline role. Other types of COVID passes have been introduced elsewhere, such as the so-called “green pass” used in many European countries.

COVID passes are certificates intended to limit the access to certain spaces – including, in some cases, the workplace – to people who are vaccinated, or who are thought to have immunity from previous COVID infections, or who have had a recent negative COVID test, or some combination thereof (depending on the type of pass). The aim is to minimise the risk that people in those spaces can infect others.

A common objection to COVID passes is that they are discriminatory because they would create a two-tier society with vaccinated people enjoying more freedom than the unvaccinated.

Read More »Cross post: Why COVID passes are not discriminatory (in the way you think they are)

Who Cares?

By Stephen Rainey & Yasemin J. Erden

How much of a role should the state play in taking care of us, as opposed to, say, our family members? According to some, care should “start at home” and should, moreover, be selfless. Statements like “Parents and other caregivers look after their children with little thought of return” from a recent New Statesman article sound nice, and elicit nods of approval – of course no returns are sought!

But are they true?Read More »Who Cares?

Paying for the Flu Vaccine

By Ben Davies

As I do every winter, I recently booked an appointment for a flu vaccine. I get it for free in the UK. If I didn’t have asthma, I’d still get vaccinated, but it would cost me between £9 and £14.99. That is both an ethical error on the part of the government, and may be a pragmatic one too.

Read More »Paying for the Flu Vaccine

Oxford Uehiro Centre Goes DefaultVeg

By Katrien Devolder

“Britons have cut their meat consumption by 17% over the past decade but will need to double these efforts if they are to meet targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production set out in the national food strategy earlier this year”. So began an article in The Guardian last Friday.[1] The article was reporting the guidance of the National food strategy[2]—commissioned by the UK government, but developed by an independent team in 2021—which recommends that meat consumption is cut by 30% within a decade. Many scientific studies have concluded that we (i.e., richer countries) need to be even more ambitious than that, especially if we want to halt the climate crisis.[3]

Read More »Oxford Uehiro Centre Goes DefaultVeg

The double ethical mistake of vaccinating children against COVID-19

 

Alberto Giubilini

Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

University of Oxford

 

Against the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)’s advice that did not recommend COVID-19 vaccination for children, the four Chief Medical Officers in the UK have just recommended that all children aged 12-15 should be vaccinated with the mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

This is a double ethical mistake, given our current state of knowledge.

Read More »The double ethical mistake of vaccinating children against COVID-19

Philosophical Fiddling While the World Burns

By Charles Foster

An unprecedented editorial has just appeared in many health journals across the world. It relates to climate change.

The authors say that they are ‘united in recognising that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory.’

Climate change, they agree, is the major threat to public health. Here is an excerpt: there will be nothing surprising here:

‘The risks to health of increases above 1.5°C are now well established. Indeed, no temperature rise is “safe.” In the past 20 years, heat related mortality among people aged over 65 has increased by more than 50%.Hi gher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. Harms disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities, and those with underlying health problems.’Read More »Philosophical Fiddling While the World Burns

We Should Vaccinate Children in High-income Countries Against COVID-19, Too

Written by Lisa Forsberg, Anthony Skelton, Isra Black

In early September, children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are set to return to school. (Scottish schoolchildren have already returned.) Most will not be vaccinated, and there will be few, if any, measures in place protecting them from COVID-19 infection. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have belatedly changed their minds about vaccinating 16- and 17-year olds against COVID-19, but they still oppose recommending vaccination for 12-15 year olds. This is despite considerable criticism from public health experts (here, here, and here), and despite the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) declaring COVID-19 vaccines safe and effective for children aged 12 and up—Pfizer/BioNTech in the beginning of June, and Moderna the other week.

In Sweden, children returned to school in the middle of August. As in the UK, children under 16 will be unvaccinated, and there will be few or no protective measures, such as improved ventilation, systematic testing, isolation of confirmed cases, and masking. Like the JCVI in the UK, Sweden’s Folkhälsomyndigheten opposes vaccination against COVID-19 for the under-16s, despite Sweden’s medical regulatory authority, Läkemedelsverket, having approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for children from the age of 12. The European Medicines Agency approved Pfizer and Moderna in May and July respectively, declaring that any risks of vaccine side-effects are outweighed by the benefits for this age group.

Read More »We Should Vaccinate Children in High-income Countries Against COVID-19, Too

The end of the COVID-19 pandemic

 

Alberto Giubilini, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and WEH, University of Oxford

Erica Charters, Faculty of History and WEH, University of Oxford

 

 

A discussion on the end of the COVID-19 pandemic is overdue. We keep hearing that ‘we are in the middle of a pandemic’. However, it is not clear what it means to be in the middle of a pandemic if we don’t know what it means for a pandemic to end.  How can we know what the middle is if we don’t know what the end is?

We were given a clear date by the WHO for the start of the pandemic (11 March 2020). A few days earlier the WHO Director-General had for the first time used the term ‘epidemic’ to refer to COVID-19 outbreaks in some countries (5 March 2020). A disease is categorized as an epidemic when it spreads rapidly, with higher rates than normal, in a certain geographical area. A pandemic is an epidemic spreading over more than one continent. Thus, declaring epidemic and pandemic status is a decision based on epidemiological criteria.

By contrast, the end of an epidemic is not determined by epidemiological factors alone. Historically, epidemics end not with the end of the disease, but with the disease becoming endemic – that is, accepted and acceptable as part of normal life.

However, when and how a disease becomes normal or acceptable is primarily a social, cultural, political, and ethical phenomenon, rather than scientific or epidemiological.  It is a more subtle phenomenon – and less precise – than the start of the epidemic.  The end depends on how a society decides to respond to a pathogen that keeps circulating.  We might well find ourselves out of this pandemic without realising when and how it happened.

So, when will this pandemic end?

Read More »The end of the COVID-19 pandemic