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Shaming unvaccinated people has to stop. We’ve turned into an angry mob and it’s getting ugly

Written by Alberto Giubilini and Julian Savulescu. Cross-Posted from The Conversation 
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Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford and Alberto Giubilini, University of Oxford

Unvaccinated mother, 27, dies with coronavirus as her father calls for fines for people who refuse jab.

This is the kind of headline you may have seen over the past year, an example highlighting public shaming of unvaccinated people who die of COVID-19.

One news outlet compiled a list of “notable anti-vaxxers who have died from COVID-19”.

There’s shaming on social media, too. For instance, a whole Reddit channel is devoted to mocking people who die after refusing the vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccinations save lives and reduce the need for hospitalisation. This is all important public health information.

Telling relatable stories and using emotive language about vaccination sends a message: getting vaccinated is good.

But the problem with the examples above is their tone and the way unvaccinated people are singled out. There’s also a murkier reason behind this shaming.

Read More »Shaming unvaccinated people has to stop. We’ve turned into an angry mob and it’s getting ugly

Cross Post: Why the UK Shouldn’t Introduce Mandatory COVID Vaccination

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Written by Julian Savulescu, Dominic Wilkinson, and Jonathan Pugh

As coronavirus infections surge across Europe, and with the threat of the omicron variant looming, countries are imposing increasingly stringent pandemic controls.

In Austria, citizens will be subject to a vaccine mandate in February. In Greece, meanwhile, a vaccine mandate will apply to those 60 and over, starting in mid-January.

Both mandates allow medical exemptions, and the Greek mandate allows exemptions for those who have recently recovered from COVID.

Other countries, including Germany, may soon follow suit, and the European Commission has raised the need to discuss an EU vaccine mandate. In contrast, the UK health secretary, Sajid Javid, has been clear that the UK will not consider a general mandatory vaccination policy.Read More »Cross Post: Why the UK Shouldn’t Introduce Mandatory COVID Vaccination

Cross Post: Omicron: Better To Be Safe (And Quick) Than Sorry

Written by: Dominic Wilkinson, and Jonathan Pugh

People Image Studio/Shutterstock
On discovering the omicron variant, many countries moved quickly to impose travel restrictions and other public health measures, such as compulsory mask wearing. But, given the lack of data, is this the best course of action?

These measures have tangible costs, and some have argued that they are an over-reaction. Critics of the travel ban claim that new measures will not significantly prevent the spread of the variant. Indeed, World Health Organization (WHO) officials have urged countries not to hastily impose travel curbs, instead advocating a risk analysis and science-based approach.Read More »Cross Post: Omicron: Better To Be Safe (And Quick) Than Sorry

Cross Post: Selective lockdowns can be ethically justifiable – here’s why

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Written by: Jonathan Pugh, Dominic Wilkinson, and Julian Savulescu

 

Spitzi-Foto/Shutterstock
COVID is surging in some European countries. In response, Austria and Russia are planning to reimpose lockdowns, but only for the unvaccinated. Is this ethical?

Some countries already have vaccine passport schemes to travel or enter certain public spaces. The passports treat those who have had vaccines – or have evidence of recent infection – differently from those who have not had a vaccine. But the proposed selective lockdowns would radically increase the scope of restrictions for the unvaccinated.

Lockdowns can be ethically justified where they are necessary and proportionate to achieve an important public health benefit, even though they restrict individual freedoms. Whether selective lockdowns are justified, though, depends on what they are intended to achieve.Read More »Cross Post: Selective lockdowns can be ethically justifiable – here’s why

Cross Post: Vaccine passports: why they are good for society

Written by Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, University of Cambridge,

and Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford

person holding a mobile phone displaying a Covid-19 vaccinated message
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As more and more people get vaccinated, some governments are relying on “vaccine passports” as a way of reopening society. These passports are essentially certificates that show the holder has been immunised against COVID-19, which restaurants, pubs, bars, sports venues and others can use to grant them entry.

Israel currently operates a “green pass” system, which allows vaccinated people access to theatres, concert halls, indoor restaurants and bars. The UK government, had to roll back plans to trial vaccine passports after some of the venues involved experienced significant backlash against the proposals.

This is perhaps not surprising – vaccine passport schemes are controversial, with some arguing that they will reinforce inequalities. But there is an ethical case for using some form of certification of COVID status, as long as it is designed properly and as long as everyone has access to vaccines.

Let’s look at the ethics of vaccination and certification.Read More »Cross Post: Vaccine passports: why they are good for society

Cross Post: End-of-Life Care: People Should Have the Option of General Anaesthesia as They Die

Written by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu

KieferPix/Shutterstock
Dying patients who are in pain are usually given an analgesic, such as morphine, to ease their final hours and days. And if an analgesic isn’t enough, they can be given a sedative – something to make them more relaxed and less distressed at the end of life. We have recently written about a third approach: using a general anaesthetic to ensure that the dying patient is completely unconscious. This has been described previously, but largely overlooked.

There are two situations when a general anaesthetic might be used in dying patients. The first is when other drugs have not worked and the patient is still distressed or in pain. The second is when a patient has only a short time to live and expresses a clear wish to be unconscious. Some dying patients just want to sleep.Read More »Cross Post: End-of-Life Care: People Should Have the Option of General Anaesthesia as They Die

Cross Post: COVID: Is it OK to manipulate people into getting vaccinated?

Written by Maximilian Kiener, University of Oxford

The vaccine does contain a microchip, but it means you’ll get free wifi. Rido/Shutterstock
Bored Panda, a website that publishes “lightweight and inoffensive topics”, reports an allegedly true case from the US of a woman who refused to have her child vaccinated. The woman, who is described as a “conspiracy theory magnet”, provided 15 reasons why vaccines are more harmful than the disease they protect against.

When the doctor realised that he wouldn’t be able to dissuade her of her beliefs, he decided to present her with another one:

Have you considered the possibility that anti-vaccine propaganda could be an attempt by the Russians or the Chinese to weaken the health of the United States population?

The doctor deliberately deceived the woman and probably reinforced her belief in conspiracy theories by pretending to find them plausible himself. But the tactic worked. The mother consented to have her child vaccinated.

Right now, vaccination is key to overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and regaining safe individual freedom. Yet a minority of people, like the woman in our example, still refuse vaccination on mistaken beliefs. But how far can we go to change their minds?

Would the doctor be justified in using similar tactics to make the woman consent to her own COVID-19 vaccination?Read More »Cross Post: COVID: Is it OK to manipulate people into getting vaccinated?

Crosspost: Learning to live with COVID – the tough choices ahead

By Jonathan Pugh, Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu

This work was supported by the UKRI/ AHRC funded UK Ethics Accelerator project, grant number AH/V013947/1. The UK Ethics Accelerator project can be found at https://ukpandemicethics.org/

 

As mass vaccination continues to be rolled out, the UK is beginning to see encouraging signs that the number of COVID deaths is reducing, and that the vaccines may be reducing the transmission of coronavirus.

While this is very welcome news, a mass vaccination programme is unlikely to be enough to eliminate the virus, so we need to turn our thoughts towards the ethics of the long-term management of COVID-19.

One strategy would be to aim for the elimination of the virus within the UK. New Zealand successfully implemented an elimination strategy earlier in the pandemic and is now in a post-elimination stage.

An elimination strategy in the UK would require combining the mass vaccination programme with severe restrictions on international travel to stop new cases and variants of the virus being imported. However, the government has been reluctant to endorse an elimination strategy, given the importance of international trade to the UK economy.

One of the main alternatives to the elimination strategy is to treat coronavirus as endemic to the UK and to aim for long-term suppression of the virus to acceptable levels. But adopting a suppression strategy for the long term will require us to make a societal decision about the harms we are and are not willing to accept.

 

Read More »Crosspost: Learning to live with COVID – the tough choices ahead

Cross Post: There’s no Need to Pause Vaccine Rollouts When There’s a Safety Scare. Give the Public the Facts and Let Them Decide

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Written By: Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford; Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford;

Jonathan Pugh, University of Oxford, and Margie Danchin, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

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

 

from www.shutterstock.com
When someone gets sick after receiving a vaccine, this might be a complication or coincidence. As the recent rollout out of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe shows, it can be very difficult to know how to respond.

For instance, reports of blood clots associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine led to several European countries suspending their vaccination programs recently, only to resume them once these clots were judged to be a coincidence. However, authorities couldn’t rule out increased rates of a rare brain blood clot associated with low levels of blood platelets.

There are also problems with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. By early February 2021, among the over 20 million people vaccinated in the United States, there have been 20 reported cases of immune thrombocytopenia, a blood disorder featuring a reduced number of platelets in the blood. Experts suspect this is probably a rare vaccine side-effect but argue vaccination should continue.

So what happens with the next safety scare, for these or other vaccines? We argue it’s best to give people the facts so they have the autonomy to make their own decisions. When governments pause vaccine rollouts while investigating apparent safety issues, this is paternalism, and can do more harm than good.Read More »Cross Post: There’s no Need to Pause Vaccine Rollouts When There’s a Safety Scare. Give the Public the Facts and Let Them Decide

Cross Post: COVID vaccines: is it wrong to jump the queue?

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Written by Dominic Wilkinson and Jonathan Pugh

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

 

Sabrina Bracher/Shutterstock

In the UK, an Oxford city councillor has been suspended after mentioning on social media that she had received a COVID vaccination from a private doctor. Meanwhile, media reports suggest that two Spanish princesses, who did not yet qualify for vaccination in Spain were vaccinated while visiting their father in the United Arab Emirates. They are among a number of ultra-wealthy people getting vaccinated in that country.

There have also been reports of people accessing vaccines early in the UK, despite not being in any of the groups prioritised for vaccination at the time.

So how concerned should we be about these cases?Read More »Cross Post: COVID vaccines: is it wrong to jump the queue?