Triage, Consent And Trusting Black Boxes

A similar concern to temper utilitarian considerations, in this case with an Aristotelian view of the common good as ‘the good life for each and every member of the community’ is expressed in ‘Public health decisions in the COVID-19 pandemic require more than ‘follow the science’’ by de Campos-Rudinsky and Undurraga 2 Public health decisions, they argue, ‘always involve layers of complexity, coupled with uncertainty’: ‘the implication of the incommensurability of basic human goods… is that when tensions between them arise (such as happened during this pandemic, when preservation of health required the adaptation of how we experience work, education, leisure, family and friendships), the solution cannot be readily determined by a simple balancing test’ In response, they ‘set forth a series of concrete ethical proposals with which to face the successive waves of COVID-19 infection, as well as other future pandemics’: these include the duty of health authorities ‘to plan for foreseeable ethical challenges during a health emergency’, and the duty of ‘public organisms at the national level, such as national committees on ethics…to prepare the protocols for care and treatment that would help physicians and healthcare workers to manage the predictable uncertainty and distress in healthcare emergencies’ Turning to a currently pressing international aspect of resource allocation, Jecker and colleagues, in ‘Vaccine ethics: an ethical framework for global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines’4 marshal an impressive amount of empirical research and ethical theory to argue that ‘in order to accelerate development and fair, efficient vaccine allocation…vaccines should be distributed globally, with priority to frontline and essential workers worldwide’: ‘ethical values to guide vaccine distribution’, they conclude, should ‘highlight values of helping the neediest, reducing health disparities, saving lives and keeping society functioning’ Because of the pandemic and the fear of health services being overwhelmed by it, research on and treatment of other conditions, no less serious for the individual patient, have lacked resources which urgently require to be restored