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319How
Should We Allocate Health and Social Resources During a Pandemic?
to the vulnerability of countries to an attack or pandemic threat.
However, while national vulnerability has been measured, studied,
and addressed, individual and community vulnerability to health
risks and threats has not been a focus of comparable efforts.
While all human beings have been made newly vulnerable to
the harms of COVID-19, the extent of this new vulnerability varies
enormously across individuals and social groups according to their
existing vulnerabilities. Vulnerability to COVID-19 disease and to
other diverse harms has disproportionately increased for certain indi-
viduals and social groups, within and across countries, numbering in
the billions. The national responses, while aiming to reduce the new
vulnerability to COVID-19, have contributed to even more vulner-
abilities—the most direct evidence of this is reflected in the more than
300,000 premature deaths from COVID-19 as of June 2020, and espe-
cially in the distinct socio-demographic distribution patterns of those
deaths.9 By far, more older people have died than any other social
group, and in many countries where socio-demographic data are
being collected and reported, more socially disadvantaged racial and
ethnic minorities are dying. There are millions more who are suffering
non-COVID harms invisibly, particularly in low- and middle-income
countries, beyond the reach of cameras, journalists, government agen-
cies, and researchers.10
These layers of vulnerabilities, including existing vulnerabili-
ties, the new vulnerability to COVID-19, and further new vulnera-
bilities created by the varying national pandemic responses, are all
socially created, through certain kinds of policies, or are due to wilful
or benign neglect. One form of neglect is to ignore or erase diversity
when considering the vulnerabilities of citizens and human beings,
all while implementing policies that carry significant burdens.11 But
among the range of social choices, two applications of scientific ideas
9. “COVID-19 Dashboard” (21 May 2020), online: Centre for Systems Science and
Engineering at Johns Hopkins University <www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/
index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6>.
10. Maria Abi-Habib, “Millions Had Risen Out of Poverty. Coronavirus Is Pulling
Them Back”, The New York Times (30 April 2020), online: <www.nytimes.
com/2020/04/30/world/asia/coronavirus-poverty-unemployment.html>; Maria
Abi-Habib & Sameer Yasir, “India’s Coronavirus Lockdown Leaves Vast
Numbers Stranded and Hungry”, The New York Times (29 March 2020), online:
<www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/world/asia/coronavirus-india-migrants.html>
[Abi-Habib & Yasir].
11. Chotiner, supra note 6.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International