Seite - 319 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

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.