Seite - 328 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
Bild der Seite - 328 -
Text der Seite - 328 -
VULNERABLE328
Conclusion
As stated in the introduction, a partial answer to the question of how a
nation should allocate its resources during a pandemic is that it should
seek to deploy a pandemic response that aims to effectively control the
epidemic, but with attention to equity. Such attention entails giving
greater scrutiny to the scientific ideas at play. The implementation of
national lockdowns reflects the use of the contain-and-control approach
to infectious diseases to its maximum and unprecedented extent.
While the deployment of quarantine measures at such a large
scale was designed to protect the health care systems and save as
many lives as possible, it also distributed burdens across the popu-
lation, and disproportionately to those who are already vulnerable.
Every country may have its particular vulnerable groups, and some
groups may cut across all countries, but it is clear that the background
vulnerabilities prior to the pandemic, the new vulnerability created
by COVID-19, and the further vulnerabilities created by national pan-
demic responses have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths
and greater deprivations for millions. We are now entering a difficult
period, one that is expected to last one to two years. Thus, low- and
middle-income countries are likely to experience the impact of this
approach for a longer duration, perhaps even decades.
The discussion also aimed to show that basic infectious dis-
ease modelling so influential early in this pandemic actually erased
inequalities in vulnerabilities. Such erasure of inequalities in vul-
nerabilities then produces recommendations for policies such as
lockdowns, which do not recognize acute vulnerability, or the fur-
ther burdens and vulnerabilities from the interventions. Nor does
such modelling provide any indication of the social distributions
of immunity and deaths. One potentially practicable and impactful
use of resources would be to combine infectious disease modelling
and social epidemiology to produce better forecasts that incorporate
differences in vulnerability and show social distribution patterns of
impacts of infections as well as social responses. This is not a novel
assertion. Such a call to improve infectious disease modelling and epi-
demiology by incorporating social determinants of unequal vulnera-
bility was raised in the mid 1990s in response to HIV/AIDS modelling.
But it went unheeded. This shows again how the devastation from
this COVID-19 pandemic has a long chain of causes rooted in social
choices and neglect, going back decades.
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