Ethical Failures of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response

'Ethical Failures of the COVID-19 Response insightfully anticipates the coming pandemic post-mortems by focusing empirically and conceptually on decisionmakers and decision-making from Wuhan to Omicron. An essential text.' -Stephen Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Queen Mary University of London, UK

'Future historians of science, medicine, and public health examining the Covid pandemic will rely on Péter Marton's acute, multi-dimensional analysis.' -Matthew Adamson, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, McDaniel College, USA

'This book is an important contribution conceptualising the key mistakes and failures of decision-making from an ethical perspective.' -Scott Romaniuk, Visiting Fellow, University of South Wales, UK

This book draws attention to the non-biological-political, economic, societal and cultural-variables shaping both the emergence and persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it, with a particular focus on political decisionmakers' role in the domestic and international politics surrounding the process of the pandemic. The book identifies the strategic and underlying ethical failures of decision making, using a process-tracing approach to reconstruct considerations, decisions and actions by key leaders-interested in thus weaving a global narrative of the response. The author highlights key speech acts, and interprets the causal implications embedded in a chronological and contextualised appraisal of events, statements and public health measures. The book further discusses the normative ethics of pandemic response, and presents lessons drawn from the present experience. It also offers a normative analysis taking into consideration pre-pandemic guidelines for response, including in the literature of public health ethics and pandemic preparedness plans.

PéterMarton is Associate Professor at Corvinus University, and Adjunct Professor at McDaniel College, Budapest, Hungary.

Auteur

Péter Marton is Associate Professor at Corvinus University, and Adjunct Professor at McDaniel College, Budapest, Hungary.