Abstract:
My friend Axel Gosseries drew my attention to a perplexity. In spring 2020, COVID intensive care resources were (feared to be) scarce. In response, some ethicists, doctors and country guidelines proposed de-prioritizing old adults for these resources. By contrast, in winter and spring 2021, COVID vaccines became available but remained scarce in some Western countries. This time round, everyone endorsed priority to old adults—nearly the opposite approach. Seemingly, the easy explanation for this perplexing tension is that intensive care often failed to rescue older adults and worked better for younger adults, whereas vaccines prevent severe COVID outcomes similarly across age groups and therefore prevent such outcomes more often in older adults, who otherwise are at higher risk of severe outcomes. I show that the “easy” explanation is not that easy. The vaccine prioritization decisions, at least, rested on nontrivial factual and normative assumptions, and we missed opportunities to collect data and ethical input bearing on them prior to making these decisions.
The CPop/ DaWS Interdisciplinary Lecture Series on Care and Intergenerational Justice are organized by the Societies and Demographic Change section at the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies and the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics at the University of Southern Denmark. They bring together world-leading researchers to discuss new ways of understanding and addressing the challenges of implementing just care systems.
For additional information and information about registration please contact Lars Henrik Pedersen.