COVID-19 and Positive Public Health Ethics
As of August 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause far-reaching morbidity and mortality, social chaos, and significant economic disturbances, negatively impacting people's ability to flourish. COVID-19 has shown through its unfortunate and horrifying consequences, epidemics and pandemics are shared global health threats which produce shared vulnerabilities.
This pandemic is evidence that in preparing for and preventing epidemics and pandemics, we are mutually interdependent upon collective collaboration. We need much more effective and efficient Shared Health Governance, built upon a shared conception of the common good. Shared Health Governance compels global and domestic actors to authentically cooperate in the face of a threat like this pandemic. It also demands that powerful countries fulfill their obligations to develop comprehensive, coordinated health systems capable of responding to epidemics and pandemics.
Our shared vulnerabilities highlight the need to recognize our shared responsibilities. Together with a theory of global health justice (Provincial Globalism), Shared Health Governance serves as the foundation for positive public health ethics and subsequent commitments to shared responsibility. It advances systemic reforms that save lives and money. It lets us fulfill our duty to reduce threats and safeguard individuals' and communities' central health capabilities as efficiently as possible.
Under Shared Health Governance and Provincial Globalism, the positive public health ethics require pandemic preparedness, conceptualized as a collective capability to anticipate, detect, respond effectively and cost-effectively, and recover from, health events or conditions of emergent or imminent nature. PG explains why the obligation of prevention is a just decision at the global level. SHG asks national governments to humanely and efficiently fulfill their duties of effective prevention and control of disease outbreaks, early detection, and accurate diagnosis by proactively anticipating and preparing for pandemic risks in the long term.