Structure to take action that would never have been allowed. The population’s fear of sickness allowed the white power Years later, still wrestling with plague, it would force all Africans into this The city was named Johannesburg, and, two How fair! It saved lives not just of the wealthy, but the poor of all races, The newspapers were supportive-how well prepared the city was! Thisįast, forceful action drove case rates sharply down, saving many lives
Residents a few miles away to isolation camps at full government expense. To better prevent spread, the city moved these But the disease continued to spread,Įspecially in urban areas inhabited by people of color, where generations lived Neighborhoods withĬases were asked to self-quarantine a few neighborhoods were cordoned off to They built armies ofĬontact tracers, who knocked on doors to collect symptoms. Do the most good for the greatest number. The disease struck, the new administration determined they must be effective.Įfficient. We develop a pandemic ethics framework rooted in uBuntu and care ethics that makes visible the underlying multidimensional structural inequities of the pandemic, attending to the problems of resource scarcity and inequities in mortality while insisting on a response that surges existing and emergent forms of solidarity. We argue for the creation of a new disaster imaginary to shape our own understandings of the interrelated social, political, and economic hardships under conditions of social distancing. In this paper, we argue that pandemic ethics should instead be oriented through a relational account of persons as vulnerable vectors embedded in existing networks of care.
We show how these preoccupations reflect an established disaster imaginary that orients the ethics of response.
Public discourse about ethics in the COVID-19 pandemic has tended to focus on scarcity of resources and the protection of civil liberties.