Video Response Pandemics

Critically ill patients need ventilators to succeed. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for ventilators increased and hospitals became overwhelmed. The competition for the life support resources became stiff during the pandemic. In Italy, doctors consider a patient’s age and preexisting medical conditions in prioritizing who gets an ICU spot and who does not. In some US states, intellectual disabilities are considered. Experts also wonder if priority should be based solely on the likelihood to recover, implying a reason to withdraw life support for patients who are not recovering, so as to free the ventilators for those who need them. Overall, tough ethical decisions are needed to save lives in the wake of the pandemic. There is also the proposition that frontline workers should be prioritized in getting lifesaving care to allow them recover fast to continue to save more lives.

According to the second video, the pandemic has exposed serious failures of the public health system in the U.S. The biggest problem is that the system prioritized profitability over public health. The government poorly responded to the pandemic before it went out of control. In 2016, President Obama had created a taskforce to deal with pandemics, but President Trump’s administration disbanded it and fired the officials without replacing them. The budget allocated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was reduced by 10% in 10 years preceding the pandemic. President Trump reduced funding to CDC and other public health programs significantly. When the pandemic struck, the public health system was poorly prepared. There were fewer resources and staff for testing, isolating, and tracing. State and local public agencies were also affected in the budget cuts, rendering them unable to deal with the challenges of the pandemic. The system is designed to treat rather than prevent because it is more profitable, which worsened the pandemic.

Globally, countries are tracking people with technology including apps and drones to help deal with the pandemic. For instance, in China, drones were used to identify those flouting COVID-19 rules, while in Korea, cameras were used to identify those with fever. In Tunisia, robots were used to question violators of the public health guidelines. People have concerns about their privacy because they do not know how much is known out there about them and how much data is collected by the apps and technologies. Lock-downs are among the strategies adopted to reduce the spread the pandemic, resulting in closing of businesses. While the strategies worked, limiting movement of people, some considered it a violation of their freedom of movement. People lost their jobs and many could not sustain them. In the long-run, people need to work and continue with their lives without being forced to. Finally, people were going to die of starvation, and ways had to be established on how to safely lift the lock-downs.