Tag: coronavirus

Vaccines.

Promote Trust, Avoid Fraud: Lessons in Public Health Messaging from the Booster Roll Out

Carmel Shachar Leave a comment

By Carmel Shachar

Even in September 2021, it was fairly clear that boosters for all adults, regardless of risk factors or which vaccines they initially received, would be coming soon.

Indeed, within two months, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its recommendations to say that all vaccinated adults should receive a COVID-19 booster.

Unfortunately, the discrepancy between past messaging, which restricted access to boosters to select groups, and the current, broad recommendation has spawned two, related public health communications problems.

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Vial and syringe.

Causes of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff 1 Comment

By Jasper L. Tran

Vaccinated individuals — like Tolstoy’s happy families — are all alike; each unvaccinated individual is hesitant for her own reason.

Prior research conducted in developed countries reveals five main individual-level determinants of pre-COVID vaccine hesitancy (commonly referred to as the 5 C model drivers of vaccine hesitancy): (1) Confidence (trust in vaccine’s effectiveness and safety, vaccine administrators and their motives); (2) Complacency (perceiving infection risks as low and vaccination as unnecessary); (3) Convenience / Constraints (structural or psychological barriers to converting vaccination intentions into vaccine uptake); (4) Risk Calculation (perceiving higher risks related to vaccination than the infection itself); and (5) Collective Responsibility (willingness to vaccinate to protect others through herd immunity).

COVID-19 vaccines see these five hesitancy determinants again, only further exacerbated by waves of misinformation promulgated on social media, including through “bot” accounts, that prey on the concerns and insecurities of an already vulnerable public.

On the one hand, irrational and unreasonable conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and its vaccine abound among the anti-vaxxers — a subgroup of science deniers. These conspiracy theories include:

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Globe.

Killing Locally or Killing Globally? Inequalities in Framing Cooperation Through Pandemics

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This post was originally published on the Verfassungsblog as part of our joint symposium on international pandemic lawmaking.

By Luciano Bottini Filho

COVID-19 made “pandemic” a buzzword. The world expressed anxiety on the eve of a pandemic declaration from the WHO, a decision monitored as closely as the white smoke for a newly elected pope. Yet, “pandemic” has no legal value in international law by contrast with a declaration of public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). It is no accident that the 12th Commission of the Institute of International Law issued a report on Epidemics and International Law, which bluntly avoided the term pandemic.

Despite this, for the general public, the role of a PHEIC determination remains unknown. Given the inconsistency in declaring PHEIC (only 6 events between 2007 and 2020), many epidemics of considerable proportion were ignored by the international community. Yet the mismatch in the general public consciousness regarding the legal implications triggered by a WHO declaration of a PHEIC is not as problematic as the way lawyers and public health practitioners reinforce the centrality of a pandemic, a concept that still requires a more solid definition.

As an international instrument potentially moves forward to galvanize “pandemics” as a legally defined term — and part of global health governance — we must understand the implication that this word has in relation to disparities between developing countries‘ problems and the interests of their richer counterparts. After all, any pandemic would have originated from one or more national epidemics, but it would require a globally recognized procedure to trigger stronger international obligations. As opposed to pandemics, though, epidemics have persisted for decades and raged in low- and low-middle income settings from Zika to Ebola, demanding support from international actors.

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Globalization concept illustration.

Human Rights and Global Responses to the Pandemic in the Age of Hyper-globalization

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This post was originally published on the Verfassungsblog as part of our joint symposium on international pandemic lawmaking.

By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

In 1999, the Human Development Report called for stronger international arrangements to govern people in a globalized world, stating: “the present era of globalization, driven by competitive global markets, is outpacing the governance of markets and the repercussions on people…. An essential aspect of global governance is responsibility to people – to equity, to justice, and to enlarging the choices of all.” As the 21st century sped into an era of hyper-globalization, new global institutions are urgently needed to protect the public interest. The architecture of global health emergencies is a case in point. Its core agreement, the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) remains state centric, catering to national interests, bound to colonial epistemic frameworks, and silent on market power that can trample on human rights. The age of hyper-globalization requires global institutions that enable global – collective – responses to contain pandemics worldwide, that build on international solidarity and human rights norms, and structures that break free from North-South hierarchies of power and knowledge.

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Researcher works at a lab bench

Governance Needs for Pandemic Preparedness and Response: How to Ensure the Science-Policy Interface

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This post was originally published on the Verfassungsblog as part of our joint symposium on international pandemic lawmaking.

By Gian Luca Burci

The COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by mistrust in science, the manipulation of science for political purposes, the “infodemic” of mis- and disinformation, and a repeated failure to base policy decisions on scientific findings.

The crisis of confidence in scientific analysis is paradoxical and disquieting, particularly in light of increasing international regulation to manage acute or systemic risks and its reliance on science.  This so-called “science-policy interface” (SPI) incorporates scientific expertise into global policy-making and regulation in fields as diverse as climate change, biodiversity, and nuclear safety, but it is arguably less developed in global health and in particular for pandemic preparedness and response (PPR).

As international policymakers consider various proposals aimed at preventing another pandemic through better and stronger global rules — whether in the form of a WHO “pandemic treaty,” revised International Health Regulations, a UN political declaration, or regulatory framework — the integration of SPI in their design will be of crucial importance for their credibility and effectiveness.

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Freeway on-ramp

The Government Needs to Construct On, Not Off, Ramps to Combat the Latest Wave of COVID

Jennifer S. Bard Leave a comment

By Jennifer S. Bard

Over the past two weeks, the news coming in about the spread of COVID-19 has been eerily familiar. Cases are rising all over Europe, not just in under-vaccinated Eastern European countries, but in England, the Netherlands, and Germany — all of whom have much higher rates of vaccination than the U.S. At the same time, cases across the U.S., including in cities like LA, DC, and Chicago have stopped falling, and are rising rapidly in the Mountain West, including the Navajo Nation. Hospitals in Colorado have already reached crisis capacity.

Whether the increase is attributable to the emergence of yet another variant, or perhaps is a natural artifact of waning immunity, it is very real and demands a level of attention from our federal government that, once again, it is failing to provide.

Yet in the face of now too familiar signs of resurgence, already being called a “Fifth Wave,” not only are the usual minimizers advocating reducing existing measures to prevent spread, but cities and states are rolling back what few protections remain intact. It is in the face of this foolish movement to drop our guard that the federal government is, again, failing to use the powers it has beyond vaccine mandates to create much needed on-ramps for mitigation measures as the country heads into winter.

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WHO flag.

Can a Pandemic Lawmaking Exercise Promote Global Health Justice? — Final Symposium Editorial

Alicia Ely Yamin Leave a comment

By Alicia Ely Yamin, on behalf of the editors*

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Lire en français.

Amid the unfolding “moral catastrophe” of COVID-19, and across the entries in this symposium, we see a clamor for any pandemic law-making exercise to promote more justice in global health.

However, this universally-embraced imperative masks a wide array of divergent views about the nature and sources of inequalities in global health, and in turn what should be done if we were to think beyond a narrow pragmatism of the moment.

In this final editorial, we attempt to surface some of the critical contestations that underlie any future pandemic treaty or revisions of the International Health Regulations (IHR).

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Compass on a tree stump.

From Cooperation to Solidarity: A Legal Compass for Pandemic Lawmaking

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Guillermo E. Estrada Adán

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This post proposes incorporating solidarity as a legal compass for international norms in a new international pandemic law agreement or reform.

The current model of global health governance espoused by the World Health Organization (WHO), based heavily on cooperation between states, has significant shortcomings. An approach that relies on solidarity, rather than cooperation, would better advance states’ responsibilities to ensure the protection and enjoyment of each individual’s rights. Read More

Euros, U.S. dollars, and pounds.

Who Will Pay for COVID-29? (Or, Who Will Pay to Avert It?)

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Sebastián Guidi and Nahuel Maisley

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Pandemics have very real costs. When they hit, these costs are obvious and dramatic — people fall ill and die, businesses go bankrupt, children are kicked out of school. When they don’t, it’s very likely because we have already taken extremely costly measures to prevent them.

These costs are inevitably distributed — through act or omission — by international law. As the international community discusses a new pandemic treaty, complementary to the International Health Regulations, it bears emphasizing that any global framework that does not reckon with cost will fall short of an acceptable solution.

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Mexico City 03082021 Feminist march against gender violence, March 8 in Mexico thousands of women protest in the streets for safety and better living conditions, using banners.

Strengthening Global and National Governance for Gender Equality in Health Emergencies

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Anna Coates

An international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response opens a much-needed space to highlight the centrality of gender inequality considerations in health emergency responses.

With an eye to inclusive governance, investment in gender expertise, and strengthening existing normative mechanisms and architecture for gender equality at global and national levels, a new intergovernmental instrument offers an opportunity for future health emergency preparedness and responses to meaningfully contribute to gender equality.

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