coronavirus - Bill of Health

Moving Beyond a State-Centric Pandemic Preparedness Paradigm: A Call for Action

September 27, 2021September 24, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Tsung-Ling Lee

Despite the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent efforts to broaden participation, the international infectious disease control regime remains state-centric.

As such, the state-centric infectious disease regime violates the fundamental principle of how contagious diseases spread within and across countries — the virus recognizes no national borders, nor does the virus discriminate. The longstanding global health mantra — no country is safe until all countries are safe; no one is safe until everyone is safe — should guide global pandemic preparedness.

Whose Global Health Security?

September 22, 2021September 21, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Aeyal Gross

The current discussion within the World Health Organization (WHO) of a “pandemic treaty” aims at better solutions to “health emergencies.”

But, if this focus on “emergencies” comes at the expense of chronic and underlying issues, including the overall status of health systems, we risk replicating, with this legal instrument, the colonial legacy of international health supposedly left behind with the shift to “global health.” This points to the urgent need to rethink what is considered a “crisis” or an “emergency,” as part of the effort to “decolonize global health,” including global health law (GHL).

Geneva, Switzerland - December 03, 2019: World Health Organization (WHO / OMS).

International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues — Launch Editorial

September 20, 2021September 20, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Joelle Grogan, on behalf of the editors*

Leer en español.

Lire en français.

This symposium, “International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues,” was convened with two primary aims: to shed light on the inequities and imbalances exposed by global pandemic response, and to advocate recommendations on which principles should guide the framing and drafting of a potential international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response.

However, while good principle can guide good action, to be effective it must be more than good principle; and more substance is needed than good design. Thus, these symposium posts published on Monday through Thursday on Bill of Health and the Verfassungsblog, along with our accompanying editorials, look not only to the design of such an instrument, but also its implementation and enforcement.

What’s the Law on Vaccine Exemptions? A Religious Liberty Expert Explains

September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia

For Americans wary of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, like the sweeping requirements President Joe Biden announced Sept. 9, 2021, it seems there are plenty of leaders offering ways to get exemptions – especially religious ones.

No major organized religious group has officially discouraged the vaccine, and many, like the Catholic Church, have explicitly encouraged them. Yet pastors from New York to California have offered letters to help their parishioners – or sometimes anyone who asks – avoid the shots.

These developments point to deep confusion over how to win a religious exemption. So what are they, and is the government even required to offer the exemptions in the first place?

Legal and Ethical Analysis of Court-Ordered Ivermectin Treatment for COVID-19

September 2, 2021September 3, 2021 Jennifer S. Bard Leave a comment

By Jennifer S. Bard

A judge in Ohio ruled on Monday that a hospital in the region must administer ivermectin to a patient very sick with COVID-19 in their ICU, despite the decision by the medical staff, in agreement with recent statements by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that ivermectin is not an appropriate treatment, as it has been shown not to work against COVID.

The patient’s prescription came from a doctor who has no authority to treat patients at this particular hospital, although he is licensed to prescribe medicine in Ohio.

This case tracks a swelling interest, which some ascribe to the efforts of a group called America’s Front Line Doctors, among people for the anti-parasitic medication as both a treatment and prophylactic for COVID-19 — despite warnings from the medical establishment that it doesn’t work, and, if taken in the form normally given to farm animals or at the dosages being suggested, can be harmful.

The Ohio ruling is just the latest of several successful law suits (see similar cases in New York and Illinois) to order hospitals to administer ivermectin to hospitalized COVID-19 patients, despite the objections of the treating physicians.

There is also evidence of a global trend, as evidenced by the order of a court in South Africa to allow the prescription of ivermectin for COVID-19, something that was previously not permitted by the country’s drug regulatory agency.

This trend of courts ordering that treatments requested by hospitalized patients be made available by that hospital — so long as they are prescribed by a physician — opens the door to substantial administrative, legal, and ethical chaos. This post analyzes some of the most pressing legal, regulatory, and ethical concerns.

Map of remote execution requirements for advance directives.

Advance Care Planning in an Online World: State Law Activity and Challenges Since COVID-19

August 25, 2021August 24, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Nikol Nesterenko, Jonathan Chernoguz, and Sarah Hooper

Advance care planning — the process by which an individual documents their wishes for health care in the event that they become incapacitated — has become particularly urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, individuals that wish to engage in advance care planning, and specifically to document their plans in a written form (i.e., advance directives), have faced significant hurdles due to legal execution requirements. State advance directive law often requires or presumes live, in-person witnessing or notarization, actions which were prohibited by social distancing orders or simply unsafe during the pandemic.

In this piece, we summarize the state of remote execution requirements for advance directives before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Broadly speaking, while many states took some action in this regard, most did not enact comprehensive changes, and therefore failed to meaningfully facilitate remote execution of advance directives.

Policing Public Health: Carceral-Logic Lessons from a Mid-Size City

August 24, 2021August 24, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Zain Lakhani, Alice Miller, Kayla Thomas, with Anna Wherry

When it comes to public health intervention in a contagion, policing remains a primary enforcement tool. And where a health state is intertwined with carceral logics, enforcement becomes coercive; emphasis is placed on the control of movement and behavior, rather than on support and care.

Our experience in New Haven during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic well illuminates this, while also revealing a logic of exceptional force lying dormant in municipal health practices.

Attending to the local is all the more important, albeit difficult, for fast moving and intensely quotidian practices, as COVID in the U.S. seems to be settling in as a pandemic of the local.

Our experience as activist-scholars working with a New Haven-based sex worker-led harm-reduction service and advocacy group, SWAN, suggests that by focusing on municipal practices, we can better understand what public health police power actually is. By orienting our scholarship toward the way social movements engage with local politics, we can then address how these police powers complicate the ability of those most at risk of both disease exposure and police abuse to engage with local authorities. Absent this engagement and critique, progressive policies for constructive state public health powers may be more vulnerable to attack from the right.

Preventing Misuse of COVID-19 Vaccine Medical Exemptions

August 23, 2021August 20, 2021 Ross D. Silverman 10 Comments

By Ross D. Silverman and Gabriel T. Bosslet

As COVID-19 vaccination mandates become increasingly common, we can expect exemption requests (and misuse) to become increasingly widespread, too.

Most entities requiring vaccination mandates or proof of vaccination upon entry may offer limited grounds upon which an individual may request an exemption, usually based upon religious beliefs or medical reasons. Recent history with childhood immunization programs shows less rigorously-structured and -enforced vaccination exemption policies are vulnerable to increased usage, relative to narrower or more stringently-monitored programs. That history also shows there is a possibility some health care licensees may be willing to support individuals seeking to circumvent COVID-19-related requirements through offering questionable medical exemptions.

Entities imposing COVID-19 vaccination mandates, and state health care licensure boards, can take several simple but significant steps to counter misuse of medical exemptions and better protect communities from COVID-19. These safeguards also can decrease the temptation for licensed health professionals to recklessly undermine critical, lawful, evidence-driven public health efforts.

Beverly Hills, CA: April 7, 2021: Anti-mask protesters holding signs related to COVID-19. Beverly Hills and the state of California have a mask mandate requirement.

What Makes Social Movements ‘Healthy’?

August 17, 2021August 18, 2021 wparmet Leave a comment

By Wendy E. Parmet

Social movements can play an important role in promoting population health and reducing health disparities. Yet, their impact need not be salutatory, as is evident by the worrying success that the anti-vaccination movement has had in stoking fears about COVID-19 vaccines.

So, what makes a health-related social movement “healthy?” We need far more research about the complex dynamics and interactions between social movements and health, but the experience of a few health-related social movements offers some clues.

COVID-19 is Still a Crisis for All

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021 Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

Recently, a narrative that COVID-19 is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” has emerged.

Setting aside the callousness of the claim, the biggest problem with this narrative is that it’s wrong. COVID-19 continues to threaten the health and well-being of all, regardless of vaccination status.

As we now know, vaccinated individuals can be infected with and transmit the delta variant. “Breakthrough” infections are not rare — countries with better data collection efforts than the U.S., including Israel and the United Kingdom, estimate vaccine efficacy against infection by the delta variant at around 40-50%.

This isn’t to say that the vaccines are worthless. We should continue to work to promote vaccine uptake, as the vaccines do provide a level of protection against the most severe outcomes.

But we need to understand: We can’t end this pandemic with vaccines alone.

Tag: coronavirus