Monday, October 26, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

Kathy Kinlaw, Associate Director, Emory Center for Ethics; Assistant Professor, Pediatrics

“Pandemic Ethics and Difficult Choices in the Time of COVID-19”

Though there has been extensive planning in Pandemic Ethics through the years and around the world, no one was well prepared to deal with the ethical issues raised by COVID-19. U.S. healthcare systems moved dangerously close to implementing tragic choices about who would receive scarce medical resources as transmission of the novel virus continued and serious consequences (including ICU care, ventilation, and death) were realized. Kathy Kinlaw will discuss the challenge of making ethical decisions in the midst of this threatening situation. She will explore whether those in certain groups should be given priority when resources for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 are scarce. Healthcare workers are often viewed as reasonable recipients of limited supplies. But should “essential service workers,” too often forced by financial need to continue work that places them at high risk, also be given priority? And what’s to be done when people from any group do sicken and fill emergency rooms to overflowing? What if triage of some sort seems necessary?  What criteria might come into play then? At least longstanding disparity and inequity in our society have become increasingly visible in these circumstances. And that may be reason for hope.