KIEJ Special Issue on Ethics, Pandemics, and COVID-19

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal is extremely proud to present this special volume on ethical and social issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring work that is practically relevant and engaged as well as conceptually rigorous.

From the issue co-editors:

It is with great pleasure and a sense of urgency that we present this KIEJ double issue on ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer range of ethical concerns raised by the pandemic, combined with the speed with which these problems emerged, is staggering and unprecedented in our generation. We have tried to give space to papers that raise immediately pressing ethical issues that have not received much discussion in popular media. Topics range from fundamental questions about how we set up our public health infrastructure, to ethical issues in scientific communication and the translation of science into policy, to the impact of the pandemic on people with intellectual disabilities, to the ethics of lockdowns, to the case for decarceration during the pandemic, and more. Our authors represent five countries and a wide range of perspectives and disciplinary approaches. We hope readers will find these papers intellectually invigorating and practically illuminating. We wish all our readers safety and good health during these strikingly difficult times.Quill R Kukla and Travis N. Rieder, Issue Co-Editors

The special double issue includes eleven articles. They will appear in print in the September issue of the KIEJ, and the double September issue will take the place of a fourth KIEJ issue that would have been published in December. We have provided advance copies of all articles here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• “The Predictable Inequities of COVID-19 in the US: Fundamental Causes and Broken Institutions” by Sean Valles
• “How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties during the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis” by Eric Winsberg, Jason Brennan, and Chris W. Surprenant
• “Should I Do as I’m Told? Trust, Experts, and COVID-19” by Matthew Bennett
• “The Ethics of Lockdown: Communication, Consequences, and the Separateness of Persons” by Stephen John
• “Incarceration, COVID-19, and Emergency Release: Reimagining How and When to Punish” by Lauren Lyons
• “Intellectual Disability and Justice in a Pandemic” by Ryan H. Nelson and Leslie P. Francis
• “Structural Stigma, Legal Epidemiology, and COVID-19: The Ethical Imperative to Act Upstream” by Daniel Goldberg
• “Anarchist Responses to a Pandemic: The COVID-19 Crisis as a Case Study in Mutual Aid” by Nathan Jun and Mark Lance
• “How Soviet Legacies Shape Russia’s Response to the Pandemic: Ethical Consequences of a Culture of Non-Disclosure” by Nataliya Shok and Nadezhda Beliakova
• “Continued Confinement of Those Most Vulnerable to COVID-19” by Suerie Moon, Eva Maria Belser, Claudine Burton-Jeangros, Pascal Mahon, et al.
• “Surging Solidarity: Reorienting Ethics for Pandemics” by Jordan Pascoe and Mitch Stripling