New dialogue report shines a light on public views on the ethical implications of Covid-19

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Click on the image to download Pandemic ethics: a public dialogue pdf report

Commissioned in June 2021 by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh on behalf of the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator, Hopkins Van Mil designed, delivered and reported on a rapid online public dialogue. A small number of participants from across the UK were invited to take part in deliberations on the ethical dimensions of Covid-19. The team at HVM are delighted to share the findings report today.

In online workshops and in tasks conducted in their own time, dialogue participants explored what they considered to be the ethical considerations and areas of public priority in relation to:

  • Covid-19 over the past eighteen months

  • Covid-19 recovery

  • Future pandemics

The dialogue brought together participants from a range of backgrounds and viewpoints to thoughtfully discuss one of the most pressing societal issues of recent times.

Ethical issues that dialogue participants thought were significant include:

  • How best to heal the social divisions and re-balance the inequalities that Covid-19 has exposed and exacerbated

  • Building trust and transparency into government policies and actions, with greater collaboration across the home nations to provide consistent and clear messaging and communications for UK citizens

  • Meaningful public involvement should be built into policy making to create a society which is resilient in the face of future pandemics.

  • Conducting further research to, for example, understand who has shouldered the pandemic burden and how to re-balance societal inequality and bring clarity to how decisions have been made during the pandemic at a community, regional and national level to understand what has been effective.

Participants are interested in the ethics of trust: who is more or less trusted, what constitutes trusted behaviour, and what would a transparent government be doing in a pandemic?

The findings of this public dialogue will inform the future work of the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator, as well as being valuable to wider policy and research. HVM is very grateful to the participants who engaged so fully in this process over the summer.

Henrietta Hopkins