Essential Workers

Background

Essential workers are those who put their health and safety on the line to keep society functioning during the pandemic. Ethically, there's not really a question that they're owed something for their actions. Conflict and complications arise, not when we consider whether or not to prioritize essential workers, but because it's a given that we will. They come up when we need to define the concept of "essential" and prioritize certain groups of workers over others (Pearce).

Making Ethical Distinctions

To a degree, every worker is essential, but in the pandemic, we need to make differentiating criteria to prioritize groups of people due to vaccine shortages. I'll start by laying out several ways to make these distinctions as to who is "essential." All information below is from an article in which Bridgette Keller outlines Johns Hopkins's framework for ethical vaccine allocation.

Workers at risk of COVID, due to the populations they work with or their daily exposure to high volumes of people

Professions with higher rates of low-income workers, as those groups are statistically more likely to contract COVID.

Professions with higher rates of black and Latino workers, as those groups are statistically more likely to contract COVID.

Workers who are "critical" to society's function, like transport, food system, warehouse, police and fire, TSA, childcare, and teachers

High-density and high-contact workers, more likely to contract the virus.

Corrections officers, as prisons can be hotbeds for COVID.

Healthcare workers, because they are at risk through treating patients.

Current US Policy

According to current CDC guidelines, the United States is prioritizing healthcare workers as the vaccine's first recipients. The second wave of US vaccinations will include the broad category of essential workers, but it will be largely up to individual states to consider their specific industries and limitations to decide who fits that "essential" designation (Goodnough).

My Take on a Solution

I think we should stop trying to define who is "essential" altogether and prioritize groups of workers who are most likely to spread the virus. Every worker is essential to society's function; it's impossible to place value on a certain profession when society would degrade if a single one was to disappear. For that reason, the "essential workers" question should be rephrased in the form of "workers who are most vulnerable to far-reaching COVID outbreaks." Workers in high-density environments and the health professions should receive top priority because their vaccination could prevent large-scale outbreaks and, thus, in accordance with the principle of beneficence, do the most good for their communities.