References

Annotated Bibliography

Bazelon, Emily. “Why Inmates Should Be at the Front of the Vaccination Lines.” The New York Times, 3 December 2020,https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/ opinion/ coronavirus-vaccine-jail.html?referringSource=articleShare. Accessed 3 December 2020.

This source, a New York Times article, aims to contradict portions of the current narrative of ethical COVID vaccine allocation by arguing that inmates should be among the first to get vaccinated. To support her point, the author, an author and expert on mass incarceration, states that prisoners are four times as likely as the average person to get infected and live without the choice to mask or distance. She argues that for practical reasons, prisons constitute the same congregated living situations as nursing homes, which are being prioritized first in the United States. Finally, she states that prison outbreaks pose danger to their surrounding communities and thus cannot be removed from the national conversation. This source will be useful in the part of my website where I discuss inmates as a priority group.

Dykes, Jacob. “Vaccine nationalism or global access: can we ethically distribute a COVID-19 vaccine?” Geographical, 23 September 2020, https://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/ 3837-vaccine-nationalism-or-global-access-can-we-ethically-distribute-a-covid-19-vaccine. Accessed 19 November 2020.

This source discusses vaccine nationalism as something to be avoided (i.e., there is a strong possibility that we will not avoid it). It states that the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which is designed to allocate vaccine doses to rich countries at a high price and poor countries at a low one, is a positive initiative that has garnered support from many high-income and low-income countries alike. However, the United States, alongside Russia and China, has not joined it, which the source implies to be negative. This source will be useful in the portion of my website where I discuss vaccine nationalism.

Emanuel, Ezekiel J. et al. “An ethical framework for global vaccine allocation.” Science, 11 September 2020, 10.1126/science.abe2803. Accessed 17 November 2020.

This source is the scientific journal that outlines the Fair Priority Model for COVID vaccine distribution. Co-written by 18 doctors and public health professionals from universities and organizations around the world, it uses a series of statistical models to dictate who should receive a COVID vaccine first. Several key factors that differentiate the Fair Priority Model from other COVID vaccine allocation plans are that it does leave some room for partiality in the form of vaccine nationalism, and it prioritizes younger lives lost over older lives. This source will be particularly useful to me, as the goal of my project is to use ethical principles to determine if certain groups should be prioritized for the vaccine, and this is an obviously well-researched source that gives a perspective on just that.

Goldman, Dana et al. “Why COVID-19 Vaccines Should Prioritize ‘Superspreader’ people.” 4 September 2020, TheWorld, https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-04/ why-covid-19-vaccines-should-prioritize-superspreader-people. Accessed 8 December 2020.

This article was written by professors at Johns Hopkins and USC. Its intent is to contradict the majority of COVID-19 vaccine distribution plans that prioritize the eldelry over the young. They argue that it would be more effective to vaccinate superspreader individuals, both in the sense of people who are more likely to spread the virus to more people and people who are more likely to be asymptomatic. The article cites statistics about relatively few people leading to many cases as well as case spikes in age groups from 15-25 years old to support their point. This article will be useful in the section of my website that discusses whether young adults should constitute a priority group for COVID vaccination.

Goodnough, Abby. “Who Will Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?” The New York Times, 4 December 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/health/covid-vaccine-distribution-first.html. Accessed 3 December 2020.

This article from the New York Times provides a realistic background for my presentation. It summarizes current and likely CDC recommendations as to who will be vaccinated first, stating that nursing home residents and healthcare workers will be first in line. It also provides insight into the question of which workers are essential by stating that the question should be answered by individual states that can assess risk and necessity according to their own industries (i.e., ski workers are essential in Colorado but not Alabama). It will be useful in the parts of my presentation where I talk about essential workers and the elderly, and will also serve well in my introduction.

Grady, Denise. “Early Data Show Moderna’s Coronavirus Vaccine is 94.5% effective.” The New York Times, 16 November 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/health/ Covid-moderna-vaccine.html?searchResultPosition=1. Accessed 19 November 2020.

This source is an article from the New York Times announcing that preliminary data from Moderna’s vaccine trial showed 94.5% efficacy in preventing the disease in trial volunteers. It clarifies a number of key details, such as the stunningly high rate of prevention, the way in which the vaccine works, and the challenging nature of distribution of the vaccine once it is approved for use by the FDA. It is important to note that Moderna’s vaccine is less sensitive to heat and thus more practical for use than Pfizer’s; however, both vaccines are made with similar technology and require two doses to be effective. This source will be helpful to me in providing background information about COVID vaccines so that I can look at scientific practicality when making ethical judgements about vaccine allocations, but I will probably keep having to look for sources of this nature -- news articles detailing vaccine development -- to stay current, since everything vaccine-related is happening very quickly at the moment.

Hassoun, Nicole. “How to Distribute a COVID-19 Vaccine Ethically.” Scientific American, 25 September 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/ article/how-to-distribute-a-covid-19-vaccine-ethically/. Accessed 17 November 2020.

This source is an online article from a scientific magazine that speaks about ethical vaccine distribution. The article starts by outlining different vaccination policies proposed by others and then takes a strong stance on a few aspects. Firstly, it states that we should prioritize saving lives rather than life years (i.e., the young should not be prioritized over the old). Then, it states that we should not prioritize wealthy countries in vaccine distribution. This article will be useful to me because it condemns the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO, which is an ethical issue I will discuss in my paper, and because it takes a clear stance on certain aspects of vaccine distribution that I will be able to use to argue my own stance later on.

Keller, Bridgette A. “Bioethics in a Pandemic: Johns Hopkins Offers Ethics Framework To Support Vaccine Distribution Decisions.” The National Law Review, 2 September 2020, https://www.natlawreview.com/article/bioethics-pandemic-johns-hopkins-offers-ethics-framework-to-support-vaccine. Accessed 19 November 2020.

This source is Johns Hopkins’s vaccine allocation ethics plan. It provides a framework for vaccine allocation that prioritizes the elderly, essential workers most at risk of infection, healthcare workers, and workers from socioeconomic groups that are the hardest-hit by the vaccine. It also provides a useful way to distinguish what differentiates one worker’s essentiality from another’s: just use the risk of infection and the possibility to distance rather than trying to weigh who is more important. will be most useful in the parts of my presentation where I discuss whether marginalized groups should be prioritized and where I talk about essential worker vaccination strategies.

Pearce, Katie. “Distributing a COVID-19 Vaccine Raises Complex Ethical Issues.” Hub, 1 July 2020, https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/07/01/covid-vaccine-ethics-faden/. Accessed 17 November 2020.

This source is an article from Johns Hopkins that again discusses the ethics of vaccine distribution. Unlike my other sources, it does not outline different ethical pathways; rather, it takes a clear stance on several aspects of vaccine distribution. It speaks against vaccine nationalism, which is where countries with resources ignore the vaccine needs of those without and thus do little to combat the global health crisis. Just as the article from Scientific American, it condemns US withdrawal from the WHO on ethical grounds. It also makes clear that merely obtaining a vaccine will not stop the pandemic because there are so many layers of complexity to its distribution. That last piece will be helpful to cite in the introduction of my essay because it shows the importance of ethical and logistically sound vaccine distribution, and the piece about the WHO will again be useful to me.

Thomas, Katie et al. “Pfizer’s Early Data Shows Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective.” The New York Times, 9 November 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/ covid-vaccine-pfizer.html?searchResultPosition=1. Accessed 19 November 2020.

This source is an article from the New York Times announcing that preliminary data from Pfizer’s vaccine trial showed over 90% efficacy in preventing the disease in trial volunteers. It clarifies a number of key details, such as the stunningly high rate of prevention, the way in which the vaccine works, and the challenging nature of distribution of the vaccine once it is approved for use by the FDA. This source will be helpful to me in providing background information about COVID vaccines so that I can look at scientific practicality when making ethical judgements about vaccine allocations, but I will probably keep having to look for sources of this nature -- news articles detailing vaccine development -- to stay current, since everything vaccine-related is happening very quickly at the moment.

Schmidt, Harald, et al. “Is it Lawful and Ethical to Prioritize Racial Minorities for COVID-19 Vaccines?” JAMA, 14 October 2020, 10.1001/jama.2020.20571. Accessed 19 November 2020.

This article discusses the ethics of prioritizing racial minorities for COVID vaccines. It takes the stance that they should, because not doing so would disproportionately favor the white, powerful majority. The scientists recognize that their stance is controversial and justify it on ethical, epidemiologic, social, and economic grounds in the first part of the article. They then provide several indexes for determining vaccine allocation based on racial background, one of which is called the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and is already used in other public health emergencies such as natural disasters and directly considers race, and the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) that is similar but directly prioritizes socioeconomic deprivation instead of race. Since my project is focused on whether or not certain groups should be prioritized for vaccination, this source will obviously be helpful to me in discussions of race and ethnicity.

WHO Ad Hoc Expert Group. “Placebo-Controlled Trials of Covid-19 Vaccines — Why We Still Need Them. The New England Journal of Medicine, 2 December 2020, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2033538. Accessed 3 December 2020.

This article written by a group affiliated with the WHO stresses the importance of placebo-controlled trials for obtaining reliable safety and efficacy data for a COVID vaccine as well as for maintaining public confidence in that vaccine. It argues that although there is talk about immediately unblinding trials and giving clinical trial participants who received the placebo the vaccine, but scientific consequences aboud from doing so. Thus, until a vaccine is fully approved and mass vaccination efforts are underway, the trials should remain blind. This source will be useful in the section of my website that discusses whether or not clinical trial participants should receive vaccine priority as a thank-you for putting their safety at risk to test the vaccine’s efficacy.

Thompson, Stuart A. “Find your Place in the Vaccine Line.” The New York Times, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/03/opinion/covid-19-vaccine-timeline.html?referringSource=articleShare. Accessed 7 December 2020.

This article is an interactive tool that estimates an individual’s place in the vaccine line using NASEM’s framework for COVID vaccine allocation. Their framework is but one interpretation of an ethical allocation of vaccines; it is important to note that it uses one specific allocation framework that at times contradicts others mentioned in this project. NASEM’s framework prioritizes high-risk health workers, people with severe comorbidities, and people in nursing homes first, then high-risk essential workers such as teachers, people living in homeless shelters, people in prisons, people with comorbidities, and all older adults, and only then young adults, children, and workers not at high risk. I plan to use this article as part of my interactive component. I will also have a Google form, but this will be a good resource for participants in my website to fill out.

Wu, Joseph H. et al. “Allocating Vaccines in a Pandemic: The Ethical Dimension.” American Journal of Medicine, vol. 133, no. 11, 2020, 10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.06.007. Accessed 17 November 2020.

This source is a short academic journal written by doctors at Brown University and the University of Cambridge. It discusses fair allocation of vaccines and asks firstly which ethical principles should guide vaccine distribution as well as how clashes between different principles can best be navigated. The article speaks mostly in terms of “may” and “could,” laying out different ethical pathways depending on certain aspects of Covid-19 that today remain largely unknown, such as whether prioritizing children or the elderly would serve best to stop the spread of the virus. The article will be useful to me because it discusses herd immunity and lays out different pathways that I can do more concrete research on and then come back to choose a specific one to advocate.