62,406 and Counting

Abstract

What will we remember, as scholars, practitioners, policy-makers, educators, and citizens, about this acute phase of the catastrophe in the United States? The shocking federal failure concerning testing? That the first shortage was not of ventilators but protective gear? How infection rates and deaths in communities of color, immigrant neighborhoods, and nursing homes mercilessly exposed the relationship between social inequalities and health inequities? I hope we will remember that the field of bioethics did good work under pressure, learned that public health ethics and global health ethics are about securing the conditions for decent lives and decent work as well as saving lives, and committed ourselves to progress on the problem of inequality.