COVID and ethics: Germany debates freedoms for the vaccinated
Ethical questions on how to treat individuals presumed immune to COVID have accompanied the pandemic from early on. Now, as Germans urgently want to resume their normal lives the debate has intensified.
It will be months before a majority of Germans will have had a chance to be vaccinated
As Germany finds itself in the throes of the third wave of coronavirus infections, people are getting tired of restrictions. So the country is debating whether fully vaccinated people should be exempt.
The government s position on what it terms freedoms ( Freiheiten ) for vaccinated individuals has evolved over time as vaccine supply has increased and the scientific data regarding the potential infectiousness of fully vaccinated individuals has grown.
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Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, the President-elect of the International Science Council (ISC) from the University of Auckland, joins epidemiologist Professor Sir David Skegg of the University of Otago as part of an oversight panel for the recently launched ISC Covid-19 Scenarios Project.
The panel was announced in the world-leading medical journal The Lancet in a commentary, ‘Future scenarios for the Covid-19 pandemic’, co-authored by Sir Peter and Sir David, and panel members Geoffrey Boulton, Heide Hackmann, Salim Abdool Karim, Peter Piot, and Christiane Woopen.
The panel of international science leaders also includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), an advisor to President Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board and other microbiologists and epidemiologists.
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The panel of international science leaders also includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), an advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board and other microbiologists and epidemiologists.
Within eight months, the panel will report on the possible COVID-19 scenarios the world faces over the next three to five years, and on the choices for governments, agencies, and citizens.
Sir Peter, who heads Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland, initiated the ISC project. He says decisions made by governments and individuals over coming months will impact on how the world recovers from the pandemic over the next three to five years.