Containing the spread of pandemic transmission tends to go hand in hand with a surveillance regime that tracks movement, transmission and those who contract the virus or disease. An enduring legacy of the COVID-19 crisis will be the incremental development of surveillance technologies, ostensibly purposed to identify the threat and spread of a pandemic, giving birth to what amounts to the pandemic surveillance state. Whether this is seen as an undesirable outcome depends very much on the field of expertise and the relevant slant. Health professionals and epidemiologists favor more surveillance; privacy and data security advocates fear a further denuding of protections. This paper examines the dangers of such technologies and efforts to seek a middle ground on app technologies designed to protect privacy. Such designs may, in time, seem more hopeful than actual.
The COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about reconciling health priorities with the exercise of certain liberties and rights. Public safety has come into conflict with matters of mobility, freedom of expression, and the right to protest. How can the threat of viral transmission be reconciled with the urgency of political protests, such as in the Black Lives Matter movement? This article discusses various approaches, referring to debates in the United States and Australia, where law enforcement authorities and politicians warned against protest marches, generally citing the protection of public health as a qualifying exception. Numerous epidemiologists, while acknowledging risks, argued that a calculus of risk be deployed, citing public health as a variegated, multilayered concept. A similar balancing act was deployed in Australian courts. Such reasoning led to accusations that public health science had been politicized. Striking the balance remains a pragmatic approach to holding such gatherings during times of pandemic.
The effects of COVID-19 have been telling in the sports world, seeing competitions suspended indefinitely. Initial optimism in England-that the Premier League would resume in May-dampened in favour of caution. In the absence of play and catastrophic economic losses, wealthy managers and executives have been encouraged, from a financial perspective, to accept wage freezes and reductions. Players have also been encouraged to do so as part of an effort in solidarity. This paper considers the ethical dimension of such gestures and how these have been received. How is the footballer, rendered physically incapable in such circumstances to prove sporting worth, to be critiqued? A new pandemic morality, it is argued, has emerged, one that takes an austere view of footballers and their conduct. Appraised as such, these figures are seen less as heroic beings than citizens engaged in a common cause and reviled for not doing so, a return, it is contended, to the principle of amateurishness. Specific reference is made to the English Premier League to illustrate the point.
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