Public health ethics: critiques of the “new normal”

Journal article

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, most health authorities, governments, and mass media organizations presented a single official view concerning lockdowns, masking, distancing, and vaccines. The methods used against contrary views can be classified into four types: flooding, ignoring, censoring, and attacking. The method of information flooding involves presenting dominant views in a unified front, overwhelming contrary views by volume and consistency. The method of ignoring includes the absence of research on alternative approaches, failure to report on research contrary to orthodoxy, and not mentioning challenging views. Censoring involves active measures to prevent the circulation of contrary information and views. Attacking includes steps taken to silence and penalize scientists, doctors and others with heterodox views and campaigns to discredit alternatives to recommended approaches. These four types of methods are interrelated, forming an ecology of information control

Authors: Jamrozik, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Monash Bioethics Review
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-16
• Publication date: 2022-09-27
• DOI: 10.1007/s40592-022-00163-7
• EISSN: 1836-6716
• ISSN: 1321-2753
• Language: English
• Keywords: Public health; Reciprocity (cultural anthropology); Infectious disease (medical specialty); Bioethics; Pandemic; Disease; Equity (law); Engineering; Engineering ethics; Sociology; Political science; Law; Medicine; Transparency (behavior); Social science; Public relations; Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)