The carelessness and the inhospitable. inhabit times of pandemic

The pandemic has placed us in a situation of estrangement from ourselves. We have been acutely aware of our vulnerability and fragility. Through the stories of lived experiences, we have learned about and witnessed tragic circumstances in which inhospitality and neglect have become evident. We have been shocked by the awareness of the lack of recognition, accompaniment and welcome. Institutional decisions have prioritized public health, the good for all, but have forgotten the biographies of people, full of suffering. And this has produced a moral damage, a loss of trust, a feeling of injustice that we have not been able to fight against. This is why it is necessary to build hospitality, which can be achieved through care. Care with a political dimension that takes charge of reality and transforms society. The key is a responsibility in solidarity. Faced with the possibility of dehumanizing ourselves, we seek hospitality as an alternative way of narrating lives that have to be reconstructed, that have to relearn how to take care of each other amidst the multiple possibilities of estrangement that threaten us. Hospitality is at the heart of a narrative ethics at the height of our times.

COVID-19, black swans and the anticipation of health disasters: future problems and the future as a problem in public health ethics

The COVID-19 pandemic has recalled the importance of prevention and preparedness for highly disastrous events in community health. Several emerging phenomena pose prospective threats to public health. However, the largely future-oriented character of problems, for instance, such as antibiotic resistance, the impact of climate change on health, or the bioengineering of pathogens generates difficulties of analysis. What are the ethical and epistemological challenges raised by future public health problems? How should the moral problems of potentially catastrophic future scenarios be addressed? This article argues in favour of adopting anticipatory ethical approaches from public health ethics. First, it will be argued that addressing these future problems requires reflection on the future as an ethical and epistemic problem. Second, the characteristics of the emerging anticipatory ethics in the fields of ethics of technology and bioethics will be clarified. Third, the application of foresight and anticipatory methodologies in public health ethics debates will be defended. Finally, some reflections will be offered to strengthen anticipatory normative analyses to prevent and address in advance the adverse effects of future health crises.

History repeats itself: an ethic for two pandemics

The emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the 1980s brought ethical conflicts that meant a bioethics challenge. Among others, issues of confidentiality, stigmatization, justice, duty of care and investigation arose. Bioethical reflection had been focused on conflicts involving respect for individual autonomy, nevertheless HIV highlighted the needs of the community. Almost four decades later, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the ethical conflicts typical of public health back to the bioethical scene. Quarantines, various restrictions on mobility, the obligation of masks, poorly protected health care, rationing of scarce resources, rushed research, the vaccines allocation, stigmatization and discrimination, the immune passport, or the moralization of infectious disease have highlighted the need for an ethical framework that helps to reflect and justify public health decisions. In this article we review and analyze the ethical conflicts that arose with HIV and how they have reappeared and been reinterpreted with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using General Messages to Persuade on a Politicized Scientific Issue

Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.

Inculcating Ethical and Moral Values amongst the E-Learners: Proposing a Model for E-Learning Platforms

Under the influence of neo-liberalism and marketization, education is increasingly becoming more content-focused than character one. Ignoring the fact that money, science, and technology may take a person to the moon, these are ethical and moral values that take him/her to the even loftier heights of humanity. Recent COVID-19-driven focus on information and communication technology (ICT) and digital learning have further added to these woes by focusing more on human-machine interaction than human-human ones. Traditional models for inculcating these values through education which heavily rely on the physical presence of teachers do not seem to work in these circumstances. This demands a model for inculcating these values in learning management systems/ e-learning platforms. This study contributes in this regard by first identifying key players and factors, and then proposing a model for it. Using the Delphi model, it gathers opinions from 59 experts in two rounds. Academic institutions, society and online community members, teachers, and e-contents were identified as key factors and players. It suggests a holistic approach-based model through which all of them play their role and collaborate through an e-learning platform. That platform can be used to disseminate information, create awareness, monitor, and report the e-learners. It uses pull and push strategies to help the e-learners to develop those values. © 2023 The Author(s).

It's Not the Flu: Popular Perceptions of the Impact of COVID-19 in the U.S.

Messaging from U.S. authorities about COVID-19 has been widely divergent. This research aims to clarify popular perceptions of the COVID-19 threat and its effects on victims. In four studies with over 4,100 U.S. participants, we consistently found that people perceive the threat of COVID-19 to be substantially greater than that of several other causes of death to which it has recently been compared, including the seasonal flu and automobile accidents. Participants were less willing to help COVID-19 victims, who they considered riskier to help, more contaminated, and more responsible for their condition. Additionally, politics and demographic factors predicted attitudes about victims of COVID-19 above and beyond moral values; whereas attitudes about the other kinds of victims were primarily predicted by moral values. The results indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as an exceptionally severe disease threat, and despite prosocial inclinations, do not feel safe offering assistance to COVID-19 sufferers. This research has urgent applied significance: the findings are relevant to public health efforts and related marketing campaigns working to address extended damage to society and the economy from the pandemic. In particular, efforts to educate the public about the health impacts of COVID-19, encourage compliance with testing protocols and contact tracing, and support safe, prosocial decision-making and risk assessment, will all benefit from awareness of these findings. The results also suggest approaches, such as engaging people's stable values rather than their politicized perspectives on COVID-19, that may reduce stigma and promote cooperation in response to pandemic threats.

Moral Courage: Restoring Well-Being, Community, and Capacity within the Post-Pandemic University

Purpose: This paper aims to spark dialogue regarding what it takes to lead well as a university leader post-pandemic. While much has been written about the future challenges facing universities, not a lot has been written about the kind of moral courage that is required to lead them. There never has been a more important time for strong leadership from university presidents;leadership that supports human flourishing and learning in all its forms. Design/methodology/approach: Discussion focuses on the role of presidents in leading the post-pandemic university. The author speaks from experience on the need to restore well-being, community, and capacity for a more hopeful and resilient future. Findings: This study makes a case for a post-pandemic university needing to be marked by courage and humanity. Students are looking for universities to align with what they care about and what is relevant to their experience and future. Responsibility falls to leaders within the academy to restore well-being, community and capacity across the university. Research limitations/implications: Leading a university as president, at the best of times, is a complex and rewarding role. Leading during a global pandemic could hardly get more challenging. It is hoped that this paper will generate additional discussion as to what it means to lead well in the academy. Originality/value: The author's experience having led a university through one of the most challenging times in our history may provide a perspective for colleagues and future leaders of the university sector.

Evaluate the Use of Digital Stories to Develop Moral Values among Kindergarteners in Distance Education: A Mixed Method Study during COVID-19

This study aimed to reveal the extent to which digital stories are used in distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in developing moral values among kindergarten children. The researchers have followed a mixed-method design due to its relevance to the nature of the research objectives. Two measures were used to realize the objectives of the research;quantitative data were gathered from questionnaires given to 285 randomly teachers and parents/guardians. While qualitative data were collected via a subset of 50 open-ended instructed questions. Results showed that teachers need support to reach the required level in the use of digital stories in education to assist kindergarten children to enhance their motivation to learn values as well as to attain more effective and efficient learning.

Pro-environmental attitudes, altruism, and COVID-19 risk management behavior. (Special Issue: COVID-19: feeling and confronting pandemic risk challenges.)

Limiting the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic is a collective action problem that calls on individuals to act, not just for their benefit but also for the benefit of others in their community. Many environmental problems, especially climate change, share this characteristic, which invites inquiry on whether those predisposed to act to solve environmental problems may also be predisposed to act to solve health-focused collective action problems. In this study, we use a survey instrument to examine how pro-environmental attitudes and two types of altruism relate to the tendency to follow social distancing guidelines and limit voluntary social exposure during the pandemic. We find that pro-environmental behaviors predict a feeling of moral obligation to reduce COVID-19 risk and a lower level of voluntary social exposure. Voluntary, individual-level altruism has no relationship with social exposure. These findings point to important insights about the connections between different types of collective action and the nuances in altruistic behavior. These insights may lead to essential guidance for public health and environmental messaging that respects and leverages the differences in voluntary, individual-level altruism and collective altruism.

Surfing the Waves of Uncertainty: How Jewish Educational Leaders Face Enduring Dilemmas

The authors taught students in an Executive Master's program in Jewish education how to recognize and manage Enduring Dilemmas, situations in which two prized Jewish values stand in tension with one another and cannot be enacted simultaneously. They explore how these educators draw on the leadership practice of Managing Enduring Dilemmas in their professional lives and highlight the power of this practice to bring a unique Jewish frame and semblance of order to complex situations and issues. They conclude by describing the process by which educators learn this practice and the implications for professional learning and leadership development.

Moral Character Education after COVID-19: An Interview

This interview piece addresses the following questions: Does the COVID-19 pandemic offer any lessons for moral character education? Do the experiences of students, educators, and communities during the pandemic illustrate the importance of aspects of character education that may have been known but taken for granted? The three authors bring to this the perspectives of a philosopher of moral psychology and education (Curren, the interviewer), a clinical psychologist and co-founder of self-determination theory (SDT), a systematic approach in the psychology of motivation, development, and well-being (Ryan), and a moral theorist focused on mindfulness and virtue (Barber).

Emergency methods, moral dilemma and coping styles among frontline nurses: an explorative study during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly impacted China, especially the emergency services since 2020. For many, it raises unique ethical dilemmas, including psychological, moral, social, and economic issues, especially among frontline health workers.

From moral values to public health effectiveness: the place and importance of trust during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has put every contemporary society in front of various challenges. While those are often reflected and explained through economic, political or medical lenses, it seems that thorough ethical and bioethical insights are too rarely exposed and made explicit. This article tries to contribute to the neglected sphere of interconnection and interrelatedness of basic moral values and general, primarily public health, challenges. Moreover, it will be argued that by deeply disrespectful behaviour of chief institutions and inappropriate communication to the overall community (citizens) the value of elementary trust and respectfulness has been eroded, betrayed, and consequently brings to the plethora of economic, political, medical, and other challenges and troubles. The key argument is that the effectiveness of the public health measures is primarily rooted in stable and publicly communicated basic values, such as life and health, but the stability and communication of those values lays mostly in moral values such as trust, respect, fairness etc. One of the most important lessons this pandemic could give the humanity is the almost self-evident, but often forgotten insight, that moral values are the necessary glue of all values needed for functional society (and generally functional global community on Earth). The examples will be taken from the Croatian example of social, political, and institutional confrontation to the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 University of Rijeka, Faculty of Medicine. All rights reserved.

Why Are General Moral Values Poor Predictors of Concrete Moral Behavior in Everyday Life? A Conceptual Analysis and Empirical Study.

Within moral psychology, theories focusing on the conceptualization and empirical measurement of people's morality in terms of general moral values -such as Moral Foundation Theory- (implicitly) assume general moral values to be relevant concepts for the explanation and prediction of behavior in everyday life. However, a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for this idea remains work in progress. In this study we explore this relationship between general moral values and daily life behavior through a conceptual analysis and an empirical study. Our conceptual analysis of the moral value-moral behavior relationship suggests that the effect of a generally endorsed moral value on moral behavior is highly context dependent. It requires the manifestation of several phases of moral decision-making, each influenced by many contextual factors. We expect that this renders the empirical relationship between generic moral values and people's concrete moral behavior indeterminate. Subsequently, we empirically investigate this relationship in three different studies. We relate two different measures of general moral values -the Moral Foundation Questionnaire and the Morality As Cooperation Questionnaire- to a broad set of self-reported morally relevant daily life behaviors (including adherence to COVID-19 measures and participation in voluntary work). Our empirical results are in line with the expectations derived from our conceptual analysis: the considered general moral values are poor predictors of the selected daily life behaviors. Furthermore, moral values that were tailored to the specific context of the behavior showed to be somewhat stronger predictors. Together with the insights derived from our conceptual analysis, this indicates the relevance of the contextual nature of moral decision-making as a possible explanation for the poor predictive value of general moral values. Our findings suggest that the investigation of morality's influence on behavior by expressing and measuring it in terms of general moral values may need revision.

Learning to Adapt Domain Shifts of Moral Values via Instance Weighting

Classifying moral values in user-generated text from social media is critical in understanding community cultures and interpreting user behaviors of social movements. Moral values and language usage can change across the social movements;however, text classifiers are usually trained in source domains of existing social movements and tested in target domains of new social issues without considering the variations. In this study, we examine domain shifts of moral values and language usage, quantify the effects of domain shifts on the morality classification task, and propose a neural adaptation framework via instance weighting to improve cross-domain classification tasks. The quantification analysis suggests a strong correlation between morality shifts, language usage, and classification performance. We evaluate the neural adaptation framework on a public Twitter data across 7 social movements and gain classification improvements up to 12.1%. Finally, we release a new data of the COVID-19 vaccine labeled with moral values and evaluate our approach on the new target domain. For the case study of the COVID-19 vaccine, our adaptation framework achieves up to 5.26% improvements over neural baselines. This is the first study to quantify impacts of moral shifts, propose adaptive framework to model the shifts, and conduct a case study to model COVID-19 vaccine-related behaviors from moral values. © 2022 ACM.

Special Issue: Ecological justice and the right to health. (Special Issue: Ecological justice and the right to health.)

This special issue contains 6 articles that discuss justice, rights, and health. Topics include: health rights, ecological justice, and anthropocentrism;rights and COVID-19;slaughterhouse workers, animals, and the environment;One Health, COVID-19, and a right to health for human and non-human animals;human rights and pesticide exposure and poisoning in children;and moral status and moral agency.

Normative analysis and ethical evaluation of curfew and restrictions as a public health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic

Countries have declared various public health measures and have taken measures to protect public health in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures aim to protect the health of society and individuals, prevent and restrict the spread of the disease;on the other hand, they also restrict fundamental rights and freedoms. Our research aimed at conducting normative analysis and ethical evaluation of curfew and restrictions as a public health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic with focusing on some epidemiological research results. The definition and function of proportionality as an ethical principle in the application of such measures were examined. Basic theses were developed and some recommendations were made for ethical orientation by revealing the importance and necessity of moral virtues such as responsibility and solidarity in the fight against the pandemic.

How people deal with COVID-19: in terms of coping and moral panic

This study's goal is to see how the community copes with the Pandemic's effects. 1038 people in the COVID-91 red zone filled out the online survey questionnaire. Both the modified coping and moral panic questionnaires (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988) were completed by all participants. According to the findings of this study, eight coping mechanisms were discovered, including problem-solving plans, seeking social support, and isolating yourself from the situation. Planful problem solving (r: -0291;p: 0000), social support (r: -0215;p: 0000), distancing (r: -0270);self-control (r: -0327;p: 0000), positive reassurance (r: -0211;p: 0000) and self-control (r: 0327) are six coping styles that are negatively correlated with moral panic (r: -0,408;p: 0,000). Confrontive coping (r: 0,122;p: 0,000) and escape-avoidance coping are two coping styles that correlate with moral panic (r: 0,122;p: 0,000). (r: 0,196;p: 000) Not reacting aggressively and excessively is the best way to avoid panic. Be wary, but not terrified.

The Family as the Centre of Moral Values and Ethics: Challenges since the Covid-19 Pandemic

Nation-states are a result of the existence of families which constitutes communities that form them. Therefore, without families, regardless of how developed they are, there can’t be communities, and, thus, no nation-states. Religiously argued, the family is the cardinal centre of focus when the wellbeing of a nation-state is to be assessed. Implying that, when families disintegrate, the survival of communities and of nations cannot be guaranteed. Precisely because of this, the family is a primary institution where religious, socio-economic and moral values are imparted to children who ultimately constitute future generations. To unravel dilemmas caused by the devastation of Covid-19 pandemic on families, Maslow’s theory and also that of nihilism are utilised in tandem with the principles and values that are underpinned by Rossouw’s theory. The article aims to preserve the family as an important unit whose core functions is the production of communities. Religiously, diverse belief systems have from time immemorial used and or applied their principles and moral values to either overcome or manage dangers faced by families, or communities at large. Currently, the effects of Covid-19 on the economy, society, religious and learning institutions including essential establishments that delivers critical services are either under great pressure or have stopped functioning entirely. No question, Covid-19 is slowly but surely eroding and altering the way the world’s people are living. It has introduced modes of survival hitherto known or which were never practiced before. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Investigation of the drivers of abnormal behaviors from the perspective of health managers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: Considering the COVID-19 pandemic and its severe effects on life, there is no doubt that an analysis of the components and drivers of abnormal behaviors can facilitate the emergence of moral behaviors. Therefore, we conducted this study in order to investigate the drivers of abnormal behaviors from the perspective of health managers during the COVID-19 pandemic.