The Traditional Definition of Pandemics, Its Moral Conflations, and Its Practical Implications: A Defense of Conceptual Clarity in Global Health Laws and Policies
This paper argues that the existing definition of pandemics is not nuanced enough, because it is predicated solely on the criterion of spread, rather than on the criteria of spread and severity. This definitional challenge is what I call ‘the conflation problem’: there is a conflation of two differe...
| Autor principal: | |
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| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Gargar...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publicado: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2020
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| En: |
Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Año: 2020, Volumen: 29, Número: 2, Páginas: 205-217 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
global health
B Pandemics B global health emergencies B definition of pandemics B communicable diseases B conflation problem |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Sumario: | This paper argues that the existing definition of pandemics is not nuanced enough, because it is predicated solely on the criterion of spread, rather than on the criteria of spread and severity. This definitional challenge is what I call ‘the conflation problem’: there is a conflation of two different realities of global health, namely global health emergencies (i.e., severe communicable diseases that spread across borders) and nonemergencies (i.e., communicable or noncommunicable diseases that spread across borders and that may be severe). To put this argument forth, this paper begins by discussing the existing and internationally accepted definition of pandemics, its requirements, as well as its strengths (section 1). Section 2 then considers the problem with the standard definition of pandemics (i.e., the conflation problem) and some examples of it. Finally, section 3 evaluates some practical implications of the conflation problem to then explore conceptual clarity as the adequate solution. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-2147 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0963180119001002 |