Is it right or wrong to disclose personal information of patients with infectious diseases to warn the community? Should foreign visitors be treated to the same ethical and cultural standards as locals? Should the wealthy limit their movements and personal “rights” to privacy to protect the health of the more financially constrained, those who cannot access medical care or cannot take time off work?
My rights! Ethical issues during the pandemic
Many people around the world have spoken out against the government’s measures to control the spread of COVID-19. Experts with all kinds of political views criticize the government for violating individual privacy and freedom of movement, while demanding fast and accurate information, transparency, and accountability from government. To respond effectively to pandemics at both the local and international levels, the most difficult issue seems to be reaching a consensus on ethical standards during the medical emergency.
Quarantine, travel restrictions, as well as the collection and sharing of personal information are considered civil rights violations in many countries with COVID-19 epidemics. In Italy, the quarantine of more than 60 million people raises concerns about the potential for government to become tyrannical and abuses of power, while many doubt the effectiveness of the draconian measures. . The United Nations High Commissioner, despite his neutral stance, also acknowledged the importance of isolation for public health. In a press release, the High Commissioner emphasized: “Blockade, isolation, and other measures to contain and prevent the spread of COVID-19 should be implemented on the basis of human rights and appropriate for a well-considered risk.” In general, though, debates about human rights and COVID-19 often fail to take into account the customs and economic situation of individual countries and communities. This is a shortcoming.
In addition to the visible differences in material, economic, and social conditions, it is obvious that what is considered a universal human right is also practiced quite differently in different countries and communities. . This phenomenon is known in the world of social science researchers as “indigenous moral standards”. Our American physician and professor of anthropology at Harvard University, Arthur Kleinman, discusses the concept of “these indigenous moral standards” in this book. What Really Matters (The really important thing) his. In the book, he pointed out many moral paradoxes to explain why Chinese patients and relatives had to make difficult decisions, choosing between their own life and death. and their family members. With his personal and professional experience from taking care of his wife in the last days of her life and from working as a “barefoot doctor”, traveling around China, he reminds us that the A situation of risk, instability, or danger in a community will always force the community to confront ethical questions that are extremely difficult to answer. And culture is what helps us make the right choices. Therefore, it is difficult from the perspective of one culture, to evaluate and judge the moral choices of people of another culture, when we have not actually experienced what they have had to go through. pass and face.
Interactions between locals and foreigners in the highly internationalized labor market in Vietnam make cultural and ethical differences even more pronounced, when foreign tourists or workers, without intentionally or intentionally, infecting the native population with the virus.
In Vietnam, tensions due to cultural and ethical differences arose when Vietnam quarantined an aircraft carrying Korean tourists. The tourists accused Vietnam of treating them badly, and the Vietnamese online community initiated a response campaign on Twitter with the hashtags #KoreaStopLying and #ApologizeToVietnam. Vietnam). The Vietnamese online community claimed that the Korean tourists lied about the care they received during the quarantine and demanded an official apology.
Tensions have also increased between local Vietnamese and foreigners living in Hanoi due to different views on wearing masks in public. Foreigners say they are stigmatized and discriminated against when they don’t wear masks on the street, while Vietnamese complain that people from richer countries behave “uninformed” and “selfish”.
Mr. John Hetherington, US citizen, currently living in Da Nang, in an interview via text message, expressed his concerns about this conflict of cultural values. This kind of conflict “seems to be getting worse and worse,” he said.
A discussion among Facebook group members “Expats Living and Working in Vietnam” (Foreigners living and working in Vietnam) show why many foreigners do not voluntarily wear masks. Foreigners often doubt the quality of Vietnam’s masks or worry that medical staff will lack masks if people use masks for personal purposes. One member said: “Science has clearly proven that people should wear masks when they are sick because masks can stop the spread.” However, this person also contradicts himself when he thinks that healthy people wearing medical masks only have a symbolic meaning and are not really effective in preventing infectious diseases.
Stigma, racism, and xenophobia are commonly used (though not very precise) terms to describe events of this kind, implying that the moral conflict between Groups of people from different cultures are inevitable and difficult to deal with. Ethnic violence against Asians abroad or against Chinese in Korea is often reported in the mass media. This phenomenon has led many experts to warn that xenophobia or closed-door policies will become increasingly common during and after the pandemic. Opponents of secrecy argue that access to health care is a universal right and should be protected for all regardless of nationality, ethnicity and status. Furthermore, we also have to be careful with the trend when many stories are related to ethnic violence or racism. Because media attention with negative behaviors will make these behaviors more common and aggravated. The biggest issue we should be discussing in Asia right now is not racism or xenophobia as the press in many countries deliberately exploit. The problem East Asia and Vietnam are facing is the problem of allocating health resources in the region. Disparities in health resources and lack of solidarity in mutual medical assistance are the main risks, which can lead to serious humanitarian risks in the region.
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Pandemic is a global problem with consequences that every country and community is suffering. The more widespread the pandemic, the more it requires countries and communities to work closely together to prevent it. In reality, however, we live in a world with many divisions. Besides divisions over economic interests and ideologies, we are also divided on moral standards. These divisions and misunderstandings have led many countries and communities to condemn the country’s and other communities’ response to the epidemic as “tyranny,” “dictatorship,” “police rule,” “violating human rights” or “neglect”, “irresponsible”, or “selfish”. Those moral divisions have been hindering efforts to contain the spread of this pandemic.
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Ethics in the East and the West: Individual Freedom or National Responsibility
Differences in ethics and beliefs about the role of government represent a major challenge to COVID-19 prevention efforts. While idealists in Europe and America believe that closing borders and restricting movement violates each individual’s right to protect himself from disease; leaders in East Asia are more concerned about the lack of medical equipment needed to save the people for whom they are responsible. Ethical values of Europe – America focus on freedom, self-determination, and dignity of each individual, while East Asian ethical values revolve around responsibility and obligations towards the nation.
Liberal idealism that emphasizes individual freedom and self-determination is often seen as unnecessary, irrational, and frivolous to many East Asians, as these individual rights can lead to material consequences (including death) that must be borne by the vulnerable and incapable of choice groups in society. Because of the moral outlook associated with the obsession with the tragedy of this type of community in East Asia, people in East Asia have a preference for political economy and Marxism. They also have a slight disregard for the West’s ideology of individual rights.
East Asia has a history of not very peaceful international relations. The foreign policy of warships and gunboats is a typical policy for foreign activities in East Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, starting with the Treaty of Kanagawa between Japan and the United States in 1854. Instead of improved relations between countries as advocates of free trade and liberalism advocated; during the 20th century, the economies of Western Europe and the United States prospered while many in Asia exhausted by poverty and constant war. Political tensions escalated worldwide, leading to uprisings in East Asia fighting for independence and sovereignty. It was during that turbulent time that the 1918 Spanish flu swept the world, infecting a third of the global population and causing the deaths of more than 50 million people.
Now, as COVID-19 ravages East Asia, national leaders are once again having to deal with the problem of producing and stockpiling medical supplies and food to ensure the nation’s health. As a result, countries in the region have imposed travel bans and export medical supplies. This action, in the eyes of East Asians, is perfectly ethical, responsible, and policy correct. But it is denounced by many liberal scholars and Western policymakers as nationalism or totalitarianism.
These ethical differences have attracted the attention of many anthropological researchers over the past few decades. Ethical studies in anthropology raise questions about the universality of human rights. Anthropologist Laura Nadar sees human rights as a form of “moral imperialism”. Meanwhile, in the view of anthropologist Saba Mahmood, human rights are used as an excuse to continue violence, not to limit it. New approaches to anthropology place greater emphasis on the role of local history as well as the experiences and memories of individual communities.
It can be seen that the development of a common code of ethics for the whole world is more hindering than promoting international cooperation. In the age of globalization, resolving ethical conflicts while preventing the spread of a pandemic must begin with understanding the different interpretations and interpretations of each provision in human rights documents. international, instead of trying to impose a common moral system on all nations.
The development of international trade, technology, and transportation has yet to erase cultural differences, or replace local moral notions with a common concept of human rights. But this development has made the need to understand and respect indigenous moral values more important than ever.