Have you thought about the effect the covid-19 pandemic has had on you or your families health? In an article “Public health ethics and the Covid-19 pandemic” written by author Alhaji Aliyu. She speaks on the impacts and effects of covid-19 . Alhaji states “the covid-19 pandemic has revealed the world’s interconnectedness and has exerted pressure on world leaders, policy makers and public health authorities to make ethically challenging decisions on public health containment measurements. More notably, she describes how we had to rely on public officials for announcements about restrictions and lockdowns in place because us as civilians couldn’t do much to bring the pandemic under control. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the disease epicenters are in the Americas (USA and Brazil) and Asia pacific (India).It is pertinent to evaluate the global public health response to COVID-19 focusing on surveillance, isolation, quarantine social distancing, travel restrictions, universal masking, and contact tracing (CT). Alhaji shows how public health measures often raise difficult and intricate questions about the relationship between the state and it’s citizens and organizations that are affected by public policies. public health ethics challenges against social, political , economic and societal structures. Therefore, the importance in managing the pandemic in an organized coordinated global response is an ethical duty.
Another example in the report “Experiences, impacts and mental health functioning during a COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown”. Concentrated on documenting the breach of COVID-19 experiences and their impacts on college students and explore associations between patterns of COVID-19 experiences and psychosocial functioning during the prolonged lockdown. Authors Teresa López-Castro, Laura Brandt, Nishanthi J. Anthonipillai, Adriana Espinosa and Robert Melara, In May 2020 reported their findings which highlight significant impediments to multiple areas of students’ daily life during this period (i.e.home life, work life, social environment, and emotional and physical health) and a vast majority reported heightened symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety. Moreover, those who reported the loss of a close friend or loved one from COVID-19 (17%) experienced significantly more psychological distress than counterparts with other types of infection-related histories.This demonstrates the current study explored the experience and impact of the unprecedented stressors of a COVID-19 outbreak-exposure to possible contagion of a life-threatening pathogen and a 78-day government-mandated home confinement-on a diverse NYC college sample. We found significant disruptions in the daily lives of the sampled students, in line with the city’s status as one of COVID-19’s highest-impact zones, coupled with high psychological distress. Furthermore, this shows that the covid-19 pandemic not only had an effect on public health but students’ everyday lives as well.
