It has recently been reported that some hospitals in the UK have placed a blanket restriction on the provision of maternal request caesarean sections (MRCS) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pregnancy and birthing services are obviously facing challenges during the current emergency, but we argue that a blanket ban on MRCS is both inappropriate and disproportionate. In this paper, we highlight the importance of MRCS for pregnant people’s health and autonomy in childbirth and argue that this remains crucial (...) during the current emergency. We consider some potential arguments—based on pregnant people’s health and resource allocation—that might be considered justification for the limitation of such services. We demonstrate, however, that these arguments are not as persuasive as they might appear because there is limited evidence to indicate either that provision of MRCS is always dangerous for pregnant people in the circumstances or would be a substantial burden on a hospital’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Furthermore, we argue that even if MRCS was not a service that hospitals are equipped to offer to all pregnant persons who seek it, the current circumstances cannot justify a blanket ban on an important service and due attention must be paid to individual circumstances. (shrink)

Background: Infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19 and MERS pose a major threat to healthcare workers' physical and mental health. Studies exploring the positive changes gained from adapting to traumatic events, known as post-traumatic growth, have attracted much attention. However, it is unclear which factors or experiences lead to PTG among HCWs. The purpose of this mixed-method study was to investigate factors associated with PTG among HCWs who experienced the MERS outbreak in South Korea, and fully describe their experience of (...) developing PTG.Methods: Quantitative data from 78 participants were collected using psychometric tools for Psychological distress, Resilience, and Support for coping, and Post-traumatic growth. Qualitative interviews were conducted with seven nurses. Data were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method according to the sub-themes of resilience, which was the main factor associated with PTG.Results: We found resilience to have a significant impact on PTG. Thus the qualitative interviews were analyzed using the core concepts of resilience. Qualitative interviews with nurses illustrated how participants experienced the development of resilience in terms of its sub-factors: hardiness, persistence, optimism, and support.Conclusion: HCWs who endured the MERS outbreak showed high levels of PTG, and the analysis of the interview data provided a fuller understanding on the experience of remaining resilient and developing PTG. These results provide practical and pragmatic information helpful for developing intervention strategies and protocols that can help HCWs transform adversity into growth and development. (shrink)

The May 2026 Hantavirus outbreak had eleven cases and three deaths. It looks small. This essay argues that such biological events work as triggers for deeper structural change. Drawing on Foucault's biopower, Agamben's state of exception, and Arendt's normalisation of the exceptional, the analysis proposes a pattern: biological crises are increasingly used to build permanent algorithmic infrastructures that control physical access to society and hold epistemic authority over what counts as real health information. Hantavirus 2026 is a "reminder shock"—a maintenance (...) signal that stops the removal of COVID-era surveillance systems. The essay traces the shift from citizen to algorithmic subject, a change in political ontology. The conclusion is stark: the algorithm has joined the politico-legal system as an epistemic sovereign. Three counter-scenarios are identified. The most likely path points toward a permanent state of emergency framework. The final question is not who decides. It is this: under what conditions does the algorithmic subject see its own leash? And try to break it? (shrink)

The world’s first COVID-19 human challenge trial using the D614G strain of SARS-CoV-2 is underway in the United Kingdom. The Wellcome Trust is funding challenge stock preparation of the Beta variant (B.1.351) for a follow-up human challenge trial, and researchers at Imperial College London are considering conducting that trial. However, little has been written thus far about the ethical justifiability of human challenge trials with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. While vaccine resistance as such does not increase risks for volunteers in (...) COVID-19 challenge trials, we explore two specific characteristics of some variants that may initially be thought to make such trials unethical and conclude that SARS-CoV-2 variant challenge trials can remain ethical. (shrink)

The major epidemics that have been faced by humanity in the known history of the earth have also led to major social, political, commercial and ideological changes. After every major epidemic, humanity has changed its form by reconstructing itself. It is considered that the epidemic, which continues to threaten all humanity, has triggered major changes similar to the epidemics that happened before this one. It seems that one of the most important changes that humanity will comprehend in terms of the (...) subject of the study is to take place in religious structures, which are the centres of individual religious perception and production of religious knowledge. It is certain that after the coronavirus epidemic, each individual is going to seek different meanings again or through current tools, and typologies of religiousness are going to change. Accordingly, it is considered that all the structures, which are the production centre of religious knowledge, take into account the changes in individual religiousness typologies, but are going to have to reshape them in order to overcome the problems that they encounter during the pandemic period. The aim of this study is to provide a foresight about the individual religious tendencies and the future of pure religious groups along with the religions as a centre of religious information production during the post-pandemic period. In addition, the necessary precautions that the state should exercise about individual’s escalating search for meaning, the changing individual religious sense and the probable re-construction of pure religious groups have also been presented. (shrink)

Introduction. The 2020 viral pandemic put humanity in a forced isolation environment. This crisis situation provoked the total inclusion of technology in the modern dialogue at different levels of connections and relationships. This phenomenon does not only demonstrate the enormous importance of technology in the modern world, but also raises the question of the essence of such a “mandatory” dialogue partner. The aim of the study is to raise a question about ontological essence of technology, formulating a hypothesis about the (...) involvement of the “technical” in the symbolic world. The authors use the phenomenological approach that makes it possible to see behind an array of diverse human experience interacting with the “technical” — the anonymity of the essence of technology. The usual attitude to engineering and technology as a tool that performs certain initially laid down tasks is unsatisfactory, since the importance of technology in modern civilization is much wider. In addition, the authors use the analytical approach that makes it possible to see behind scientific theories and facts a certain “logic of behavior” of science and technology aimed at overcoming the nature of things. Symbolic technology passes all natural and cultural boundaries. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a ‘perfect crisis’ that combined health, ecological and economic crises, resulting in the death of millions of people and the unemployment of others. While states took extraordinary measures to manage the crisis, social scientists tried to make sense of this situation. Early in the pandemic, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben controversially claimed that states were instrumentalizing the disease to proclaim, “an authentic state of exception”. This study contributes to the criticisms of Agamben through a critical rereading (...) of German legal theorist, Carl Schmitt. The main argument is that Agamben’s approach to the pandemic is too strongly social constructivist, over-philosophical, over-political and a-historical due to his general philosopho-political project. Agamben’s decisionist and over-political approach is derived from his use of Schmitt’s problematic concept of the “state of exception”. However, Agamben’s use is even more problematic because he uses it to analyze various political developments ahistorically, which obliviates the concept’s analytical consistency. (shrink)

We investigate and analyze the dynamics of hepatitis B with various infection phases and multiple routes of transmission. We formulate the model and then fractionalize it using the concept of fractional calculus. For the purpose of fractionalizing, we use the Caputo–Fabrizio operator. Once we develop the model under consideration, existence and uniqueness analysis will be discussed. We use fixed point theory for the existence and uniqueness analysis. We also prove that the model under consideration possesses a bounded and positive solution. (...) We then find the basic reproductive number to perform the steady-state analysis and to show that the fractional-order epidemiological model is locally and globally asymptotically stable under certain conditions. For the local and global analysis, we use linearization, mean value theorem, and fractional Barbalat’s lemma, respectively. Finally, we perform some numerical findings to support the analytical work with the help of graphical representations. (shrink)

The idea of commons has been rehabilitated in today’s global bioethics and used to redefine the public domain.

This text is an attempt to reflect on some of the morally relevant issues raised by the current pandemic crisis. The specificity of this situation is also defined by comparison with the AIDS pandemic. The topicality of the current crisis is an obstacle to a more systematic analysis and formulation of more coherent conclusions. This is the reason why the text outlines those aspects that can now be formulated as possible starting points for discourse on the moral dimension of the (...) pandemic. These mainly include the problem of responsibility (individual, social and professional) at a time of escalating risk situation. Other problems are briefly outlined according to the basic areas of bioethics – human bioethics, environmental ethics, and animal ethics. (shrink)

Education has to go digital, and this will involve a lot more than just on-lining brick-and-mortar classes. Also, the process of doing this will be real epistemology, as in, it will involve people doing epistemology, instead of just impotently and unoriginally talking about it.

Este artigo, de caráter ensaístico, não se furta a pensar o fenômeno de maior proeminência no momento em que fora escrito, a pandemia desencadeada pelo Covid-19. Partindo literalmente da premissa foucaultiana, segundo a qual a filosofia deve ter como alvo o tempo presente, e abalizado por reflexões recentes de filósofos contemporâneos influenciados por Foucault, como Paul B. Preciado e Roberto Esposito, defendo a hipótese de que o vírus carrega em si, como um espelho, tudo o que ainda não conseguimos deixar (...) de ser. Com efeito, a abordagem aqui adotada lança mão da estratégia, já recorrente na filosofia contemporânea, de ampliar a noção de “vírus” como metáfora pertinente para os mais diversos fenômenos societários. Após introduzir o que está em jogo neste contingente virótico e global, decomponho a reflexão em quatro partes: enquadramento – de uma atmosfera previamente carregada de certos hábitos de exceção e anticorpos fronteiriços; estranhamento – como princípio da imunização e da redistribuição da vulnerabilidade; confinamento – como disciplina assimétrica de sobrevivência e autossacrifício; desaparecimento – como horizonte ontológico de uma existência inerte que nos espelha. O que me interessa aqui é, mais do que delinear uma interpretação filosófica da pandemia, indiciar a lógica insuspeita e virulenta que há décadas nos cerceia enquanto corpos e anticorpos descartáveis. Concluo, à guisa do diagnóstico de Paul B. Preciado, segundo o qual o vírus atua “à nossa imagem e semelhança”, que o fenômeno pandêmico implica o recrudescimento do paradoxo neoliberal segundo o qual, para “sobrevivermos”, devemos sacrificar a nós mesmos. (shrink)

When we first started thinking about this Special Issue in our home country of New Zealand, we had little sense of what the future might hold. Emerging from a very strict lockdown—where one of us found herself in an isolated rural community, unable to return home, and the other was confined to a small suburban space with a dog, two children under the age of five, and a husband, and both of us with doubts as to what our jobs would (...) look like when we were "released"—our minds were strictly focused on the pandemic and its immediate impact on our day-to-day lives.At the same time, in the unfamiliar context of isolation, we connected with a colleague from Edinburgh, Michael Kelly—someone Annemarie knew from sabbatical... (shrink)

Zika infection in pregnant women is associated with an elevated probability of giving birth to a child with microcephaly and multiple other disabilities. Public health messaging on Zika prevention has predominantly targeted women who know they are pregnant or intend to become pregnant, but not teenage females for whom unintended pregnancy is more likely. Vulnerabilities among this population to reproductive risks associated with Zika are further amplified by restrictive abortion laws in several Zika-impacted states. Key to prevention is enhanced, targeted (...) public health messaging centered on teens nationally and particularly in certain high-risk regions. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with constantly new challenges. We need to browse new inventories of scientific knowledge to reflect on previous experiences and thus facilitate societal learning. In line with the first volume on the COVID-19 pandemic in this series, contributions from different disciplines and fields of practice create an awareness of the complexity of this crisis and help us to understand the diversity of challenges it poses. The first part focuses on philosophical, sociological and psychological problem (...) diagnoses, the second on reactive strategies in the fields of medicine, nursing care, the economy and law. After taking a look at religious contexts and fields of practice, leading experts from the healthcare sector share their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. With contributions by Mahmoud Abdallah, Désirée Amschl-Strablegg, Cornelia Baptist-Kröpfl, Herbert Beiglböck, Ulrike Berdnik, Alois Birklbauer, Anneliese Derkits, Reinhold Esterbauer, Franziska Grossschädl, Katharina Heimerl, Andreas Heller, Marie-Christin Hinteregger, Hartmann Jörg Hohensinner, Elisabeth Horvath, Isabella Jonveaux, Anna-Christina Kainradl, Ulla Kriebernegg, Wolfgang Kröll, Ulrike Kylianek, Martin M. Lintner, Saskia Löser, Christa Lohrmann, Sandra Müller, Gerold Muhri, Manfred Novak, Sabine Petritsch, Eva Peyker, Michaela Pfadenhauer, Barbara Pichler, Johann Platzer, Lisa Pongratz, Maria Puntigam, Elisabeth Reitinger, Hans-Walter Ruckenbauer, Hellmut Samonigg, Walter Schaupp, Georg Tafner, Christa Tax, Wolfgang Toller and Jürgen Wallner. (shrink)

COVID-19 has been studied extensively for its direct effects on healthcare workers. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of COVID-19 fear on future orientation. Studying medical social workers’ fear of being infected with COVID-19 and their future orientation was the primary method used to examine this relationship. 204 Turkish medical social workers on the pandemic’s front lines were included in the total sample. Social workers were found to be extremely concerned about contracting COVID-19. Although only gender is (...) a significant predictor of the fear of contracting COVID-19 infection, the study also found that female social workers have a higher fear of infection than males. Also, no correlation exists between social workers’ vaccination status and their fear of contracting COVID-19. There was a weak negative correlation between social workers’ fear of contracting COVID-19 and their future orientation, but in general, social workers had a positive future orientation. Medical social workers and front-line health care providers can use these findings to develop effective and culturally appropriate intervention programs to reduce COVID-19 concerns and foster a forward-looking outlook. (shrink)

Viruses have generally been thought of as infectious agents. New data on mimivirus, however, suggests a reinterpretation of this thought. Earth’s biosphere seems to contain many more viruses than previously thought and they are relevant in the maintenance of ecosystems and biodiversity. Viruses are not considered to be alive because they are not free-living entities and do not have cellular units. Current hypotheses indicate that some viruses may have been the result of genomic reduction of cellular life forms. However, new (...) studies relating to the origins of biological systems suggest that viruses could also have originated during the transition from First to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Within this setting, life has been established as chemical informational system and could be interpreted as a macrocode of multiple layers. The first entity to acquire these features was the First Universal Common Ancestor that evolved to an intermediate ancestral that could be named T-LUCA and be equated to Woese’s concept of progenotes. T-LUCA may have remained as undifferentiated subsystems with viruses-like structures. The net result is that both cellular life forms and viruses shared protein synthesis apparatuses. In short, virus is a strategy of life reached by two paths: T-LUCAs like entities and the reduction of cellular life forms. (shrink)

A crucially important part of the biosphere – the virosphere – is too often overlooked. Inclusion of the virosphere into the global picture of protein structure space reveals that 63 protein domain superfamilies in viruses do not have any structural and evolutionary relatives in modern cellular organisms. More than half of these have functions which are not virus‐specific and thus might be a source of new folds and functions for cellular life. The number of viruses on the planet exceeds (...) that of cells by an order of magnitude and viruses evolve up to six orders of magnitude faster. As a result, cellular species are subject to a constitutive ‘flow‐through’ of new viral genetic material. Due to this and the relaxed evolutionary constraints in viruses, the transfer of domains between host‐to‐virus could be a mechanism for accelerated protein evolution. The virosphere could be an engine for the genesis of protein structures, and may even have been so before the last universal common ancestor of cellular life. (shrink)

This paper revisits the concept of “life” in the abortion debate by drawing an analogy between human fetuses and viruses. We set aside normative and theological considerations and adopt a scientifically Aristotelian approach to the factual question of what counts as a living being. Following Rosalind Hursthouse's wish to avoid metaphysical disputes about fetal status, we re-examine the biological and philosophical criteria for life in the light of Aristotle's theory of substances and contemporary definitions of autoteleonomy – self-sustaining, self-directing activity. (...) Modern biology excludes viruses from the category of life because they lack autonomous metabolism and depend entirely on host organisms for replication. Applying the same criterion consistently, fetuses in early and mid-stage gestation also fail to qualify as independent life forms: they do not regulate or sustain themselves but exist as dependent, parasitic systems within the pregnant body. To grant fetuses the status of life forms while denying it to viruses is therefore inconsistent on strictly biological grounds. We acknowledge that moral, emotional, or social considerations may still warrant treating fetuses as “lives” in symbolic or ethical senses, but such designations lie outside the scope of a biological classification. Our analysis concludes that, if viruses are excluded from the category of life because of parasitic dependence, consistency requires that fetuses be excluded on the same basis. (shrink)

Viruses have been virtually absent from philosophy of biology. In this editorial introduction, we explain why we think viruses are philosophically important. We focus on six issues, and we show how they relate to classic questions of philosophy of biology and even general philosophy.

Though viruses have generally been characterized by their pathogenic and more generally harmful effects, many examples of mutualistic viruses exist. Here I explain how the idea of mutualistic viruses has been defended in recent virology, and I explore four important conceptual and practical consequences of this idea. I ask to what extent this research modifies the way scientists might search for new viruses, our notion of how the host immune system interacts with microbes, the development of new therapeutic approaches, and, (...) finally, the role played by the criterion of autonomy in our understanding of living things. Overall, I suggest that the recognition of mutualistic viruses plays a major role in a wider ongoing revision of our conception of viruses. (shrink)

This article draws on Jacques Derrida’s and Roberto Esposito’s conceptualisations of the immunitarian paradigm to analyse the Slovenian crime novel _The Virus_. In the first part, we examine the links between neoliberalism and the rise of the Slovenian authoritarian state during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second part, we show that the neoliberal ethos is expressed in the figure of the self-serving and self-disciplined detective, in the nature of desocialised and privatised crime, and in the figure (...) of the self-righteous criminal. Although the actions of the detective and the criminal are autoimmunitarian, both function – paradoxically – as guardians of the common good by pursuing private interests. In the final section, we deconstruct the binary oppositions underlying the dual status of murdered victims, who are simultaneously criminally responsible and possess an unusual (non-heteronormative) or pathological sexual identity. (shrink)

Herbert, Dilinie The Zika virus has dominated the news media and captured the attention of the international community. Epidemic disease has become the mainstay of public health emergencies in our recent past with Ebola virus in West Africa and now Zika virus in Latin America. An unexpected and troubling feature of this current outbreak is the high incidence of birth defects and neurological health complications. As scientists investigate a possible causal link, health authorities as well as Catholic (...) Church leaders are involved in communicating how women and the wider community should make decisions about their health, reproduction and pregnancy. A morally appropriate, culturally sensitive and socially inclusive approach to managing the immanent risk should be the priority. (shrink)