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For most people living in Germany today, the COVID-19 pandemic has probably been the most profound personal experience of a crisis situation affecting all of society. The rapid global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2020 has shaken our confidence in the predictability of life and confronted each and everyone of us with the vulnerability and finite nature of existence.
In every phase of the pandemic emergency, which lasted until 2023, political decisions had to be made in the interest of public health that required genuine ethical reflection. The German Ethics Council has tried to cover the changing acute needs for advice, at times explicitly expressed by politicians, by issuing a series of shorter Ad Hoc Recommendations and organising a number of events. Among others, ethical criteria were developed to support prioritisation decisions, for example triage situations in the allocation of scarce intensive care resources or of vaccines, but also to substantiate the balancing of competing interests such as between individual liberties and the requirements of public health.
In a comprehensive Opinion entitled “Vulnerability and Resilience in the Crisis – Ethical Criteria for Decision-Making in a Pandemic”, the German Ethics Council analysed in 2022 the experiences gained in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and formulated recommendations for the future handling of pandemics. In the normative part of the Opinion, some of the criteria that the Ethics Council has already applied in its more concise publications on specific ethical issues are explained in more detail.
