Morality and COVID-19: Abortion in the Shadows of Coronavirus and its Challenge for Moral Stances

 The issue of morality tends to be overlooked in the shadow of COVID-19 as people necessarily focus on the urgent issues of preventing infection, treating the sick, and finding a cure, while protecting the social order and economic well being of society.  And yet it would be a mistake to detach issues of morality from the way that society confronts the challenge of COVID-19.  More importantly, there is a necessary moral element when, in the shadow of the COVID-19, political and other actors seek to advance objectives that are not directly related to the fight against COVID-19.  

This post focuses on the way that morality, and moral thinking, becomes a necessary element in the way that it may be necessary element of the accountability of our institutional and political leaders.   The illustrative case centers on abortion regulation in the shadow of COVID-19.

Automated Law and COVID-19: Data Driven Measures With National Characteristics In China and Israel and the Future of the Law-Governance Complex

(Pix credit:支付宝健康码7天落地超100城 数字化防疫跑出“中国速度” )

Pix Credit HERE

It should come as no surprise that the COVID-19 pandemic would generate responses by states, entities and other actors with governance (and self-governance) authority.  Such responses, in turn, provide a window about the state of the mechanics of governance among these communities.  More specifically, it also provides a window on the evolving alignments between the command functions of law and the implementation functions of data driven governance. 

Pix Credit here

We have already considered the character of that relationship (and its alignments) in the case of Taiwan (Data Driven Management of COVID-19: The Case of Taiwan).  This post briefly describes some of these alignments (with national characteristics) of other states, with particular focus on China and Israel, as well as the way in which COVID-19 behavior standards enforcement furthers the development of data driven governance measures in each state. Brief consideration of data driven COVID-19 related measures are reported for Spain, South Korea, Singapore, India, Poland, U.K., Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Iran, and Russia.

For those interested in the official discourse at the international level, the WHO site, Country & Technical Guidance - Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), might be of some interest.

Origin Stories and COVID-19: The Value of Stories of the Lab Created Origins of COVID-19

Origin stories (here, here, here, and here) have always been important in the organization and disciplining of human society.  In many cases they serve to construct and differentiate one community form another.  They also tend to embed the core founding ideological premises that define a society as autonomous and distinguishable from another.  In periods of great convergence--which was the essential marker of globalization in its first phase (1945-2016)--such origin stories diminish in importance as a border of autonomy and serve more as a distinguishing element of "voice" by a community participating in the greater communities of peoples all engaged in the development of common positions and consensus. 

Conversely, where fracture becomes a political or cultural ideal, origin stories become a critical element in enhancing detachment.  That detachment is inherent in a political project that is grounded on enhancing the identity between communal autonomy (peoplehood) and the erection of borders. This is the positive and normative objective of origin stories. These are almost always bound up in stories of the creation of the world--with world understood as the space within which a self referencing community comes to know itself and its place within the space allotted to it. 

As important, origin stories might also serve as part of a moral project,   or they serve to develop not just the identity of the community (as the "other" in a world of communities) but to situate that "otherness" within a spectrum of moral values in which the community itself is identified with the incarnation of the"good" the goodness of which can be measured against the incarnation of its opposite. The remnants of post Temple Jewish communities as the bad end of the moral spectrum in which the community of Christians occupied the idealized space of the good at the time both were competing around the Mediterranean for control of the narrative of the "true" post-Temple Jewish faith, is an excellent example.

Origin stories of both types continue to serve politics in the 21st century (though the stakes are far more pathetic and they tend to resemble the court intrigues of Ming era eunuch politics, or those of the Ancien Regime aristocratic court). Especially potent are those origin stories that serve a moral purpose--that is that reinforce the notion of the "goodness" of a community measured against the "evil" of another. It appears that the officials who occupy middling positions within the self reflexive bureaucracies of powerful states appear unable to resist the temptation to use origin stories--especially origin stories with a moral element--in the hurley burley of political competition in the middle of a global crisis.

The recent distraction, coming in equal measure form Beijing and Washington, and fanned by the hangers on (academic, press, and others) who seek personal advantage through the deployment of these cultural tropes irrespective of the greater damage they may do to their respective governments and without a care for the way they betray the fundamental political principles of their respective systems, have taken up a certain substantial amount of time from the primary task of meeting the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

I do not refer to the childish diversion of the origins name of the disease (here, here, and here) with respect to which I will waste no more space than this.  Rather I speak to the much more potent, and derivative, battle that followed the conflict over "names" and evolving as if taken from the text of a third rate novella, of the assertion that COVID-19  was manufactured either in a Chinese or a US lab, and from there released onto the world (here, here, here, and here, but see here).  Here one has a powerful example of a morally driven origin story, the object of which is to buttress the unstated but underlying notion that two distinct communities exist, and that in nice Manichean style, one represents (and defines the "good" and the other--not so much. Here one references the origins of COVID-19 as a metaphor for the moral condition of the two societies.

That battle and its political ramifications (for geo-politics, for the control of the narrative of the pandemic, for the use of the pandemic as affirmation of political or cultural legitimacy, etc. e.g., here,  here) if fairly uninteresting, except for those in the business of managing story lines for specific objectives.  But their is neither subtlety nor deep value in that exercise--except among technicians.  It is not for nothing, then, that the Press and social media, apparently with little other news to report, has been cultivating this tempest in a teapot in a sort of ironic complicity with the propaganda departments of the combatants.

This post, instead considers an eddy in these politics that ought to be of more interest and greater value.  I refer the extraordinary efforts, by the American press to manufacture a rift within the Chinese administrator class respecting either the value of pressing the "US labs created COVID-19" line or its validity. As reported by Bloomberg:

An unusual public spat between two top Chinese diplomats points to an internal split in Beijing over how to handle rising tensions with a combative U.S. president. The differences spilled into public view Monday after China’s ambassador to the U.S. reaffirmed his opposition to promoting theories that the virus that causes Covid-19 originated in an American military lab. Ambassador Cui Tiankai said in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that he stood by his Feb. 9 statement that it would be “crazy” to spread such theories, even though a foreign ministry spokesman has repeatedly floated the idea on Twitter in recent weeks. (Spat Between China Diplomats Signals Internal Split Over Trump)

What makes this story interesting--at least from the context of the West where it is getting some play--centers on the way in which an origin story can be used to invert the trajectory of morality.  What is attempted here is to manufacture conflict within the story-telling community, and then to turn that into a story of the origin of weakness in the storytelling country.   That is, in this case, the origin story coming from certain sectors of the Chinese bureaucracy (e.g., that the US produced and released COVD-19 (e.g., here))  because it is publicly contested either evidences a rift within the ruling collective (e.g., here) or suggests contention over the forms and manifestation of foreign policy (here) that evidences the weakness of the ruling collective and immorality of the story.

And yet it is not entirely clear that their either is a rift, or that the disagreement is merely a quite elegant effort to manage response among the masses int he US. The origin story in China remains as vibrant as ever for the consumption of Chinese mass opinion.  But that is its function as a moral value origin story. On the other hand, its utility when projected toward the object of constructed evil is more problematic.  Thus, the decision for the Chinese Ambassador to the US to grant an interview, and to grant it to Axios ("we’ve engineered Axios around a simple proposition — deliver the clearest, smartest, most efficient and trustworthy experience for audience and advertisers alike"), takes on a quite distinct hue.

In a rare interview, China's ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, told "Axios on HBO" that he stands by his belief that it's "crazy" to spread rumors about the coronavirus originating from a military laboratory in the United States. Why it matters: Cui called this exact conspiracy theory "crazy" more than a month ago on CBS' "Face the Nation." But that was before the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, began publicly promoting the conspiracy. (Top Chinese official disowns U.S. military lab coronavirus conspiracy)

 But you decide for yourselves. . . . and not by reading the manipulative "highlights" version of the encounter. The entire CBS-Axios interview may be accessed here .

Dogs and COVID-19: An Emerging Tragedy Born of Fear?

(Pix Credit: The History of Dogs as Pets)

The coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has necessarily focused on its transmission, strategies for its containment, strategies for its eventual eradication, and the human tragedy generated during its course. Those tragedies center on human suffering and death for those who have fallen victim to the disease along with their loved ones, as well as the economic, social, and economic repercussions of a pandemic the magnitude of which was underestimated.

But solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris (Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1604) (misery loves company; Mephistopheles' answer to Fautus, who asks why Satan seeks to enlarge his kingdom with sinners)).

Over the last several months there have been investigations about the transmission of COVID-19 from humans to dogs. . . . and of course, from dogs back to humans. 

This mirrors the earlier debate, unresolved, about the origins of COVD-19 in some sort of wild animal--with the usual focus on bats. (Bats are not to blame for coronavirus. Humans are ("Reclusive, nocturnal, numerous -- bats are a possible source of the coronavirus. Yet some scientists concur they are not to blame for the transfer of the disease that's changing daily life -- humans are. Zoologists and disease experts have told CNN that changes to human behavior -- the destruction of natural habitats, coupled with the huge number of fast-moving people now on Earth -- has enabled diseases that were once locked away in nature to cross into people fast.")).

The possibility of human infection of dogs, however, has created a space for tragedy. Having gone to the trouble to infect dogs, humans now appear potentially ready to abandon the dogs they have infected.--and those who might become infected. This has caused some worry among those who worry about such things.  In the process it has given rise to a fear that people will abandon dogs (and perhaps cats as well). This will create the potential for an additional challenge to public authorities at precisely the moment when public bodies may be least capable of effectively responding. 

Authorities face multiple issues: (1) can dogs (or cats) be infected with COVID-19?; (2) can they get sick?; (3) can they pass COVID-19 back to humans?; (4) what sort of contact is necessary to pass COVID-19 back to humans?; (5) can animals pass COVID-19 to each other (thus requiring containment and segregation in multiple dog households?; (6) should high risk humans dispose of their dogs?; (7) ought infected dogs to be euthanized even if they are otherwise healthy and loving and of no other threat to humans as a mitigation measure?; (8) to what extent are mitigation and containment strategies that cause pain or harm to dogs in the circumstances of their relation COVID-19 in breach of core premises of human dignity applied to the space within which individuals engage; and (9) how do animals cruelty laws (and the human norms and principles on which they are grounded) implicated where decisions are made to euthanize or abandon dogs out of fear of COVID-19?  

These questions have yet to be fully considered.  The possibility of cruelty on a large scale cannot be ignored--it is as great as the capacity of human communities to allow fear to excuse inhumane actions (for which regret after the fact provides small comfort).  Some of the issues, confusions,  and the limited state of knowledge are nicely summarized in recent reporting--Second dog tests positive for coronavirus as owners warned not to abandon pets (Market Watch 21 March 2020)--portions of which are reproduced below .

今日晚间，国家监委调查组发布关于群众反映的涉及李文亮医生有关情况调查的通报。[Tonight, the investigation team of the State Supervision Commission released a report on the investigation of the situation involving Dr. Li Wenliang, which was reported by the masses.]

At the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, in the Chinese city of Wuhan, an important site of pandemic origin, Dr. Li Wenliang, who himself died of complications from COVID-19, became the center of a substantial controversy over the way the authorities responded to his efforts.

The controversy was significant enough that the Chinese central authorities designated a team from the State Supervision Commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dr. Li's treatment, and ultimately, his death.  The State Supervision Commission has recently released its report, the text of which has been made available.  Perhaps of greatest interest extracted frm the report is tis:

Li Wenliang forwarded and released related information, subjectively wanted to remind classmates and colleagues to pay attention to precautions. After a large amount of information was forwarded, it aroused social attention. Objectively, it played a role in promoting attention to the epidemic in various aspects and strengthening prevention and control. On March 4, 2020, the National Health Commission and other departments issued a decision to commend advanced individuals in the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in the national health system. Dr. Li Wenliang is one of them. [李文亮转发、发布相关信息，主观上是想提醒同学、同事注意防范，信息被大量转发后引发社会关注，客观上对各方面重视疫情、加强防控起到了推动作用。2020年3月4日，国家卫健委等部门印发决定，表彰全国卫生健康系统新冠肺炎疫情防控工作先进个人，李文亮医生是其中之一，这正是对李文亮医生工作的肯定和表彰。]

The text of that report, as distributed --7问李文亮事件：训诫是否合法，抢救是否全力，是否曾遭报复 [Li Wenliang Incident: Was the official admonition legal, was the rescue effort cmprehensive, and was there retaliation]--It follows below, without comment, in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation.  Also below the shorter official report circulating on official websites: 关于群众反映的涉及李文亮医生有关情况调查的通报[Report on the investigation of the situation related to Dr. Li Wenliang by the masses].

POSTPONED to 17 APRIL 2020--Coronavirus and International Affairs Roundtable

It is with mixed feelings that the organizers of the Roundtable Conference: Coronavirus and International Affairs, originally scheduled for 20 March 2020 to be held at Pennsylvania State University, must announce that the Roundtable Conference will be POSTPONED to FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2020 and re-organized in a new format as a wholly online event.


Public health concerns, and the rapidly evolving situation in the United States now makes any other decision reckless. In making this decision, we were motivated primarily by concerns for the health and safety of our participants, but also of our audience. Physical meetings have been substantially curtailed and those in the university have been effectively forbidden in the near term. The organizers seek to comply with all measures that further the objectives of safety and of the efforts to minimize the spread of the disease.

We delayed because we were reluctant to cancel the event in the face of the overwhelming health and safety concerns, and sought to find a way to quickly transform the event from one with a potentially substantial physical presence to one that could be held wholly online. We were unsuccessful given the time constraints we faced. Moreover, we were reluctant to seek to burden the university with these issues out of a concern that its resources are now given, and quite correctly, to our teaching and administrative responsibilities. I also became clear that online alternatives will take some time to arrange and to publicize.

At the same time, the possibility of pursuing an online alternative militated against cancellation and convinced us that we would do more good postponing and re-shaping rather than canceling the event. Indeed, that re-scheduling and transformation if the event could itself provide additional topics for discussion about the world of academic discourse and knowledge production within and among universities in the post-COVID-19 world. Thus, the pandemic itself suggests both the importance of the topic, and the ways that it is changing the way that organized human activity is being transformed. In that context working hard to change the format of the event to suit the times might itself serve as one of the more important elements of the Conference Roundtable.

We appreciate the support of those interested in this event. We are grateful for your patience and flexibility. Over the next week we will distribute more information with specifics about the POSTPONED EVENT. We hope to be able to organize the postponed event with some form of interactive participatory elements within the parameters and limitations of an online event, one that may not be simulcast.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR 17 APRIL 2020. If possible we will simulcast from 9.30 am (U.S. East Coast Time) through 12.30 PM. If not were will hold the event remotely at that time and then immediately post the recording line. We hope as well to be able to gather your questions, inputs, statements and opinions and share them during the course of the Event. The website for the Conference Roundtable remains unchanged: https://www.thecpe.org/projects/education-projects/roundtable-coronavirus-and-international-affairs/.

Stay tuned!

Final Version of HR 6201 as Signed by President Trump: "Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020"

In Multiplici miraculo Deus gloriosum--The Text of HR 6201, “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” in the Wake of the Declaration of National Emergency we  posted the draft text of the "Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020."  Since then the Senate has passed and the President has signed  a final version of the Act.

"Trump's support for the House measure cleared the way for a broad, bipartisan vote in the House at the end of last week. The House later approved a set of changes to the legislation on Monday, clearing the path for the Senate to consider it, which scaled back their efforts to offer millions of Americans paid sick and family leave. The revised legislation would still provide many workers with up to two weeks of paid sick leave if they are being tested or treated for coronavirus or have been diagnosed with it. Also eligible would be those who have been told by a doctor or government official to stay home because of exposure or symptoms. Under the revised bill, however, those payments would be capped at $511 a day, roughly what someone making $133,000 earns annually. The original measure called for workers to receive their full pay but limited federal reimbursement to employers to that amount.Workers with family members affected by coronavirus and those whose children's schools have closed would still receive up to two-thirds of their pay, though that benefit would now be limited to $200 a day." (President Trump signs 'Families First Coronavirus Response Act' into law)

The enrolled version of the "Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020" follows below for those who might find it difficult to access online. Otherwise the text may be accessed here.  PDF version available HERE. In addition, Squire Patton Boggs has produced a useful summary (available HERE) and also below.

Additional aid to the private sector is also forthcoming, though it may be more contentious.  Stay tuned.  See, "Republicans get ready to unveil Senate's $1 trillion coronavirus bailout and start talks with Democrats as Chuck Schumer warns he wants guarantees that firms saved by government avoid layoffs and keep paying salaries," Daily Mail 19 March 2020.

Mehr News Agency Interview: "COVID-19 revealing little parts of fundamental shifting of global ordering: Prof. Larry Backer"

It was my great honor to have been asked by Payman Yazdani for an opinion essay that sought to reflect on the question: what was the the most significant development in international arena during the last 12 months? The interview with Mr. Yazdani has just been published by the Mehr News Agency as "COVID-19 revealing little parts of fundamental shifting of global ordering." 

 It may be accessed by clicking on the link above and is set out below.

Pavel Vidal: "Analysis: Coronavirus to Deliver a Blow to Cuban Tourism"

I have written about the effects of COVID-19 on Cuba.  The effects, of course,  has been centered on one of the crown jewels of Cuban economic planning, the tourism sector.  It was tourists (from Italy) that brought COVID-19 to Cuba with them; and it was travel to Italy that brought introduced an indigenous element of COVID-19 transmission (COVID-19 in Cuba: The Current State of Affairs).

I am delighted to pass along the insightful analysis of Pavel Vidal who delves more deeply into the connection between the global course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Cuban tourist sector.  The issue is particularly acute because of the centrality of tourism to Cuban economic planning. The essay is well worth reading not merely for its implications for Cuba.  Rather, the analysis is useful as a template for the hard choices that many states will have to make in the middle and lower reaches of  global production chains.  The analysis suggests hardship--Cuba projects well above its weight despite its adherence to Soviet style central planning models.  For states that are in a more preliminary (and precarious) state of development the prognosis may be more negative. 

Professor Vidal specializes in macroeconomics and monetary policy. Since 2012 he lives in Colombia and works as a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. He served as a visiting researcher at Harvard University, Columbia University, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and the Institute for Developing Economies (Japan External Trade Organization). He has been a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, UNDP and Banco de la República de Colombia. He received training from many central banks in Latin America (1999-2006). One of his expertise is the time series econometric models to develop forecasts and estimate economic indexes. He was professor of the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana (2006-2012) and worked in the Monetary Policy Division of the Central Bank of Cuba (1999-2006). 

The essay follows.It first appeared in  Cuba Standard Monthly

The Convergence of Economics, Politics, and Health as Globalization Moves into its New Era: 16 March 2020 G7 Leader's Statement

(Pix credit: G7 leaders issue statement acknowledging COVID-19 as 'human tragedy')

By now it has become clear that  COVID-19 is not another simple epidemic with respect to which health professionals occupy a central space.  Instead, and for reasons that will be teased out over the course of the next several months, COVID-19 has metastasized from a crisis of the health establishments, to one that, in its own way, has begun to copy the more comprehensive scope of the 2007 economic collapse. 

To speak to COVIS-19 as a mere health crisis no longer really reflects the reality of the crisis.  It has become, in its own way, a crisis of globalization.  More than the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, or the economic collapse of 2006, the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic will prove to be the space within which the strength of globalization, and of its institutions--meticulously developed over the last seventy years--will be tested.  

What is becoming clear, through the fog of policy and panic--as well as of the herd instinct that characterizes and diminishes value the administrative cultures on which human society now relies for its collective protection--what is becoming clear, is that COVID-19 is quickly becoming a space for the transformations of social, political, and economic space will occur.  Those transformations might not have been inevitable.  And yet that inevitability may well be built into the bones of the cultures of administration that have now come to characterize the apparatus of both public and private institutions.  Those cultures deepen as the basic premises of human organization--in Marxist-Leninist, liberal democratic, and theocratic systems--continue to align with respect to the ideal of the individual in the shadow of the state, and of the institution. 

None of this is a criticism of events or decisions.  How, effectively or reasonably, can one actually critique the inevitable?  One seeks ot understand it; one might regret the decisions made, now a generation or more ago, which made these trajectories unavoidable.  What is useful now is the extraction of the premises and habist of the new inevtable so that one can have a better sense of the way in which societies will manifest the arrangements within which order is maintained, resources allocated, and the individual embedded within insttituional frameworks. That is thw work that waits the end ogf the epidemic (in its current phase).

The G7 has provided us with hints about the trajectories for the movement forward.  The version, of course, is that of liberal democracy. The Marxist-Leninist and theocratic versions will be slightly different (with respect to language, cultural referent, and sources of authority, to be sure).  But they all point in the same direction.  

The G7 Leaders' Statement, distributed 16 March 2020 follows. It nicely conflates health, economic and political  policies, even as it seeks to manage the fundamental of globalization as the ordering framework within which crises like COVID-19 will be managed, and int he process society transformed.  To see into the future, then, one ought to quite carefully read the G7 statement.  Careful reading requires that one does not dismiss the Statement as propaganda, nor as sloganeering, and certainly not as bathos (though the temptation with respect to the last is almost overwhelming). Rather, the G7 Statement provides a sort of coded language of fear. Here one encounters fear: fear of instability, fear of a reversal of the trajectory of human progress, fear of the ability of institutions (including the state) to deliver a better life to its people in exchange for obedience and conformity, fear of anarchy (of order without a center), and fear of the reverse of a string center without order.

The conflation of the health of labor, and the development of productive forces, across global production chains, may appear to require the re-emergence of the state, not in and for itself, but as the institutional mechanism through which labor health is protected for the ultimate protection of global production chains (and thus, more indirectly, the welfare of labor whose welfare is a necessary predicate for the operation of the system as economics, as politics, and as culture. The "human tragedy" to which the G7 statement references, is not merely that of the loss of life--a bad enough consequence-, but rather its threat to the ways of life within which even the great powers now compete, that will be the most unsettling effect of this pandemic.