The Effects of Paternalistic Policies During COVID-19 on Vulnerable Populations

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Michelle Egeolu, Emory University; Benjamin Stoff, Emory University; Travis Blalock, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2021-06-01
• Publisher: NATL MED ASSOC
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnma.2020.11.013
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
• Volume: 113
• Issue: 3
• Start Page: 294
• End Page: 296
• Grant/Funding Information: None
• Keywords: Shelter in place; Medicine, General & Internal; COVID-19; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Diabetes; Stress; Paternalism; SOCIAL SUPPORT; Healthcare; General & Internal Medicine; Science & Technology
• Research Categories: Environmental Sciences; Health Sciences, Mental Health

Abstract

Amidst the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) pandemic, the United States has enacted utilitarian public health policies to mitigate the spread of cases and related deaths. Indeed, as of the 1905 Jacobson vs. Massachusetts court ruling, the US government possesses the authority to enact paternalistic laws that supersede individuals’ autonomy in order to protect both the individual citizens and the whole of the population from harm.1 Other countries have enacted similar directives.