Public attitudes toward allocating scarce resources in the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: The general public is subject to triage policies that allocate scarce lifesaving resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the worst public health emergencies in the past 100 years. However, public attitudes toward ethical principles underlying triage policies used during this pandemic are not well understood. Three experiments (preregistered; online samples; N = 1,868; U.S. residents) assessed attitudes toward ethical principles underlying triage policies. The experiments evaluated assessments of utilitarian, egalitarian, prioritizing the worst-off, and social usefulness principles in conditions arising during the COVID-19 pandemic, involving resource scarcity, resource reallocation, and bias in resource allocation toward at-risk groups, such as the elderly or people of color. We fou

SUBMITTER: Buckwalter W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7641460 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature