Free Essay on Governing a State: Ethical Dilemmas and Legal Challenges

In the line of governing a state, the persons in authority are often faced with various issues that create a legal dilemma directly affecting the operations of the United States president and the federal government operations. The various ethical dilemmas that are highlighted in the process of governing a state revolve around the aspects of administrative secrecy and discretion, information leaks, nepotism, corruption, and public accountability. The United States president may appoint officials who may engage in the issues highlighted above.

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Public servants may be confronted by one of these problems and wonder whether they should keep quiet when there is evidence that public discretion has been committed. Additionally, there exist instances when a president may make the wrong call even though the juniors are of a different opinion. The juniors may not be in a position to undertake their activities in the right way due to the position assumed by their leader, and this triggers the occurrence of a legal, ethical dilemma.

When COVID-19 hit the world, some of the measures that the health officials have used to prevent the surge of the virus has been the wearing of masks. In the United States, the President was sceptical on whether the masks will be of any use, and believed that they would not bring an end to the spreading of the disease. The President being the senior-most citizen in the country, failing to wear masks was a symbolic gesture to people in the country, and it triggered a wave of division on partisan lines.

The health officials were calling for everyone to ensure that they have face masks when they are in public arena, and this was to ensure that the spreading is managed and social distancing is maintained, and this is an issue that the president was against. Despite the health officials and the president's advisors notifying the president that it was ethical to wear masks, the leader was not willing to take the heeding call. Therefore, the officers working under the president were left with no option but to ensure that they were also not wearing masks even though they knew that they were placing themselves at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

Even when they appeared in public with the president, the presence of their leader deterred them from covering their nose and mouth with a mask, for it would have appeared as a way of deviance. The move has made it impossible to manage the available resources in the country on matters regarding containment measures. The president has the responsibility of knowing how funds are used, and it is difficult for the health officials to convince the leader that there is a need to invest in the production of masks when the president does not believe that the tool is of any benefit.

According to “Ethical challenges arising in the COVID-19 pandemic: An overview from the association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) task force,” the pandemic has triggered various ethical challenges. Some of the ethical problems that are arising are the determination of whether the healthcare system in the United States should ration the healthcare resources that are scarce (McGuire et al., 2020). The policies that are used in the health care systems tend to vary based on the institutions, jurisprudence, and health systems. It is crucial to note that some of the states have uniform policies, while others lack the necessary guidelines on the measures to follow in managing such occurrences.

The regions that adopted the treatment policies ensure that the first-order consideration ensures that a patient is getting adequate treatment care by relying on the available resources and adhering to the measures initiated by the health ministry. The arising debate includes determining the clinical measures that should be used in the determination process and to the level that the clinical judgment can be made. Additionally, there exist disagreements on the other procedures that can be used in achieving the desired goals. It is critical to note that the use of masks is one of the programs that has been identified in the containment process (McGuire et al., 2020).

The federal government while working with the Ministry of health, is working on implementing the measures. However, the president of the United States initially failed to support the move, and this triggered a form of misunderstanding for the federal government officials, the ministry of health did not know whether to defer the president’s proclamations or rely on their knowledge and initiate the usage of masks in the entire nation.

The rising number of infections and deaths in the United States has placed the healthcare system at a point where they are unable to manage the pandemic effectively. Physicians and bioethicists have been working on policies and measures that will ensure that new programs are created, and the ones in existence are revised to ensure that they are getting to handle the prevailing situation. The federal government, in conjunction with the health ministry, is working on clinical consultation to ensure that there is the creation of an appropriate tool for the resource allocation process.

President Trump was not initially supporting the use of masks for the leader claimed that they were not offering any desired outcome in the fight against COVID-19. Therefore, it was challenging for the federal government to allocate funds to the production of masks. The scarce resource allocation process is mainly based on the elements that are highly likely to benefit from the allocation process. The allocation guidance relies on various clinical scoring systems with the adults making use of the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores while the children use the Paediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction (PELOD). These tools are used in the determination of the probability of short-term survival of a patient, and they help in the development of mortality predictions. They make use of biochemical and psychological metrics while attempting to avoid biases and stereotyping. The incorporation of metrics calls for the need to determine the various procedures that can be used in the management of an illness.

In the case of COVID-19 management in the United States, some of the measures are likely to be avoided, such as the need to use masks, for the president does not support the move. Therefore, the metrics that will be derived will not offer the right outcome meaning that the location of the limited resources available will not be effective. The federal government will find it difficult to apply these scoring systems for their outputs are not correct since when computing them, some of the data is not included (Mason & Friese, 2020).

The Ministry of health does not have the details on the effects of using masks in managing the pandemic, considering that the president is not supporting the move. Therefore, a significant section of society is highly likely to follow the president’s call and avoid masks. Health care officials face an ethical dilemma where they do not know whether they should follow the president’s directive or undertake their duties based on the necessary containment measures.

The legal dilemma that is facing the federal government can be explained by focusing on the various ethical theories and reasoning elements. Based on the Kantian Rights Theory, the decisions made by the president are creating a dilemma. A decision is said to be ethically justified when it is passed considering other people’s rights. The president has not been considering the public needs when proclaiming that masks are irrelevant in the fight against the COVID-19 in the United States.

Every individual has a right to receive information that is true to enable them to make the right decision in the working process and make it easier to manage ethical conflict. The inability of the president to provide information that was critical to the survival of the public led to a lie by omission and the fact that the leader is the most powerful person in the world, his actions are likely to trigger a wave of legal dilemma (Tanne et al., 2020). A significant number of people have been calling on the president to ensure that he is leading the nation in the right way in a move to weaken the spread of COVID-19.

The leader’s insensitivity nature to the matter at hand is an issue that many people were predicting that it will derail the president’s ability to compete in the coming general elections in the country. The fact that the leader was going against the information given by the advisors and the position of the federal government, the country was at a tricky position, and this may explain why the United States is deeply affected by the problem. It is clear that the legal, ethical dilemma was significant for a large number of deaths led the president to change his stances of mask-wearing, and he is currently supporting the move by the health care officials on wearing masks.

The president has for a long time misled the public in believing that he has handled the issue of virus in the right manner. He is making the public think that he is acting with based on their interest while in the real sense, there is an element of personal interest and lack of accountability on the part of the leader. When the country was initially hit by the virus, the leader used to recommend the use of therapeutics or treatment processes that included the use of Hydroxychloroquine, and a dilemma was noted in this case of the Food and Drug Administration stated that the use of these treatment processes is harmful to the human body.

Conclusion

The contradictory statements among the various organs in the United States that the public waited for guidance from them created an ethical conflict that has significantly led to the deterioration of health status in the country. Therefore, this legal dilemma is causing the president of the United States and the federal government and it is an issue that should never be again in the future. The life of a human being is precious and decisions made regarding it should be carefully managed to ensure that the desired outcome is realised.

References

Mason, D. J., & Friese, C. R. (2020, March). Protecting health care workers against COVID-19—and being prepared for future pandemics. In JAMA Health Forum (Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. e200353-e200353). American Medical Association. https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/2763478Mc

Guire, A. L., Aulisio, M. P., Davis, F. D., Erwin, C., Harter, T. D., Jagsi, R., ... & Wynia, M. (2020). Ethical challenges arising in the COVID-19 pandemic: An overview from the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) task force. The American Journal of Bioethics, 1-13. https://doi: 10.1080/15265161.2020.1764138

Tanne, J. H., Hayasaki, E., Zastrow, M., Pulla, P., Smith, P., & Rada, A. G. (2020). Covid-19: how doctors and healthcare systems are tackling coronavirus worldwide. Bmj, 368. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1090