The persuasion of vaccine allocation models during Covid-19. Rhetoric, ethics and science

Abstract

The swift development of effective vaccines against the new coronavirus was an unprecedented scientific achievement. In this paper, we discuss what models have been proposed for distributing vaccines locally and globally through the application of Aristotelian rhetoric. This discussion, therefore, focuses on a specific question: how are the different models of vaccine administration and distribution justified on an ethical-argumentative level? This report also examines what has come to be known as “vaccine nationalism” through the lens of the early experience with the COVID- 19 vaccination process. To this end, this report proceeds as follows: Section I explains the rhetorical method applied to ethical principles, and Section II explains the chosen criteria for the analysis. Section III looks at the Fair Priority Model; Section IV examines the COVAX and GAVI model; Section V presents the weighted lottery model. Section VI proposes a summary table of the analysis of the proposed models and Section VII focuses on the ethical problem of vaccine nationalism and its implications in relation to the models, that were taken into consideration during the previous sections. Section VIII offers brief conclusions; solidarity conceived as an argument of reciprocity should be, according to this analysis, the guiding value to address ethical problems in the area of resource allocation.