Ethical Challenges of Public Administration During COVID

Lockdowns in the Bronx: A Public Administration Perspective

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a response from public administrators that was never seen before: a near global lockdown whose effects are still being felt in the economy, the healthcare system, in society, and in politics. A local examination of the situation in the Bronx, New York, reveals a story of contention between citizens of the borough and public administration which has been sued on multiple fronts for what has generally be described as COVID tyranny, consisting of businesses being shut down, vaccine mandates, jobs being lost, and so on. These lawsuits are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, dozens of NYC workers have filed a $250 million lawsuit to end COVID vaccine mandates: the lawsuit contends that “many of the fired employees — from the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Education, Department of Health and other agencies –worked for the city for over 20 years, still they were ‘thrown to the curb’ and callously terminated,’ the suit claims” (DeGregory, 2023). These are public worker grievances over the handling of the pandemic by the public administration. This is but one example of what the response to COVID has led to.

Other issues include a housing crisis that was already bad but was made worse by the COVID lockdowns—as reported: “in the Bronx, tenants who are not receiving rent relief may struggle for years to emerge from debt accumulated during the pandemic. Mercedes Escoto, 63, has not paid rent on her two-bedroom apartment in the High Bridge neighborhood since April 2020. As of October, she owed more than $43,000, according to a letter from her landlord, which had filed court papers seeking her eviction in May” (Barron, 2021). Escoto represents merely one of 26,000 renters who had been sued by their landlords by 2021 following the lockdowns (Barron, 2021).

Lockdowns were implemented swiftly and initially proposed for only a few weeks. That proposal was extended into what amounted to a months-long exercise of control over residents’ lives. Did public administration allow itself too much liberty in this respect? To what extent does a perceived common good run afoul of the individual’s personal liberty? Furthermore, what if the perceived common good is highly debatable and very controversial at best? This certainly characterizes the COVID lockdowns for its critics.

Background and Context

The Bronx is one of New York City's five boroughs and is home to a diverse population of over 1.4 million people. It is characterized by a vibrant and diverse culture, socioeconomic diversity, healthcare disparities, and high immigrant population. The Bronx has historically faced challenges in healthcare access, quality, and outcomes due to factors such as poverty, racial and ethnic diversity, and social determinants of health.

The Office of Comptroller (2021) reported on the demographics and unique situation of the Bronx with respect to COVID. The following points come directly from the website of the Office of the New York State Comptroller:

· More than 90 percent of Bronx residents are minority residents, a higher share than any other borough.

· From 2009 to 2019, private sector employment in the Bronx grew by 20 percent to reach 248,800 jobs.

· Prior to the pandemic, more than 70 percent of the Bronx work force worked in essential or face-to-face industries.

· Although the Bronx did not have the highest rate of COVID-19 cases among the City’s boroughs, outcomes in the Bronx were more severe, with the highest hospitalization and death rates.

· By the second quarter of 2020, employment had fallen by 18 percent in the Bronx compared to 2019, with unemployment peaking at nearly 25 percent in May 2020, the highest rate among all the boroughs.

· In the 2021 round of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a higher share of loan dollars in the Bronx went to first-time borrowers (30.8 percent) and to single-entity businesses (19.9 percent) than in any other borough.

· Feeding America estimated that 17.5 percent of Bronx residents suffered food insecurity in 2018 (Office of the New York State Comptroller, 2021).

Clearly, from these simple points alone one can see that the Bronx was adversely impacted by the lockdowns—and, moreover, that it was already in an underprivileged situation to begin with based on the fact that its residents are overwhelmingly minorities and immigrants. Did public administrators take into consideration their particular cultural needs and health concerns before implementing a lockdown policy that exacerbated conditions for them? Obviously, public administration has an ethical responsibility to serve its citizens—not to make their lives harder, more difficult, and more problematic. What happened?

Problem Statement

In brief, a lot happened. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a wave of fear and hysteria fueled by media coverage and political discourse. Rapid public health responses were called for, including strict lockdown measures that significantly impacted communities like the Bronx. Public administrators were tasked with implementing these measures and faced ethical dilemmas and pressures from external experts and politicians who, it should also be noted, had financial and political interests in the vaccine rollout and other pandemic-related decisions.

Research has shown that fear can be as significant a problem during a pandemic as the disease itself (Bagus et al., 2021; Karadimas, 2023). In their study, Jeong et al. (2024) explored how social media amplified fear and mass hysteria during the pandemic, indicating a gap in understanding how public administrators can prevent future mishandlings of public health crises in the now booming digital age of news information. Legacy media was always far more controlled and controllable than today’s social media. Social media's ability to rapidly disseminate information across the globe certainly presents both challenges for managing public perception and behavior during a pandemic.

The deviation from established pandemic protocols in favor of expert recommendations and the influence of media-driven narratives also raises critical questions about the role of public administrators in managing crises. Did public administrators do enough to control narratives and ensure evidence-based decision-making? Could social media have been better utilized to promote calm and reason rather than hysteria? These questions form the core of this research, which seeks to explore the ethical and practical dimensions of public administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Main Research Question

The primary research question guiding this dissertation is: How did public administration practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bronx deviate from standard established pandemic protocols? The secondary questions are these: Did public administrators in the Bronx contend with ethical quandaries regarding their implementation of lockdowns on this population? Did they carefully consider the ramifications of this public policy approach to what many have since called just another variant of the flu?[footnoteRef:1] [1: It should be noted that there is still disagreement about the danger represented to the general public by COVID. It remains a highly controversial and debatable subject—which only begs the greater question of why public administration acted with such total conviction in lockdowns in the Bronx.]

The ultimate heart of the research, however, will be to find answers to these questions, as already stated above: Did public administration allow itself too much liberty in this respect? To what extent does a perceived common good run afoul of the individual’s personal liberty? Furthermore, what if the perceived common good is highly debatable and very controversial at best?

Did public administrators take into consideration their particular cultural needs and health concerns before implementing a lockdown policy that exacerbated conditions for them?

Exactly what did happen and was it really wise?

The perspectives and experiences of public administrators in the Bronx will be highly educational in helping to have an answer to these questions.

It is important to get to the bottom of this insofar as is possible of a research project of this scope. The scope is this: to engage in exploratory, qualitative research to better understand just what happened with public administration in the Bronx during the COVID lockdowns. What did administrators know? What did they learn? What do they think looking back on the experience? Because I myself am a New Yorker and was present during the lockdown period, I am adopting a phenomenological approach to this research: I experienced the lockdowns with my own eyes; I saw how they affected others as well as myself. I work in the healthcare industry and thus had a front row view of the unfolding healthcare situation during the lockdowns in the Bronx. In this research, I will be applying my own experience to the question, as I incorporate the experiences of others—namely, individuals who worked in public administration at the time. My goal is to better understand this rather unique approach to the pandemic and to ascertain if it serves as an appropriate model for future reference, or if it serves better as an example of what not to do in the future.

Structure

This thesis proceeds in the following stages. First, is a literature review that covers the standard established protocols in public administration for pandemic response in urban areas. This establishes that precedent existed at the time for best practice in public administration with respect to how to handle a crisis like COVID.

The second focus in the literature review is the issue of factors that likely impacted the COVID situation, making it perhaps unique with respect to the role that digital media can now play in shaping narratives, spreading fear, and so on.

Following this is the discussion of the phenomenological methodology and its appropriateness for this research. The selection of the sample for interviews is described and the experience of the researcher, who was personally immersed in the setting for the duration of the period in question is also explained.

The last section is the findings and discussion section.

Literature Review

Pandemics are not new.

It has been pointed out that the COVID pandemic response was worsened by the problem of social media, narratives, hype, fear, and prejudice (Jeong et al., 2024).

Did social media make the COVID pandemic unique for public administrators? Despite established pandemic protocols, public administrators often ignored these guidelines in favor of external expert recommendations and political pressures amplified on social media (Karadimas, 2023).

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Bronx was already facing a number of disparities in terms of socio-economics, healthcare, education, and more. It was a community that needed considerable care and support in a situation like that of the pandemic. Surely, the field of public administration had standards for how to handle a situation like this without making everyone’s life worse for an extended period of time. What did the literature say on this point?

Established Pandemic Protocols: A Review

Before COVID-19, established protocols and guidelines were in place for managing pandemics. These guidelines, developed by organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and local health departments, provided a framework for pandemic preparedness and response. Key elements of these protocols included:

1. Preparedness and Planning: Comprehensive plans for pandemic preparedness emphasized surveillance, healthcare service delivery, infection control, and risk communication. It is worthwhile attending to this older literature pre-COVID because it provides a sense of what recommended guidance was in existences. These plans outlined strategies for resource allocation, healthcare capacity management, and communication with the public (Vaughn & Tinker, 2009).

2. Phased Response: Guidelines included phased response strategies to escalate measures based on the severity of the pandemic. These phases typically included surveillance, containment, mitigation, and recovery stages (World Health Organization, 2018).

3. Coordination and Collaboration: Protocols emphasized the importance of coordination among government agencies, healthcare providers, and community organizations to ensure a cohesive response. The establishment of an incident management system and a pandemic coordinator was recommended (Rosenthal & Kouzmin, 1997).

4. Community Mitigation: Strategies for community mitigation, such as social distancing, school closures, and canceling mass gatherings, were outlined in protocols. These measures were designed to reduce transmission while minimizing social and economic disruption (Stark et al., 2014).

5. Healthcare System Support: Guidelines addressed the need for surge capacity in healthcare facilities, stockpiling personal protective equipment (PPE), and supporting healthcare workers (World Health Organization, 2018).

6. Communication and Public Information: Transparent communication strategies were emphasized to inform the public and healthcare providers about the evolving situation and necessary actions (Stark et al., 2014).

Despite the existence of these protocols, the COVID-19 response in many regions, including the Bronx, often deviated from established guidelines. The reasons for these deviations are complex and multifaceted, involving political, economic, and social factors.

The Politics of Managing a Crisis

Public administration is not immune to political influence (Boin et al., 2005). Political influence runs through and through the various levels of public administration and ends up affecting decision-making processes, how resources are allocated, how and what policies advance and are implemented, and so on (Boin et al., 2005). During crises, political considerations often come to the forefront because political leaders have to look like they are doing something effective—but one problem is that they can also be beholden to stakeholders (like Big Pharma) who have a vested interest in certain policies being implemented (like vaccine mandates). Elected officials have to balance public safety with political objectives and public opinion while also contending with lobbies that influence their own political parties and ranks. This influence can manifest in several ways:

Political leaders often make policy decisions that guide public administration efforts. These decisions can be driven by political agendas, electoral considerations, and the need to demonstrate strong leadership. In some cases, political pressure may lead to the adoption of policies that deviate from established protocols or expert recommendations (Boin et al., 2005).

Politics can influence the distribution of resources, including funding, personnel, and equipment. During a crisis, political priorities may shape which areas or sectors receive more attention and support, potentially leading to disparities in response efforts. This influence can impact the ability of public administrators to effectively address the needs of all communities.

Political leaders often control crisis communication strategies, shaping the messages that are conveyed to the public. This control can affect the transparency and accuracy of information, as political considerations may lead to the dissemination of narratives that align with political goals rather than factual information (Boin et al., 2005).