While the world was facing a rapidly progressing COVID-19 second wave, a policy paradox emerged. On the one side, much more was known by Autumn 2020 about the mechanisms underpinning the spread and lethality of Sars-CoV-2. On the other side, how such knowledge should be translated by policymakers into containment measures appeared to be much more controversial and debated than during the first wave in Spring. Value-laden, conflicting views in the scientific community emerged about both problem definition and subsequent solutions surrounding the epidemiological emergency, which underlined that the COVID-19 global crisis had evolved towards a full-fledged policy “wicked problem”. With the aim to make sense of the seemingly paradoxical scientific disagreement around COVID-19 public health policies, we offer an ethical analysis of the scientific views encapsulated in the Great Barrington Declaration and of the John Snow Memorandum, two scientific petitions that appeared in October 2020. We show that how evidence is interpreted and translated into polar opposite advice with respect to COVID-19 containment policies depends on a different ethical compass that leads to different prioritization decisions of ethical values and societal goals. We then highlight the need for a situated approach to public health policy, which recognizes that policies are necessarily value-laden, and need to be sensitive to context-specific and historic socio-cultural and socio-economic nuances.

虽然世界正面临着快速发展的 COVID-19 第二波浪潮，但出现了一个政策悖论。一方面，到 2020 年秋季，人们对支持 Sars-CoV-2 传播和致死性的机制有了更多了解。另一方面，政策制定者应如何将这些知识转化为遏制措施似乎比春季第一波期间更具争议性和争论性。围绕流行病学紧急情况的问题定义和随后的解决方案出现了科学界充满价值、相互矛盾的观点，这强调了 COVID-19 全球危机已经演变成一个成熟的政策“邪恶问题””。为了理解围绕 COVID-19 公共卫生政策看似自相矛盾的科学分歧，我们对 2020 年 10 月出现的两份科学请愿书《大巴林顿宣言》和《约翰·斯诺备忘录》中包含的科学观点进行了伦理分析. 我们表明，如何解释证据并将其转化为关于 COVID-19 遏制政策的截然相反的建议取决于不同的道德指南针，这导致道德价值观和社会目标的不同优先级决策。然后，我们强调需要对公共卫生政策采取一种情境化的方法，该方法认识到政策必然具有价值，并且需要对特定背景和历史的社会文化和社会经济细微差别敏感。