Uncertainty, scarcity and transparency: Public health ethics and risk communication in a pandemic.

Communicating public health guidance is key to mitigating risk during disasters and outbreaks, and ethical guidance on communication emphasizes being fully transparent. Yet, communication during the pandemic has sometimes been fraught, due in part to practical and conceptual challenges around being transparent. A particular challenge has arisen when there was both evolving scientific knowledge on COVID-19 and reticence to acknowledge that resource scarcity concerns were influencing public health recommendations.