Abstract
This paper examines the impact of the exceptional events of the 2020 pandemic and the government containment responses it triggered on two ethical issues that arose before the virus took its toll. These two questions - chosen among others - were those of the unity of the medical ethics and of the specific nature of the pharmacist's ethics. The answers to these questions were deeply changed in meaning and value after the events we experienced. When reality intrudes, it does not only change practices but it equally changes theory. The questions formerly asked continue to be asked, but a certain number of solutions have been discredited among those that we thought should be taken into account: a certain bureaucracy, in one case, to resolve illusory questions of ethical efficiency; a vague metaphysics of morals in the other, to believe that the distinction between a drug and a commodity can be fulfilled cheaply. A reading of Kierkegaard appeared to us like a salutary issue in the first case; whereas ethical and political research about pharmaceutical matters seemed to be absolutely urgent to our eyes, in the second case.