Symposium videos – The Social Impacts of Long COVID

‘The Social Impacts of Long COVID’ online symposium I convened was held on 5 March 2024. It featured presentations from Mexico, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand.

The videos of the 18 presentations in two sessions (nine presentations in Session 1, nine in Session 2) can be found on YouTube for viewing: Session 1 here and Session 2 here.

The list of presentations is below:

Session 1:

• Long COVID and the (mis)uses of restitution narrative: Mark D M Davis, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
• The long haul: contested histories of Long COVID and ME/CFS in Australia: Kathy Anderson, University of Sydney, Australia
• Australian experiences of socially and politically mediated determinants of health equity following COVID-19 infection: Danielle Hitch, Sara Holton, Bec Downing, Krishna Vakil, Catherine Bennett, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
• Long COVID in The Conversation – the role of an academic journalism publication in media coverage: Lawrie Zion, Kate Stodart, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
• Unveiling the socio-health effects of long COVID in adult population in Northwest Mexico: Marisol Grijalva-Castro, Juana María Meléndez Torres, Research Centre in Food & Development, Hermosillo Sonora, México
• The profound impact of long COVID on societal structures: governmental non-intervention and the role of social determinants of health: Pantéa Javidan, Stanford University, San Francisco, USA
• The economic burden of long COVID in the United States: evidence from the panel study of income dynamics: Matt Mazewski, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA
• The debilitating discourses of long COVID: the public pedagogies of sporting bodies: Matt Ventresca, Georgia Institute of Technology/Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, Mary McDonald, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
• We will not be silent: patients speak out about the role of epistemic injustice in erasing evidence of Long COVID in Australia: Pippa Yeoman, University of Sydney, and member of the Australia Long COVID Community, Robin Austin, member of the Australia Long COVID Community, Su Mon Kyaw-Myint, member of the Australia Long COVID Community, Kirsty Yeates, Australian National University, Canberra, member of the Australia Long COVID Community, Ruth Newport, administrator of the Australia Long COVID Community, Australia

Session 2:

• The Double-Bind: long COVID and the experience of cultural forgetting: Mary Zournazi, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• A qualitative account of psychological adaptation in long COVID: Joanne Wrench, Austin Health, University of Melbourne, Jacquie Eyres, Austin Health, University of Melbourne, Kerrie Clarke, Austin Health, University of Melbourne, Centre for Mental Health Learning, Victoria, Genevieve Rayner, Centre for Mental Health Learning, Victoria, Australia
• Validating long COVID with data: self-tracking experiences and practices: Sazana Jayadeva, University of Surrey, UK, Deborah Lupton, UNSW Sydney, Australia
• Living with the virus: an autoethnography of the traumatic experience of long COVID: Vivienne Matthies-Boon, Radboud University, the Netherlands
• Establishing a Long COVID Registry – early results and future research avenues: Paula Lorgelly, University of Auckland, Jenene Crossan, Experience & Long COVID Support Aotearoa, Andrew McCullough, University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand
• “This isn’t a life”: an analysis of HRQoL in a cohort of individuals with long COVID symptoms: Paula Lorgelly, University of Auckland, Jenene Crossan, Experience & Long COVID Support Aotearoa, Andrew McCullough, University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand
• Medical ambivalence and long COVID: the disconnects, entanglements, and productivities shaping ethnic minority experiences in the UK: Damien Ridge, University of Westminster, London, UK, Alex Broom, University of Sydney, Australia, Nisreen A. Alwan, University of Southampton, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, UK, Carolyn A. Chew-Graham, Keele University, UK, Nina Smyth, University of Westminster, London, UK, Dipesh Gopal, Queen Mary University of London, UK, Tom Kingstone, Keele University, UK, Patrycia Gaszczyk, University College London, UK, Samina Begum, University of Westminster, London, UK
• Long COVID Times: An X (Twitter) informed rhythmanalysis of the complexity of pacing in chronic illness: Sam Martin, UCL/Oxford, Emma Uprichard, University of Warwick, UK
• Long COVID consultations between medical clinics and modern healing rituals: a case study in Switzerland: Marjolaine Viret, Francesco Panese, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

The Social Impacts of Long COVID Symposium – registration now open

The Social Impacts of Long COVID online symposium is taking place on 5 March, with 18 presentations spread across two sessions – one in the morning, one in the evening (Australian Eastern Standard Time). The program has been organised to best fit the time zones of presenters, who hail from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the USA, the UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Several presentations involve co-authors who have lived experience of Long COVID.

Registration is free and open to all. Details are here, including list of papers and presenters.

Make conferences COVID safe

Throughout the COVID pandemic, I have been an advocate for ensuring the events held by universities, including conferences, seminars and talks open to the general public, are safe and accessible. I have repeatedly called for events organisers and venue managers to do their best to make events COVID safe (mostly using Twitter/X to do so, but also sending emails to organisers).

As I wrote in a piece for Croakey this week, misinformation and lack of visibility about the continuing risks posed by COVID is rife across all sectors of life. As a consequence, fewer people are realising just how serious the risks are, even while new viral subvariants continue to emerge and medical research on the impacts of even ‘mild’ COVID infection (long COVID) is continually being published (see, for example, a recent editorial in the British Medical Journal ).

A review article in Nature Reviews Microbiology published at the beginning of 2023 contended that:

In addition to providing education on long COVID to the biomedical community, we need a public communications campaign that informs the public about the risks and outcomes of long COVID.

In the absence of government-run campaigns, have been doing my best to engage in public communication about COVID risk – including to my academic colleagues. Three months ago, I published a set of guidelines on this blog to help organisers ensure that their events would not become super-spreader occasions. These guidelines offer opportunities for event organisers to expand access and improve inclusion not only for people who want to avoid COVID infection but also those who are disabled, are carers, have little travel funding or live in countries where visas for travel to conferences are denied, or who want to reduce their carbon footprint.

Advocating for COVID safe and otherwise more accessible academic events is proving an ever more serious challenge in an information environment (even at universities) in which it seems to assumed that the worst of the pandemic is over and many protections for event attendees have either been dropped or are not adhered to. For example, ‘strong recommendations’ for people to wear masks to protect themselves and each other seem to be little observed.

Over the past year, I had seen many reports of academic events offering no online options for participation. I had heard of many conferences where people had tested COVID positive while attending or soon after returning home. But what is happening at the writers’ conference being held at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf campus in Vermont, USA, really alarms me. Reports have come through on Twitter/X about over 10% of attendees reporting COVID infections. Those infected are reporting that they have been given little support by the event organisers, have been sent home while ill and infected, and that the rest of the conference was continuing with few mitigations in place to protect those still on site.

I made it home frm “the mountain” somehow propelling myself home on a 6hr drive in a fugue state. I am so very, very sick. So much water and advil and rest and still, can hardly drag myself out of bed to pee. If I get long covid I’m going to be SO pissed. https://t.co/wIiQCnc5CI

— Dr. Laura Mauldin (@mauldin_laura) August 26, 2023

Bread Loaf has sent its covid+ workshoppers home w/o regard to increasing viral transmission unlike @LambdaLiterary, @sewaneewriters & @Tin_House, each of which had robust covid protocols. it’s clear which conferences prioritize community safety & which are just a cash grab. https://t.co/Dnj9CxGJt2

— aureleo sans 🇨🇴🇵🇸 (@aureleos) August 24, 2023

Is this the future of academic conferences? Little care taken to protect attendees, covering over the harsh realities of what has happened to those who were infected, expecting people to leave immediately, even when they are very ill and pose a risk to anyone they may come into contact while travelling home?

It seems it is time to redouble my efforts to draw attention to these issues. We need to #MakeConferencesCOVIDSafe. The lives and health of academics and other knowledge workers (such as these talented writers) – across the age span and seniority levels – should not be placed in further jeopardy.

New book now out – ‘Risk’, 3rd edition

The third revised edition of my book Risk, first published in 1999, and second edition published in 2013, is now out. The book has been extensively revised and expanded to take account of the risks that have emerged over the past decade.

A link to the book on Routledge’s website is here and the Google Books preview is here.

Below is the Preface I wrote for the third edition.

In the 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century, risk was a key word in both public forums and academic research. The word ‘risk’ was used across social domains and institutions. The sociocultural and political aspects of risk and identifying the reasons for this intensification on risk identification, communication and management were a major preoccupation in the social sciences. The release in 1992 of the English translation of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s book Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity was one of the initial impetuses for this academic focus. Simultaneously, however, the scholarship of French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault on the care of the self and the governance of populations, and that of British social anthropologist Mary Douglas on the symbolic dimensions of risk cultures began to be taken up by social researchers and theorists. Their writings were extensively used by others exploring the reasons for why risk had become such a vibrant concept and discussing the implications for social identities, group membership and the management and control of diverse societies.

I wrote the first edition of Risk, published in 1999, for Routledge’s Key Ideas series. In the book, I laid out a schema in which I categorised the Beck approach as ‘the risk society’ perspective, Foucauldian insights as ‘the governmentality’ perspective and Douglas’ scholarship as ‘the cultural/symbolic’ approach. I elaborated on each of these three perspectives and provided examples of how they had been applied to empirical investigations into risk-related understandings and practices. The second revised edition of Risk came out in 2013. In updating the book, I added discussion of some additional theoretical perspectives, discussed some topics that had newly been labelled as risks and included findings from empirical studies that had been conducted since the first edition was published.

It is now a quarter of a century since the first edition of Risk appeared. Over this time, I have noticed that the topic of risk has gradually taken a back seat in social and cultural theory and research, despite its continuing salience to major problems and crises across the world. There have been various ‘turns’ emerging in theory over this time that in some ways have supplanted the ‘risk turn’. The ‘affect turn’ and the ‘materialism turn’ are two key developments. Some scholars have attempted to bring these bodies of theory together by examining the affective or sociomaterial dimensions of risk. However, thus far, this scholarship has largely remained on the fringes of risk research.

In revising Risk for its third edition, I therefore thought it important to make a strong call for a ‘re-turn’ to sociocultural risk theory in a way that incorporates insights from these theoretical developments and addresses the latest catastrophes besetting the world. At the time of writing, the world is faced with frightening disasters and emergencies. The Russian invasion of Ukraine that commenced in early 2022 continues unabated, with no clear end in sight, while the crisis affecting displaced people in other nations such as Syria, Venezuela, South Sudan and Afghanistan continues to create hardship, poor health and uncertainty for these groups. The COVID-19 crisis, confirmed as a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, is still raging globally. Citizens of the world’s most populous country, China, are facing rapid spread of the disease for the first time, following its leaders’ decision to drop many of the strong prevention strategies that have successfully controlled the outbreak in that nation. The climate emergency and associated risks of environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, emerging diseases affecting humans and other animals, and devastating natural disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts and landslides has yet to be properly addressed by governments, national leaders and peak global organisations. There are global food and fuel shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine, other disruptions in supply chains due to the COVID emergency, and many nations face an economic recession and severe cost of living crises.

Together, these emergencies appear so intractable and unsettling as to be labelled as constituting a ‘permacrisis’: a term chosen as Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022. Yet we are living in a world in which the existence of risk is constantly debated, misinformation and disinformation are rife and spread quickly and easily through online media, and where governments and institutions continue to avoid taking decisive action even when there is general agreement that a serious threat exists. Understanding how people, social groups and social organizations understand, respond to and act on threats, hazards and dangers is more important than ever. This third edition has been updated to confront these issues, including the addition of an entirely new chapter that focuses on risk misinformation, scepticism and denial, using the climate and COVID-19 crises as case studies.

New book now out – COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis

The third in my series of books about the social aspects of COVID-19 is out today. COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis can be ordered from Routledge here and a preview of its contents can be viewed at Google Books here. The abstracts for each chapter are listed below.

INTRODUCTION: COVID societies

The COVID-19 crisis has provoked intense and far-reaching socioeconomic changes globally as well as posing a major threat to human health and wellbeing. This introductory chapter introduces the rationale for the book, addressing the question of why sociocultural theories and historical perspectives are so important to make sense of how the COVID catastrophe erupted and created so much turmoil worldwide. The chapter also provides an outline of the content of the remainder of the book, detailing the topics and theoretical perspectives on which each of the ensuing chapters focus. These include discussions of the political economy perspective; biopolitics; risk society and cultures; gender and queer theory; and more-than-human theory.

1          COVID IN CONTEXT: Histories and narratives of health, risk and contagion

Major new or recurring infectious disease outbreaks are always accompanied by significant sociocultural and political disruptions and transformations. These crises often call into question ways of viewing and living in the world, as well as exposing and entrenching forms of social discrimination and inequalities. This chapter provides an overview of the historical, sociocultural and political contexts of the COVID-19 crisis. Medical historians, sociologists, anthropologists and cultural geographers have shown that social, cultural and political responses to the emergence or return of deadly pathogens often bring to the surface hidden, unacknowledged or long-established beliefs and practices. The chapter demonstrates how these perspectives have offered much of value in relation to the analysis of the sociocultural and political dimensions of previous serious infectious diseases. This discussion is followed by an account of how the new virus SARS-CoV-2 and the new disease COVID-19 emerged in the early months of 2020 and developments in the pandemic throughout 2020 and into 2021.

2          THE MACROPOLITICS OF COVID: A political economy perspective

Political economy critiques adopt a macropolitical perspective, drawing on Marxist theory as well as feminist critiques, critical disability studies, critical race theory and postcolonial theory to highlight the social determinants of health and healthcare and the role played by medical expertise and authority in society. A political economy perspective incorporates the discussion of social justice issues, inequalities and the exacerbation of socioeconomic disadvantage caused by the pandemic, including the disproportionate effects on low-income countries and marginalised social groups. Indeed, some commentators have argued that the COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced a ‘crisis of care’, in which the failings of neoliberal political and privatised approaches to public health surveillance systems and healthcare delivery across the world have been shockingly revealed. This chapter shows how neoliberal and free market capitalist political systems have been called to account and disrupted by the COVID crisis but have also operated to protect the privileged and further entrench inequalities in COVID societies. The concepts of medical dominance, the social determinants of health and globalisation are explained and applied to the COVID crisis.

3          THE BIOPOLITICS OF COVID: Foucauldian approaches

COVID-19 governance at the level of the state raises questions about how power is exerted and experienced and how it may be productive as well as repressive. This chapter delves more deeply into the complexities of these tensions and conflicts, using perspectives drawn from the scholarship of the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault to trace the historical underpinnings of contemporary approaches and responses to the COVID crisis. Various levels of control over citizens’ bodies and movements have been exerted and rationales for limiting individual freedoms put forward to protect the health of the body politic. Foucauldian theory offers concepts for understanding these relations of power. The scholarship of philosophers Giorgio Agamben and his concepts of bare life and states of exception, Roberto Esposito and his notions of affirmative biopolitics and immunitary mechanisms, and Achille Mbembe and his writings on necropolitics is also outlined. This discussion is followed by an account of Foucauldian viewpoints on the biopolitical dimensions of COVID societies have been developed, including discussion of how these theorists analysed social and governmental responses to the crisis.

4          RISK AND COVID: Risk society and risk cultures

The COVID-19 crisis is suffused with discourses, practices and emotions related to people’s reactions to risk and uncertainty. This chapter focuses on sociologist Ulrich Beck’s risk society perspective and anthropologist Mary Douglas’ cultural/symbolic approach to risk. Concepts from Beck’s scholarship, including reflexive modernisation, individualisation and cosmopolitanism, and Douglas’ work on the cultures of risk, blame and symbolic boundary control are explained and applied in an analysis of risk and uncertainty in COVID societies. The chapter shows that the risk discourses and practices circulating within and between regions and countries globally involve an affectively compelling combination of concepts of embodiment, contagion, danger and morality. The COVID crisis can be considered both a pre-industrial, fateful event and a late modern risk society phenomenon.

5          QUEERING COVID: Insights from gender and queer theory

This chapter introduces insights from scholarship in gender and queer theory and shows how they can be productively applied to an analysis of embodiment and socialities in COVID-19 times. While contemporary queer theory has its roots in critical studies of gender and sexuality, it has since expanded well beyond these origins. There are many intersections and overlaps between gender and queer theory, and both reach into many related fields: including queer necropolitics, queer death studies, crip studies, fat studies and critical animal studies. The major precepts of these intertwined bodies of literature are explained, with reference to the influential scholarship of philosophers such as Mel Chen, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Julia Kristeva. These extensions of gender and queer theory and what they offer for analysis of the COVID crisis are considered in this chapter. They critically analyse aspects of discourse, affect and embodiment to ‘queer the pandemic’: that is, to highlight disjunctures and invisibilities in the ways with which COVID has been portrayed and dealt and to provide further insights into the nature of lived experience in COVID societies. In identifying how these responses might be subject to contestation and change, contributors to gender and queer theory scholarship imagine better and more inclusive futures.

6          MORE-THAN-HUMAN COVID WORLDS: Sociomaterial perspectives

Given the intertwined dimensions of human and nonhuman relations and connections, the crushing impact of the COVID-19 crisis extends well beyond human lives and agencies. Scholars and researchers are beginning to engage with the body of scholarship that I refer to as ‘more-than-human theory’ (alternative terms used are ‘new materialisms’ or ‘the critical posthumanities’). There are various varieties of more-than-human theory. In the discussion presented here, I focus specifically on the scholarship that builds on non-western cosmologies (particularly Indigenous and First Nations philosophies) and the feminist materialism perspectives offered by western philosophers Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad and Jane Bennett. These philosophies advance a non-anthropocentric approach to understanding human existence. The implications of this approach for understanding the complexities and dynamism of COVID societies are outlined in this chapter. More-than-human theory is applied to better understand the affective forces and relational connections that are generated with and through humans’ encounters with nonhuman agents. I discuss the assemblages of humans and nonhumans that have come together and come apart as the COVID crisis unfolded. As I show, such an approach expands the One Health perspective in productive ways.

CONCLUSION: Reflections on COVID futures

This brief conclusion chapter summarises the key insights offered by COVID Societies, and then moves towards a future-oriented discussion. It is noted that throughout the book, a series of intertwined threads cross back and forth between the macropolitical and micropolitical dimensions of COVID-19: contagion, death, risk, uncertainty, fear, social inequalities, stigma, blame and power relations. Overarching these threads are five complementary themes: the historicity of COVID societies; the tension between local specificities and globalising forces; the control and management of human bodies; the boundary between Self and Other; and the continuously changing sociomaterial environments in which the world is living with and through the shocks of the COVID crisis. At this point in the pandemic, only uncertainty seems certain. As we learn to live with and through COVID, we must work towards better conditions for people across geographical regions. Acknowledging our vulnerability and using this knowledge to better care for the more-than-human worlds in which we are emplaced is a way forward to care more deeply about ourselves and our fellow species.

The three COVID books

Arguing on Facebook about COVID: a case study of key beliefs, rationales and strategies

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, social media platforms have become well-known for both disseminating misinformation and conspiracy theories as well as acting as valuable information sources concerning the novel coronavirus and governments’ efforts to manage and contain COVID. Facebook in particular – the world’s most popular social media site – has been singled out as a key platform for naysayers such as anti-vaccination exponents and ‘sovereign citizens’ to express their resentment at containment measures such as lockdowns, quarantine and self-isolation regulations, vaccination mandates and face-covering rules.

What rationales and beliefs underpin these arguments? How and to what extent are they contested or debated on Facebook? What rhetorical strategies are employed by commentators to attempt to persuade others that their views/facts are correct?

To explore these questions, I chose a case study of a short video (2 minutes 5 seconds long) shared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Facebook on 19 February 2022. I came across the video three days after it was published on the platform as part of my routine Facebook use. It turned up in my feed because a Facebook friend of mine had shared it (which it how the average Facebook user is presented with content from organisations like WHO if they don’t follow these accounts themselves.) I noticed how much engagement this post had received in those three days. There were 6,000 reactions: including 5k likes but also 551 laughing face emojis (suggesting viewers found the video content risible), 1.2k comments, 2.2k shares and 244k views. I decided to delve into the comments thread to see what people were saying in response to the video.

WHO’s official Facebook page has a huge follower base: at the time that I viewed this video, their page listed over 14 million likes and over 38 million followers. It is clearly a highly trusted Facebook presence. Many of its posts have thousands of reactions (the use of emojis to respond to posts), likes, comments and shares. WHO shares content at least once a day and often more frequently: most of this content is made by WHO itself in its role to communicate preventive health messages globally. In reviewing their latest content, it is evident that WHO has a very busy and accomplished team making their social media content.

The video featured two WHO experts: Dr Mike Ryan (pictured above from the opening section of the video) and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, both of whom feature regularly in WHO’s social media content. Ryan was introduced in a caption as ‘ED, WHO Health Emergencies Programme’ and Van Kerkhove as ‘COVID-19 technical lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme’.

In this video, both people spoke to camera as if to an unseen interviewer, explaining why they were concerned about governments beginning to loosen COVID restrictions too quickly.

The written introduction to the video stated:

Some countries are lifting all public health and social measures despite high numbers of COVID-19 cases/deaths. Dr Mike Ryan and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove explain why a slow approach is better.

Ryan and Van Kerkhove went on to use simple English to acknowledge that there is a strong desire on the part of governments and citizens to ‘open up’ and remove all COVID restrictions and ‘go back to normal’. They warn, however, that such actions could lead to the pandemic continuing ‘much longer than it needs to be’ due to ‘the political pressure to open up’ in ‘some situations’, and that replacing abandoned control measures would be difficult if a new variant emerged. Ryan and Van Kerkhove emphasise the importance of ‘a slow, step-wise approach’ to lifting COVID restrictions rather than an ‘all-or-nothing approach’ that ‘many countries’ are adopting at this point in the COVID crisis.

Both speakers are careful not to single out individual leaders or governments for criticism in these quite vague statements, leaving it up to the viewer to make a judgement about exactly to which ‘situation’ they are referring. These experts also ‘acknowledge uncertainty’ and that their concerns may be unfounded but emphasise the need for caution. They note that they do not ‘blame anyone’ for feeling confused, given the continual flux in governments’ COVID measures. Van Kerkhove ends by stating firmly that ‘you [the video viewers] have control over this’ regardless of government actions and then Ryan chimes in by asking ‘every individual just to look at your situation’ and ‘be smart, protect yourself, protect others, get vaccinated and just be safe and careful’.

There’s a lot that could be said about the statements made by these two WHO experts in this video: the veiled critique of ‘many countries” government actions and health communication efforts, the focus on individual responsibility in the face of government inaction and lack of responsibility. But I wanted to direct my attention to the more than 1,000 comments Facebook users wrote in response to this video.

I noticed first that comments came from all over the world – evidence again of the global reach and popularity of Facebook. When commentors were responding to each other, therefore, there were many examples of someone in Asia, South America or Africa engaging with Facebook users located in the USA, Australia, Canada, Europe or the UK.

Another observation was that a vigorous debate was occurring in the comments section, with supporters of the video’s messages seeking to argue with those who decried what they saw as an overly cautious or even unscientific argument from the WHO experts. Those who did not support the WHO’s points made such arguments as (my paraphrasing):

• opening up will help the economy – people need jobs
• people’s lives need to get back to ‘normal’
• most populations are now adequately vaccinated, so there is no need for further restrictions
• governments are lying to their citizens and spreading false information as a way of exerting greater control over them
• the novel coronavirus does not exist and nor does COVID
• it is risk to one’s health to wear masks for prolonged periods of time
• other health conditions kill more people than COVID
• COVID mass testing and mass vaccination have been conducted as a profit-making enterprise serving Big Pharma and governments
• WHO’s facts are wrong and they are spreading lies and fear, trying to promote their own interests for political purposes
• WHO has shown little leadership during the pandemic and is ineffectual
• face masks give a false sense of security and are useless as a preventive measure
• people who follow government restrictions are being controlled and can’t think for themselves
• the pandemic has been going on for two years and governments and health agencies like WHO are still not controlling it adequately
• the person commenting does not like to feel forced to do anything by government authorities, especially if restrictions/mandates do not help the situation (in their view) – ‘my body, my choice’
• even vaccinated people can still become infected with or transmit the coronavirus, fall ill or die of COVID – they are therefore pointless
• COVID is ‘real’ but controllable like influenza or no worse than the common cold
• governments who continue to impose restrictions/mandates are ‘Socialist’
• people’s immune systems can be strengthened without vaccines due to basic health promoting strategies
• people are dying from being given too many COVID vaccines (including children), not from the disease itself
• vaccines are ‘bioweapons’
• the medical establishment and the government are forcing COVID vaccines on people and hiding evidence of their serious side-effects
• there is a difference between ‘dying with COVID’ and ‘dying from COVID’ – governments and health agencies are deliberately obscuring this
• people need to be freed from living in fear
• scientists and medical experts are controlled by governments to serve political agendas
• ‘commonsense’ practices such as eating a healthy diet, taking Vitamin D and washing hands regularly will adequately protect against COVID

People who supported the points made by the WHO experts in the video tended to be reactive in their comments, responding to the naysayers using such rationales as:

• COVID is a real threat and has killed many people – we still need to be cautious to protect ourselves and others
• even though the situation seems to be improving in many countries, new variants could emerge that could pose major challenges
• scientific and medical knowledge and expertise should be trusted over other information sources
• many people are still dying
• opening up too quickly will lead to many more deaths globally
• vaccines do protect against serious disease and death and everyone should accept them: the benefits outweigh any risk
• face masks are important protective agents against infection (just as shoes, for example, protect against foot injuries)
• people who don’t want to conform to COVID restrictions/mandates are being selfish and don’t understand the importance of self-sacrifice to protect others
• wearing face masks and getting vaccinated are small sacrifices to make for the greater good and saving others’ lives as well as self-protection
• economies are damaged if too many workers become ill from COVID and can’t go to work
• the person commenting still feels at high risk from COVID and is happy to continue to engage in preventive measures such as wearing masks and accepting vaccination
• young children have not yet been protected by COVID vaccination in many countries and therefore are vulnerable to infection
• mass vaccination programs have worked well globally to protect people against other serious diseases, such as polio
• people who support dropping all restrictions are engaging in magical thinking or do not want to face reality
• low income countries do not have enough medical support to help people who become ill with COVID
• countries should work together in a global response to COVID rather than simply pursing nationalistic interests

Rhetorical strategies on the part of both ‘sides’ of the argument included:

• giving examples from their own lives/health (e.g. they had avoided COVID because of wearing face masks and getting vaccinated or they avoided COVID because their immune systems were naturally strong and not weakened by vaccines)
• describing the situations of people they knew personally (e.g. those who died from COVID vaccines or those who died because they refused COVID vaccines)
• urging people to ‘do their research’ or ‘due diligence’ and not just rely on television, social media or what their friends tell them
• accusing those who are disagreeing with them of ‘lying’, ‘making up facts to suit their agenda’, as ‘stupid’ or simply gullible (to either misinformation or in believing the science)
• providing hyperlinks to articles or blog posts outside of Facebook to support their claims and urging others to read them as part of educating themselves about the ‘facts’
• claiming ‘truth’ in response to ‘non-truths’, ‘lies’ or ‘fake news’
• contrasting the value of all human lives versus the value of individual freedom
• the use of large numbers to support the validity of the arguments

As just one example of a pithy exchange between two commentators:

Commentator 1: We can’t stop living.

Commentator 2: 900,000 Americans have.

These findings demonstrate the kinds of beliefs and rationales underpinning Facebook users’ concepts of COVID risk and their attitudes towards COVID restrictions. Both sides received ardent support from others. Comments sometime descended into ad hominem attacks but most of the content was focused on presenting opinions or ‘facts’ and responding to these arguments with counter-claims. Most of the commentators attempted to act as educators, challenging the misinformation or extreme views put forward by the naysayers. Emotions ran high as people defended their position or accused others of stupidity, blindness to the truth or making up facts. Some extreme misinformation positions and conspiracy theories were advanced (e.g. ‘the holy blood of Jesus Christ is our only protection’) but many arguments concerned topics such as whether vaccines were necessary or effective (and how many there should be) or raised issues around the politics of COVID control.

The main insight from this single case study of COVID commentary in response to a peak health agency’s video posted to Facebook is that there was little evidence of an echo-chamber or filter bubble where only one main viewpoint was put foward. Instead, vigorous debate and contestation about ‘the truth’ went on in the comments section, suggesting an open forum for many opinions to be aired. However, it was also clear that people’s opinions or beliefs were not challenged in and through the debates or comments. Despite all the argumentation and presenting of examples from personal experience or hyperlinks to other material, no consensus or acceptance of other people’s opposing views was evident in these comment threads.

Face masks in the wild: a photographic collection

Last April, my co-authored book The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis was published (written with Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark and Ash Watson when we were all part of the Vitalities Lab that I lead at UNSW Sydney). We feature several images of face masks in the books: a few of which we had taken ourselves.

As the title of the book suggests, and as part of my interest in COVID cultures and everyday life, I am quite fascinated about how face masks have become part of more-than-human worlds across the globe since the advent of the COVID-19 crisis. I’ve continued to notice how face masks have become ‘wilded’ through being thoughtlessly discarded (or sometimes deliberately placed) in public places and on other objects, assembling with other dimensions of things, place and space.

Here’s a catalogue of some of these images I’ve taken so far. These masks are in varying states of grubbiness/decay, which for me speaks of their pervasiveness into the environment as waste or garbage. They are a far cry from the fresh, clean ‘hygienic’ surgical or N95 masks we can buy, or the often new pretty or colourful handcrafted fabric masks that can be found on Etsy. I hate seeing them littering the ground and despoiling gardens, parks or bushland. But there’s also something strangely appealing or aesthetically pleasing about some of these still lifes: in the particular combination of mask, other things, colour, shape, texture and the play of light.

None of these assemblages have been arranged by me – they were documented as I found them, walking around as part of my everyday routines. I see these arrangements as ‘found still lifes’ that speak to the gradual seeping into our worlds of the COVID face mask, which has taken on particular liveliness and thing-power over the past two years. For me, their ever-growing presence in public spaces is a synecdoche of the ways that COVID has permeated our lives, just as the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has entered people’s bodies.

New research website – Social Aspects of COVID-19

I’ve done quite a bit of research on the social aspects of the COVID crisis over the past two years – including posts on this blog but also books, book chapters, journal articles, pieces in places like Medium and The Conversation, and recorded talks.

I’ve made a new website bringing it all together in one place, which can be accessed here. I’ll be updating it as new publications come out.

From my collection of ‘COVID Life’ photos, December 2021

COVID-19: the first 100 days

I have begun work on my new book to be published by Routledge, entitled COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis. Part of the Introduction chapter will present an overview of the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic over its first one hundred days. Things moved very quickly over that time. Here is an except from this chapter outlining key events during this period.

Sign outside an Australian shop, April 2020

The time elapsing from the first reporting of a cluster of cases of a new respiratory disease that was later to be named ‘COVID-19’ to the first million confirmed cases worldwide was slightly less than one hundred days. The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a timeline of how events unfolded from the very beginning of the first observation of a cluster of unusual cases of atypical pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Hubei province (World Health Organization, 2020). The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response (2021) also put together a chronological account of the events unfolding between late 2019 and the end of March 2020, by which time the virus had spread extensively around the world. The Panel concluded that these months were characterised by some evidence of early and rapid action by nations and global health authorities. However, delay, hesitation to act decisively and denial of the threat were also prevalent in their responses. The events and developments outlined below in these first one hundred days of the COVID crisis are synthesised from these two valuable chronologies.

On 30 December 2019, the first cases of ‘atypical viral pneumonia of unknown cause’ who had been admitted to hospitals in Wuhan were reported in two urgent notices to hospital networks in the city by officials from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission. Wuhan clinicians noted that several of these atypical pneumonia patients had visited the same ‘wet market’ in the city selling live sea creatures and other animals for human consumption, suggesting it was a key source of transmission. On 31 December, a Chinese business publication published a report about one of these notices, which in turn was picked up by several disease surveillance systems operating in the region. WHO’s Headquarters office in Geneva was alerted to the report. Later that day, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission sent out a bulletin for public notice, reporting that 27 cases of this disease had been identified. By the end of December, it seemed likely from the epidemiology of these Wuhan cases that human-to-human transmission of this as yet un-identified and unnamed pathogen was likely.

The WHO Country Office in China requested further information from the Wuhan officials on 1 January 2020, activating its Incident Management Support Team as part of its emergency response framework. By 2 January, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had sequenced almost the entire genome of the novel virus. There were 44 reported cases by 3 January. WHO released a tweet about this Wuhan pneumonia cluster (which had not yet caused any deaths) on 4 January, noting the investigations to determine the cause were underway. It released its first Disease Outbreak News report on 5 January about these cases. All countries were warned to take precautions against the spread of this new virus. On 9 January, Chinese authorities had determined that the pathogen was a novel coronavirus, similar to a previous virus (SARS-CoV) that had caused SARS disease (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in a previous outbreak between 2003 and 2007. Chinese scientists had developed a first test for the virus by 10 January.

The first death from infection with the novel coronavirus was reported by the China media on 11 January. The first case outside China was reported in Thailand on 13 January and a second case in Japan on 16 January: both cases had travelled from Wuhan. Chinese health experts publicly confirmed on 20 January that the virus was transmissible between humans and that healthcare workers had become infected. Wuhan officials had instituted a city-wide lockdown on 23 January in the attempt to control the spread. At this point in the outbreak, 830 cases and 25 deaths had been reported. The first case outside Asia was recorded in the USA on 21 January and the first European cases (a total of three) were reported by France on 24 January.

WHO’s first mission to Wuhan to investigate the outbreak took place on 20-21 January. It declared a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ on 30 January, its highest level of alarm. At this point in the outbreak, the novel coronavirus had begun to spread quickly around the world. A total of 98 cases had been detected in 18 countries. By 4 February, over 20 000 confirmed cases and 425 deaths had been reported in China, and 176 cases in 24 other countries. On 11 February, WHO announced that the novel coronavirus would be named SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it caused as COVID-19 (a contraction of ‘coronavirus disease 2019’). This naming followed best practice, which avoids linking titles of new microbes or diseases to specific regions, nationalities, individuals or animals because of the possibility of inaccuracy or stigma.

By 7 March, over 100 000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been reported globally. The outbreak was officially declared as a pandemic by WHO on 11 March 2020, when reported cases globally had reached over 118 000 across 114 countries. By 13 March, Europe had become the epicentre of the pandemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined, apart from China. By 4 April, almost 100 days after the first Wuhan cases having been reported, WHO reported that over 1 million confirmed cases had been reported worldwide, with the pace of infection rapidly increasing.

Even at that stage, many countries’ governments worldwide had not yet taken decisive action to contain the spread of the virus. WHO’s declaration on 30 January of a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ was largely ignored. Only a minority of countries began comprehensive prevention and response strategies. Many countries did very little throughout the month of February, even while cases were rapidly spreading and climbing globally. Most governments either did not appreciate the seriousness of the threat posed by COVID-19 or wanted to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach rather than implement significant action. Due to their previous experiences with the SARS pandemic, several eastern and south-eastern Asian countries were among the earlier responders, while African countries who had been through the Ebola threat also learned from this and put measures into place quickly. Many other countries did not spring into action until they noted the exponential rise in cases and rapid spread of the virus. Serious actions that could have contained such a huge expansion in cases and deaths were implemented too late.

References

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response. (2021). COVID-19: Make It The Last Pandemic. https://theindependentpanel.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/COVID-19-Make-it-the-Last-Pandemic_final.pdf

World Health Organization. (2020). Timeline: WHO’s COVID-19 response. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/interactive-timeline?gclid=CjwKCAiA17P9BRB2EiwAMvwNyGWSa7LCiCAgb9r1TIgGmjmcYnZzOj7_zVA80ZeeVZyUsfqM35BvrhoCofQQAvD_BwE#event-7

New book now out – The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives

This edited collection (with co-editor Karen Willis) is now published (see details on the Routledge website and on Amazon). The chapter abstracts are below. For a companion volume, see my co-authored book The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis, also now out.

Part 1: Introduction

1.  COVID society: introduction to the book 

Deborah Lupton and Karen Willis

In this introductory chapter, we make an argument for why contemporary social worlds can be now characterised as ‘COVID society’. We outline the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis and its global effects. The chapter offers an account of the macro- and micro-political dimensions of the COVID crisis and draws out and discusses the key themes emerging across the book’s chapters. We discuss the major findings and perspectives offered by the contributors and how they are employed to analyse the impacts and experiential dimensions of the crisis from a social perspective.

 2.      Contextualising COVID-19: sociocultural perspectives on contagion

Deborah Lupton

To fully understand the sociocultural implications of the COVID-19 crisis, it is important to be aware of the substantial body of research in sociology, anthropology, history, cultural geography and media studies on previous major infectious disease outbreaks. This chapter ‘sets the scene’ by providing this context with an overview of the relevant literature, with reference to emerging and new infectious diseases over the past century as Spanish influenza, HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola virus and Zika virus. The perspectives offered by social histories, political economy perspectives, social constructionism, Foucauldian theory, risk theory, postcolonial and sociomaterial approaches are explained and examples of research using these approaches are provided. 

Part II: Space, the Body and Mobilities

 3. Moving target, moving parts: the multiple mobilities of the COVID-19 pandemic

 Nicola Burns, Luca Follis, Karolina Follis and Janine Morley

This chapter considers the contributions of the mobilities paradigm to the sociological understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. Mobilities scholarship offers a multi-scalar framework that spans from movement at the molecular level to the movement of bodies and the local, national and supranational travel of humans and non-humans. Its core insight has been the recognition that mobilities are socially patterned, hierarchical and co-exist with immobilities, thereby generating and reproducing inequalities. The chapter focuses on the United Kingdom government response to the coronavirus pandemic, emphasising the multi-scalar effects of state intervention and the implications for different groups in society, which remain largely unaccounted for. We ask: who (and what) moves and does not move in this crisis? We work through the local, meso and macro level to show how the public health imperative to immobilise the disease vector (the body) disrupts ordinary patterns of mobility that have become central to globalised economies. The chapter argues that viewing the COVID-19 pandemic through the prism of mobilities illuminates not just the long-term effects of this crisis on national health systems but also highlights the vulnerability of static and bounded health systems in a world where everything else is in movement.

4. Physical activity and bodily boundaries in times of pandemic

Holly Thorpe, Julie Brice and Marianne Clark

With millions of people around the world spending weeks and months in quarantine, new questions emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic about the opportunities, benefits, and risks of physical activity. Health organizations, governments and the media alike advocated the importance of physical activity for health and wellbeing. While exercise was being encouraged, options for engagement were increasingly constrained. With gyms, fitness studios, recreational centres, and parks and outdoor facilities closed, many created new fitness rhythms and routines. In this chapter we draw upon feminist new materialist theory, and particularly the work of Karen Barad, to critically explore new questions about the risks of physically active bodies and the ‘trails’ of contagion that they may disperse in and through the ebbs and flows of the natural (i.e., air, wind) and built (i.e., gym and fitness studios) environment. Drawing upon Barad’s conceptualization of bodily boundaries, we explore new ethical considerations and concerns of aerosol particles (i.e., breath) and bodily secretions (i.e., sweat). In so doing, we diffractively read media releases, scientific reports, and public commentaries through our own embodied experiences of physical activity. Ultimately this chapter offers a critical and creative commentary on the new noticings of bodily boundaries in times of pandemic where the body—any and every body—was a site of possible contagion.

 5. City flows during pandemics: zooming in on windows

Olimpia Mosteanu

 In this chapter, I reflect on a series of photographs of windows taken in different cities around the world before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use these photographs to prompt an analysis of urban flows at a time when our cities have come to a halt. Windows are caught up in a series of dichotomies that posit what is inside against the outside, the intimate against the public, home against street, stability against unpredictability, among others. The chapter explores some of the ways in which windows not only mediate our interactions with the world around but also actively participate in our everyday lives, especially at the current moment. Given the restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, windows have taken on an even more important role in supporting dwellers’ quality of life and wellbeing. Working with and against the digital archive I have compiled, the chapter considers how these photographs gesture towards the layered experiences of space and place, as well as the presence and absence of affect and memory. I conclude by discussing how this type of photographic inquiry benefits qualitative research focused on the lived experience of place at a time when in-person methods are no longer an option.  

6. The politics of touch-based help for visually impaired persons during the coronavirus pandemic: an autoethnographic account

Heidi Lourens

 In the context of disability, the provision of help carries within it the potential for troublesome psychological and relational dimensions. Through an evocative autoethnography, I, as a blind person, aim to argue that help may become even more complicated for visually impaired persons during the Coronavirus pandemic. Since visually impaired persons often rely on help in the form of physical touch (for example when a sighted person guides them), help currently contains more than psychological dimensions – it also carries within it the very real potential for contracting a potential life-threatening illness. This vulnerable position, I will demonstrate, comes with its own set of psychological ramifications such as the fear of often much-needed or unsolicited touch. I will argue that what makes these feelings of vulnerability and anxiety even more acute, is the limits to freedom of choice for both help-receiver and help-recipient. I conclude that, during this health crisis, it is important to apply the approach of the relational ethics of care. Only through mutual communication, authentic communication and active engagement will disabled and nondisabled persons be able to recognise the unique context and needs of one another.

Part III: Intimacies, Socialities and Temporalities

7.  #DatingWhileDistancing: dating apps as digital health technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic 

David Myles, Stefanie Duguay and Christopher Dietzel

The physical distancing measures implemented globally by public health authorities have challenged the operating models of dating apps, which typically rely on physical proximity to foster intimate relationships. This chapter critically examines the steps taken by 16 dating apps in response to COVID-19 through an analysis of in-app messages, new features, social media posts, and press releases. Our findings suggest that dating apps assume the role of unconventional corporate digital health technologies. They do so first through interventions in user behaviour, circulating messages about maintaining physical distance while mobilising health resources to track and discourage virus transmission. Secondly, they give meaning to the use of dating apps during a time of physical distancing by encouraging users to adopt online “virtual” dating approaches. This is accomplished by replacing negative perceptions of online dating with notions of virtual dating as romantic or sexy while also introducing features and norms to define appropriate virtual dating behaviour. Overall, our analysis illustrates how corporate actors participate in online health promotion during times of crisis and, specifically, how the matchmaking industry can affect sexual and public health by reshaping contemporary dating cultures.

8. ‘Unhome’ sweet home: the construction of new normalities in Italy during COVID-19 

Veronica Moretti and Antonio Maturo

Everyday life provides that reservoir of meanings which allows us to make sense of reality. It is the ‘taken-for-granted’ dimension of our existence. With this in mind, in this chapter we investigate the ‘new normalities’ of life in lockdown. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with a population of childless, highly educated young adults living in Northern Italy. Interviewees report mixed feelings and experiences associated with being locked in their homes: cosiness alongside restriction; the freedom to call friends combined with forced physical isolation; the need to do work in places usually devoted to relaxing. Being forced to stay at home is also a cognitively ambiguous situation, in which people feel themselves to be ‘in-waiting’. In practical terms, the interviewees coped with this uncertainty by creating and adhering to rigid routines and new habits. We analyse the interviewees’ ‘definition of their situation’ in terms of the Freudian concept of the Unhemlich (the uncanny, but also the ‘unhomely’). The uncanny refers to the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar.  It describes situations where something familiar appears in an unsettling context. Our hope is that this analysis will inform future research on the effects of the lockdown on mental health.

9.  Queer and crip temporalities during COVID-19: sexual practices, risk and responsibility

Ryan Thorneycroft and Lucy Nicholas

This chapter interrogates sexual practices occurring during COVID-19 to imagine alternative (crip and queer) futures. Recognising that many people continue to engage in (casual) sex, we consider what the politics of responsibility are during this pandemic. We suggest that queer sex sits at the intersections of crip/queer practice, and we move to contextualise our current moment through the lens of crip/queer times. Understanding our moment through crip/queer times provides the opportunity to open up new sexual cultures and to diversify the range of practices and pleasures to all people. In the place of queer casual sex, we introduce forms of (crip/queer) isolation sex as an efficacious and ethical alternative, and in so doing, work to identify new forms of cultures and possibilities available during and after the COVID pandemic. To engage in ethical forms of queer isolation sex at this historical juncture is to protect crip and older bodies from COVID, and this means the actors are engaging in efficacious crip/queer sexual practices. Broadening rather than narrowing what we understand to be sexual practices opens up new forms of cultures and possibilities available during and after COVID. In turn this moment allows for an imagining of broader, alternative, and responsible socialites informed by crip and queer positionalities that do not collapse back into an individualistic normativity once the crisis is over.

10.  Isol-AID, Art and Wellbeing: Posthuman Community Amidst COVID-19

Marissa Willcox, Anna Hickey-Moody and Anne Harris

In the isolating times of COVID-19, digital live streaming has been a key means through which artists connect with their audiences/community and audience members access live art and music. With performances mediated through digital live stream, artists and audience members alike are experimenting with strategies for connection, and indeed, for survival. This reconfiguration of sociality, of the liveness of community, threatens to endure beyond the pandemic. The Instagram Live music festival ‘Isol-AID’, which we examine as a case study in this chapter, prompts a discussion around arts accessibility as a measure of public health and wellbeing. Building on literature about social prescribing, we suggest that Instagram Live engages therapeutic forms of arts practice, and as such, could be offered as a new digital health resource. Using a critical posthumanist perspective, we think-through Instagram Live and streamed performance as posthuman assemblages to highlight the importance of non-human actants (such as phones, wifi, colours, sounds) in the production of the feeling of community, which is a social determinant of health. These creative methods of expression and connection encourage discussion around the importance of the arts in community health and wellbeing, a conversation that could not be more relevant than in the socially isolated world that is, this global pandemic.

Part IV: Healthcare Practices and Systems

11. Strange times in Ireland: death and the meaning of loss under COVID-19

Jo Murphy-Lawless

David Harvey writes of ‘time-space compression’ to describe the globalised world of untrammelled flows of goods and services. Contemporary Ireland has relied on these capital flows in the shape of massive foreign direct investment and has in turn been reshaped by contemporary modes of global consumer capitalism. Large-scale emigration characterising Irish society since the mid-nineteenth century has been matched in recent decades by a second kind of international travel whereby Irish people savour life as global consumers.  COVID-19, a potent disrupter, is also a beneficiary of our globalised economy. It swiftly rendered everyday life unrecognisable. Among the profoundly stressful consequences of COVID-19 for Ireland is how we were forced to do death differently. COVID-19 has made painfully visible the social and economic contradictions of contemporary Ireland and may yet spur us to reconsider how we participate in the global game.

12. Between an ethics of care and scientific uncertainty: dilemmas of general practitioners in Marseille

Romain Lutaud, Jeremy Ward, Gaëtan Gentile and Pierre Verger

While COVID-19 continues to progress worldwide, the French situation is particularly affected by a lack of masks, tests and, as everywhere else, by the lack of clinically validated therapeutic options. The French government has made the choice of confinement and remote monitoring of patients, with recourse to the healthcare system only when signs of worsening appear (hospitalisation). But in Marseille, a hospital-research centre (IHU, led by Pr. Raoult) decided to apply the doctrine of ‘test and treat’ using chloroquine. This chapter explores the effects of this decision on local doctors’ practices relative to covid-19. We will show the dilemmas faced by doctors: how they navigate the controversy over chloroquine as well as negotiate with their patients’ demand for testing and treatment with chloroquine. This chapter constitutes a first attempt at bringing together the results of a wider research project involving analysis several surveys and interviews conducted among GPs in Marseille and 1200 GPs in France, an analysis of the coverage of the hydroxychloroquine debate in the French national press and surveys conducted among representative samples of the French population. It will also draw on one of the authors’ experience of being a general practitioner in Marseille.

13.  Post-pandemic routes in the context of Latin countries: the impact of COVID-19 in Italy and Spain

Anna Sendra, Jordi Farré , Alessandro Lovari and Linda Lombi

This chapter examines the reasons behind the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Italy and Spain, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. Despite adopting strict measures of lockdown, both countries endured two of the highest infection and mortality rates of COVID in Europe. In this context, in addition to considering political, technological and economic factors, this critical reflection explores how the particularities of the Latin lifestyle may have influenced the management of the crisis in Italy and Spain. Although the public agenda in both countries has focused on discussing the unequal distribution of resources, especially in terms of health reforms and digital competencies, this chapter concludes suggesting that the design of future interventions should also contemplate the effect of sociocultural factors in the perception and evaluation of risks.

14. Risky work: providing healthcare in the age of COVID-19

Karen Willis and Natasha Smallwood

The disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis has been profound across all dimensions of social life; and has been profoundly evident in the rapid changes to work. Alongside people losing jobs in service and related industries as countries imposed restrictions on movement and activity, workers in many industries have faced change in the way work is undertaken, and in their exposure to risks. Healthcare work is a case example of rapid occupational change with concerns that such changes have negative psychosocial effects on the workforce, as they grapple with rapid organisational change, increased anxiety and stress, and concern for patient care. In this chapter, we describe healthcare workers’ experiences of the psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on their work. We draw on preliminary findings from free text data from a survey of over 9,000 health care workers in Australia to illustrate issues related to workplace disruption, healthcare delivery challenges, and concerns of being simultaneously at risk and risky which necessitate the development of new strategies to manage work, home and family.

Part V: Marginalisation and Discrimination

15. The plight of the parent-citizen? Examples of resisting (self-)responsibilisation and stigmatisation by Dutch Muslim parents and organisations during the COVID-19 crisis

Alex Schenkels, Sakina Loukili and Paul Mutsaers

On 15 March 2020, the Dutch government announced the temporary closure of schools, kindergartens and houses of prayer in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, which de facto further responsibilised parents in areas such as home-schooling and home-working. This decision exposed an ideology of intensive parenting (IP) that has mostly remained hidden and undisputed. At the same time, the outbreak exacerbated racism and stigma, intensifying the (parental) challenges for Muslim families. This chapter explores if the boundaries of this ideology have been reached due to the COVID crisis. The first part focuses on education and ways in which Muslim parents display and (eventually) resist ‘self-responsibilising reflexes’. Part two addresses the stigmatisation of Muslims and the (re)actions by Islam-inspired political organisation NIDA. Our findings suggest that while parenting seemed to hyper intensify during the first months of the pandemic, precisely this process led to parents’ resistance. Muslim organisations strengthened resistance by serving as an ‘extended family’, which took form in spiritual and pedagogical guidance as well as in mitigating the effects of racism against Muslim families. Such mitigation undermines IP’s ideal of the ‘parent-citizen’ who is to solve societal problems in the private sphere.

 16.  Anti-Asian racism, xenophobia and Asian American health during COVID-19

Aggie J. Yellow Horse

 As COVID-19 crisis emerged in the USA, anti-Asian racism and xenophobia rhetoric as well as reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans began to rise. Understanding how such a rapid increase in racist and xenophobic incidences may affect Asian Americans’ physical, mental and social health is important, as racism and xenophobia are fundamental causes of inequalities in health in general and for Asian Americans in particular. Furthermore, this understanding is critical for reducing and eliminating the barriers for Asian Americans seeking medical help during the coronavirus pandemic, which is important not only for Asian Americans’ health, but for the total US population. Thus far, research on the health implications of the social, cultural and political dimensions of the coronavirus pandemic on Asian Americans are limited, due to the conceptual and methodological challenges in studying health and health disparities among Asian Americans. Drawing from histories of structural racism against Asian Americans through exclusionary immigration policies, and post-1965 racial policies that contributed to the emergence of Asian American stereotypes as the Model Minority and perpetual foreigners, this chapter discusses the sociohistorical contexts in which Asian Americans have been invisible in sociology of health research. It discusses the importance of examining the roles of racism and xenophobia on Asian American’s health in a broader contexts of the parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and racism; and provides suggestions for future research and policy advocacy.

17. Ageism, risk, health and the body in COVID-19 times

Peta S. Cook, Cassie Curryer, Susan Banks, Barbara Barbosa Neves, Maho Omori, Annetta H. Mallon and Jack Lam

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare societal discourses regarding age differences and stereotypes. Using sociological approaches to risk and drawing on some examples from the Australian online news media, we illustrate how risk management approaches and risk uncertainties in response to the coronavirus, have homogenised younger and older peoples and widely positioned them in a binary generational conflict of ‘risky’ and ‘at risk’. Younger people are frequently framed as healthy, active agents: they are engaging in risky behaviours that endanger their health and that of others. In contrast, older people have been typically cast as passive and at risk: ‘the elderly’ and ‘the vulnerable elderly’. In extreme cases, older people have also been framed as burdensome and worthless. In this chapter, we examine how age was framed or ‘staged’ during COVID-19 to illustrate how ageist language and dichotomous pandemic framings — grounded on blame and shame — add to social divisions and ‘othering’, shape risk management strategies, and cloud public health messaging on risk, viral spread, and physical distancing measures.