Crises lay bare the social fault lines of society. Race, gender, age, and education have affected vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. Yet, consequences likely extend far beyond morbidity and mortality. Temporarily closing the economy sent shock waves through communities, raising the possibility that social inequities, preexisting and current, have weakened economic resiliency and reinforced disadvantage, especially among groups most devastated by the Recession. Kindly comment
Shameemul Haque
Dear professor,
Thank you for the interesting topic of discussion.
There is no doubt about what you have stated in the explanatory part of the topic of discussion. Due to this pandemic, concentration of wealth has become a huge economic problem. That is why, in India we experienced the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Also, too many people have been pushed below the poverty line. These are clear signs of the pandemic exposing and magnifying the inequalities in the society.
Best regards,
Anamitra.
That the correct proposition. Covid-19 has just led to so many evils in the society and even crime rates are going high due to economic pressure.
Some people's disasters are other's benefits. Under the influence of the pandemic, crime increased due to the deteriorating economic situation & some took advantages of the situation & made masks that do not protect against the virus & many others
According to definition neo-feudalism is a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy, and public life reminiscent of those present in many feudal societies, such as unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility. Nowadays, because of pauperization of the middle class, the new aristocracy is creating the new society whose main characteristic are polarization of society on reach new aristocracy and new modern peasants or Homo netflix who are nothing but the protagonists in the novel of Aldous Huxley “Brave New World”. However, due to covid-19 it seems that neo-feudalism is in now in transition into oligarchical socialism, according to Joel Kotkin (please read his text under the following link: https://www.ocregister.com/2018/09/01/america-is-moving-to-oligarchical-socialism/). The most important role of oligarchical socialism is ensuring of “guaranteed wage” to peasants, just to keep the new peasants alive as long and as much they are necessary to satisfy the needs of the new aristocracy. Moreover, even Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret in their book “COVID-19: The Great Reset” which is pronounced as a guide for anyone who wants to understand how COVID-19 disrupted our social and economic systems, and what changes will be needed to create a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable world going forward, implicitly confirmed Kotkin's attitude. One question still remains and that is; - What about the people of the third world. Unfortunately, the new aristocracy is not so inventive to offer some new solution. I am afraid they will just use the previous experience of the old aristocracy, but they will work rather indirectly through the channels of humanitarian aid to the officially elected governments. So, the people of Africa or Asia will have distribution of humanitarian aid in spite of fact that some of them are walking on the ground with very huge mineral wealth. Off course big corporations will use the concession for exploitation of it as a small sign of gratitude for permanent humanitarian aid send to the governments of some countries of the third world.
Dear colleague Gruenwald, I am afraid that your simplification is not completely correct nowadays. Yes, I agree with you, in general there are winners and losers, but when we were teenagers our parents just said to us "Learn hard, work hard, take care about your personal costs, be honest and you will succeed." Off course, they were right and we definitely have to be grateful to them for that lesson. However, because of pandemic precarity and particularly if the covid-19 pandemic will last till the 2022 or 2023, the conditions of so called vertical mobility based on hard working, innovations, wise investments etc., etc. will vanish, because the progression of social relations will be frozen and freezing of social relationships means no opportunities of vertical mobility for hard working talents and that means no new Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Nikola Tesla, or if we want to add somebody from our age, no new Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc., etc. Only the two caste will be proliferated, the new aristocracy and losers. However, within the second caste of losers some horizontal mobility is possible into the two classes; survivors and those who were not died yet. Generally, described social stratification will be more or less the same in developed as well as in developing and poor countries. So, pandemic of covid-19 is not only the biggest epidemiological challenge in the history of civilization. It is also the biggest social threath and even the biggest social experiment in the history. If so, I pray the God, let it be the last social experiment of the mankind we know.
Cierto, la pandemia hizo visibles las precariedades sociales, económicas, políticas y culturales de los paises del mundo para afrontar a la pandemia, no hubo una respuesta conjunta, y a la fecha el numero de pobres es mayor, la falta de empleo también es una situación evidente, lo que va a generar muchas formas de conflictos sociales y violencia.
Completely agree. Inequalities increase within societies and between societies since it is a worldwide phenomenon.
Science goes so far and where it ends we find God some may refer to as mother nature. Back to basic, our body is design to exist and operate at its optimal in an environment that nature has provided for us. By these, I mean getting sufficient sunlight a day, exercise by doing outdoor work, getting enough good oxygen, eating fruits from trees, vegetables directly from the soil instead of process food, and getting enough sleep or rest. Covid 19 should not have affected us so badly if our immune system was to operate at its optimal. However, our lifestyle has weakened our immune system contributing to this pandemic which is what we need to address not only for Covid 19 but for many more to come. Otherwise, we will continue to depend on vaccines one after another. Our body is design to protect itself we are more intelligent than a chimpanzee. If we are to overcome these diseases we have to create an environment that help our immune system operate at its optimal condition. For instance, in the case of the COVID 19 virus, immunity to the entire Virus should easily be created instead of the spike protein as in the current vacines. It can be undone it's all men's doing.
Social determinants of health come into play MORE than EVER during this pandemic. As a patient advocate RN, I understand that access to quality healthcare is worse now than ever. Complications brought on by exposure and infection to Covid-19 is an ongoing issue.
Tomorrow, Monday May 17, the book entitled as "A State of Fear", written by Laura Dodsworth will be published. So, it seems that covid-19 pandemics was or still is, not only pandemics, but also a kind of the biggest social experiment in the history of mankind as I wrote in my analysis on this blog 3 days ago, please see my respond on colleague Gruenwald reaction above. Here is the link about announcement of the book I mentioned. Please see it: https://www.lauradodsworth.com/a-state-of-fear
The issue of social inequalities is slightly different in terms of nationality in individual countries and slightly different on an international scale. First, I will write a few words about the issues of social, income and material inequalities, in terms of access to specific products and services and public goods from a national perspective. Inequalities that may have arisen as a result of the development of the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic are eliminated by pro-social policies that are an important element of interventionist, anti-crisis, pro-development socio-economic policy. In addition, there has been an increase in social and intergenerational solidarity during the Coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic could also increase the scale of general public awareness of the need to develop cooperation, mutual social assistance and environmental awareness. In contrast, internationally, the issue of economic inequality, etc., is particularly evident when comparing low-income, low-growth, developing, and early-stage manufacturing countries that produce low-level products. processing and application of technologies with countries where the level of production potential, equipping production processes with modern technologies, the level of technological development is the highest. Therefore, for the effective, sustainable economic development of the world and within the framework of international cooperation and solidarity, the scale of international economic cooperation and technology exchange should be developed. Therefore, the issue of international cooperation and technology exchange should also cover therapeutic therapies, including SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccines. Thanks to international cooperation, the global problem of the pandemic will be solved faster and more efficiently.
Best wishes,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
Direct health impact of social inequality on people is obvious in this pandemic:
-out of home propagation
Those who have physical occupations, in frontline sectors such as health, food logistics, hygiene, uninterruptible utilities and infrastructure services, have not been able to work from home, nor to stop working outside of their homes. They are therefore physically more exposed than anyone staying at home.
Many people in least favoured parts of society have such frontline jobs and duties.
-in home propagation
If you live in a household where at least one member has been contaminated, you would ideally need to self-isolate. A separate bathroom, a separate kitchen/food arrangement, and distance, no indoor mixing with others, would be required. However in least favoured parts of society and urban/suburban areas even for most people, this is simply not possible, the bathroom and kitchen is shared, the rooms are shared, the space is tight and doesn't allow for distanciation, ventilation, and contact limitations.
Propagation models illustrate how the virus is likely to spread (see my article on researchgate addressing households in lock-down and virus propagation. With some hypotheses, contamination within two days has probability 0.9!).
The above shows how social inequality increases the risk of contamination to least favoured parts of society.
Note that the above is not even touching the economic disadvantage increase, it is just addressing the health risk increase acceleration...
Dear @Shameemul Haque Yes, in the eventuality of any pandemic or disaster, widespread inequality becomes evident as everybody wants at first to safeguard his own interest by hook or by crook. In addition, the rampant corruption, mismanagement of the available resources and unaccountable bureaucracy and leadership add fuel to the fire.
The pandemic has cast a shadow over all the facilities of life, and this is a reality that we cannot deny ... I notice a phenomenon that has spread after the pandemic, and everyone around me is noticing it, the mood of people has changed a lot ... We notice even that our mood no longer allows communication with others as before. ... It may be due to the internet fatigue phenomenon that we suffer from due to performing our work via the internet ... In my opinion yes, dealing with the consequences of the pandemic may be much more difficult than dealing with the pandemic itself ... The waste left by the epidemic and in various fields has cast a shadow on the whole world, especially the economic side, which almost collapsed in many countries ... On the other hand, I see that this pandemic came as a blessing to many leaders and politicians because it gave them legitimacy in the allegations that they make about the financial deficit and the widespread corruption in their policies that led many from countries to the level of poverty ... In fact, even if the pandemic ends, very bad consequences will await us (economic, health, academic ...), and unfortunately, the most group that will suffer from these consequences are the poor and the needy people... With great regret.
Dear Shameemul Haque , thank you for sharing this excellent question.
I agree with Prof. Di Francesco and Prof.Manal Hadi Kanaan..
With kind regards...