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The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe

While everyone has been impacted directly or indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it, not everyone has been impacted in the same way and certainly not to the same degree. Media coverage in early 2020 emphasized the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic, and some even pred...

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Autores principales: Fiske, Amelia, Galasso, Ilaria, Eichinger, Johanna, McLennan, Stuart, Radhuber, Isabella, Zimmermann, Bettina, Prainsack, Barbara
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8648175/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34883310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114634
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author Fiske, Amelia
Galasso, Ilaria
Eichinger, Johanna
McLennan, Stuart
Radhuber, Isabella
Zimmermann, Bettina
Prainsack, Barbara
author_facet Fiske, Amelia
Galasso, Ilaria
Eichinger, Johanna
McLennan, Stuart
Radhuber, Isabella
Zimmermann, Bettina
Prainsack, Barbara
author_sort Fiske, Amelia
collection PubMed
description While everyone has been impacted directly or indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it, not everyone has been impacted in the same way and certainly not to the same degree. Media coverage in early 2020 emphasized the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic, and some even predicted that the virus could be a global “equalizer.” Ensuing debates over how the pandemic should be handled have often hinged on oppositions between protecting health and healthcare systems versus saving livelihoods and the economy, a dichotomy that we argue is false. Drawing on 482 interviews conducted in Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland and the UK over two points in a 6-month period as part of the ‘Solidarity in times of Pandemics Research Consortium’ (SolPan), we illustrate the ways that oppositions posed between saving lives or saving livelihoods fail to capture the entangled, long-standing nature of structural inequalities that have been revealed through the pandemic. Health- and wealth-related inequalities intersect to produce the “second pandemic,” a term used by a research participant to explain the other forms of devastation that run in parallel with virus. Our findings thus complicate such dichotomies through a qualitative understanding of the pandemic as a lived experience. The pandemic emerges as a critical juncture which, in exacerbating these existing structural inequalities, also poses an opportunity to work to better resolve them.
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spelling pubmed-86481752021-12-07 The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe Fiske, Amelia Galasso, Ilaria Eichinger, Johanna McLennan, Stuart Radhuber, Isabella Zimmermann, Bettina Prainsack, Barbara Soc Sci Med Article While everyone has been impacted directly or indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it, not everyone has been impacted in the same way and certainly not to the same degree. Media coverage in early 2020 emphasized the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic, and some even predicted that the virus could be a global “equalizer.” Ensuing debates over how the pandemic should be handled have often hinged on oppositions between protecting health and healthcare systems versus saving livelihoods and the economy, a dichotomy that we argue is false. Drawing on 482 interviews conducted in Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland and the UK over two points in a 6-month period as part of the ‘Solidarity in times of Pandemics Research Consortium’ (SolPan), we illustrate the ways that oppositions posed between saving lives or saving livelihoods fail to capture the entangled, long-standing nature of structural inequalities that have been revealed through the pandemic. Health- and wealth-related inequalities intersect to produce the “second pandemic,” a term used by a research participant to explain the other forms of devastation that run in parallel with virus. Our findings thus complicate such dichotomies through a qualitative understanding of the pandemic as a lived experience. The pandemic emerges as a critical juncture which, in exacerbating these existing structural inequalities, also poses an opportunity to work to better resolve them. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2022-01 2021-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8648175/ /pubmed/34883310 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114634 Text en © 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Fiske, Amelia
Galasso, Ilaria
Eichinger, Johanna
McLennan, Stuart
Radhuber, Isabella
Zimmermann, Bettina
Prainsack, Barbara
The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title_full The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title_fullStr The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title_full_unstemmed The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title_short The second pandemic: Examining structural inequality through reverberations of COVID-19 in Europe
title_sort second pandemic: examining structural inequality through reverberations of covid-19 in europe
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8648175/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34883310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114634
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