The Unequal Pandemic: COVID-19 and Health Inequalities

✍ Scribed by Clare Bambra; Julia Lynch; Katherine E. Smith

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 200
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Rated as a top 10 book about the COVID-19 pandemic by New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/07/best-books-about-covid-19-pandemic EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC- ND It has been claimed that we are ‘all in it together’ and that the COVID-19 virus ‘does not discriminate’. This accessible, yet authoritative book dispels this myth of COVID-19 as an ‘equal opportunity’ disease, by showing how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality. Drawing on international data and accounts, it argues that the pandemic is unequal in three ways: it has killed unequally, been experienced unequally and will impoverish unequally. These inequalities are a political choice: with governments effectively choosing who lives and who dies, we need to learn from COVID-19 quickly to prevent growing inequality and to reduce health inequalities in the future. COVID-19 is an unequal pandemic.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Cover
Endorsement
The Unequal Pandemic: COVID- 19 and Health Inequalities
Copyright information
Table of contents
List of figures and tables
About the authors
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface
ONE Introduction: perfect storm
COVID-19: the unequal pandemic
Health inequalities
Perfect storm: syndemic pandemic37
The rest of the book
Chapter Two, ‘Pale rider: pandemic inequalities’
Chapter Three, ‘Collateral damage: inequalities in the lockdown’
Chapter Four, ‘Pandemic precarity: inequalities in the economic crisis’
Chapter Five, ‘Pandemic politics: inequality through public policy’
Chapter Six, ‘Conclusion: health and inequality beyond COVID-19’
TWO Pale rider: pandemic inequalities
Introduction
An unequal pandemic
Deprivation and COVID-19
Occupational inequalities in COVID-19
Racial/ethnic inequalities in COVID-19
Intersectional inequalities in COVID-19
The ghost of pandemics past
The syndemic of COVID-19 and inequality71
Conclusion
THREE Collateral damage: inequalities in the lockdown
Introduction
Collateral health and wellbeing impacts
Collateral social and community impacts
Collateral employment, income and wealth impacts
Conclusion: reducing collateral damage through politics and policy
FOUR Pandemic precarity: inequalities in the economic crisis
Introduction
An unequal crisis
Recessions, health and inequality19
Lessons from the global financial crisis: social security nets matter
Conclusion
FIVE Pandemic politics: inequality through public policy
Syndemic pandemic: black swan, white swan, or grey rhino?
Three worlds of inequality
How political policy choices affected pandemic inequalities
Inequalities under lockdown
Variation in political and policy responses to the pandemic
Conclusion: pandemic politics
SIX Conclusion: health and inequality beyond COVID-19
Introduction
Trends in health inequalities: before and after COVID-19
Reducing health inequalities case study 1: German reunification in the 1990s11
Reducing health inequalities case study 2: English health inequalities strategy in the 2000s
Lessons for a post-COVID-19 future: policy
Lessons for a post-COVID-19 future: politics
Conclusion: hope in a time of COVID-19
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover