Pandemics are potentially very destructive phenomena, and for that reason, they both fascinate and frighten us. And because they are shot through with uncertainty, they often become sites of contestation and conflict. This book presents research on the 2009 pandemic and other public health crises in an attempt to describe and analyze the distinctive challenges that such diseases pose today. Thanks to vaccines, more reliable provision of medical services, more effective means of communication, and a more educated public, some argue we will not see a new Black Plague – or even Spanish Flu – in our time. Today we face new challenges, however, which can both enable diseases to reach pandemic scales and affect our ability to enact an appropriate response. Those include fragmentation of media, tribalization of “knowledge regimes,” the increasingly troubled status of scientific and political expertise, growing cross-continental mobility, as well as the globalization and commercialization of pandemic response systems. These distinctive complexities make the need to stage public action in response to pandemics and other public health crises a crucial problem, on which thousands of human lives hinge. This volume consists of a handful of social science and humanities studies of precisely such complexities, and thus offers a much-needed supplement to existing research on pandemics and pandemic response.

Research suggests that future influenza pandemics are inevitable as strains of the virus mutate in new ways. With this uncomfortable reality in mind, this book examines how the general public experienced the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus outbreak by bringing together stories about individuals' perception of their illness, as well as reflections on news, vaccination, social isolation, and other infection control measures. The book also charts the story-telling of public life, including the 'be alert, not alarmed' messages from the beginning of the outbreak through to the narratives that emerged later when the virus turned out to be less serious than initially thought. Providing unprecedented insight into the lives of ordinary people faced with the specter of a potentially lethal virus and drawing on currents in sociocultural scholarship of narrative, illness narrative, and narrative medicine, Pandemics, Publics, and Narrative develops a novel 'public health narrative' approach of interest to health communicators and researchers across the social and health sciences.

Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.

This book looks at the institutional and governance issues faced by India during the first and second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse impact on the vulnerable sectors and groups. The book is split into four parts, with preceding chapters informing later ones. Part One outlines the approach of the study, in particular their examination of policy responses and the effect of the pandemic. Part Two delves into the governance challenges in containing the pandemic while giving the theoretical rationale for institutional responses. Part Three looks at how the pandemic affected economically vulnerable households, workers, and small industries. The effect of pandemic on the informal sector is also detailed. Lastly, Part Four examines the impacts and responses of Indian public infrastructure and services to the pandemic, in particular the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care and schooling. It also explores the challenges caused by infrastructure inadequacies in Indian cities. The book closes by looking at how businesses in the private sector have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on Corporate Social Responsibility. The book will be a useful reference to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who are interested in institutions and development, especially in the context of India.

The destruction of the Covid-19 pandemic has marked every society with deep-seated wounds whose scars have only begun to heal. Yet, even as societies take their first steps away from the trauma of the pandemic, they confront new and perhaps equally daunting challenges in the post-Covid era. These challenges offer a unique occasion to consider how the mechanisms of public value (PV) creation and preservation can be rebuilt and improved, mindful of what has been left in the pandemic’s wake, and of the difficult road that lies ahead. The aim of this book, then, is to examine the forward-looking possibilities of multi-stakeholder value co-creation, which involves the renewed efforts of civil society, public managers, politicians, and society-at-large in a new post-pandemic era. The book examines many different facets that appeal deeply to public value scholarship: value stability & transitions, inequalities within & between publics, necropolitics, disaster preparedness, value measurement, and sustainability, all of which represent important explorations within public value theory, and can greatly enrich PV research going forward. This book will therefore be of use to both academics and practitioners of public administration and public policy, as well as scholars of government, health care policy, and economics.

In Understanding American COVID-19 Pandemic Beliefs, Behaviors, Politics, and Society, Herbert C. Covey presents an overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted American society. He proposes that the social and political contexts leading up to and during the pandemic fueled differing and sometimes opposing attitudes and behaviors. Some Americans saw COVID-19 as a dangerous threat while others dismissed it as overblown. Covey observes that these divergent views occurred in a vacuum but were influenced by various political, historical, cultural, psychological, and social factors. He argues that Americans’ social perceptions of the pandemic were affected by the unpredictability of the virus, erosion of trust in science and institutions, degradation of the news by biased news sources and social media, loss of critical thinking skills, denialism, truth decay, high emotions, racism, and unprecedented politicization of the pandemic. In addition, the susceptibility of some Americans to COVID-19 rumors, myths, misinformation, and conspiracies led them to make poor health decisions resulting in more severe cases of COVID-19 or, in some cases, death. The book includes data from numerous national surveys to document American beliefs and behaviors related to the pandemic. Finally, the author shows how these beliefs have led to protests, conspiracies, and social movements regarding pandemic responses.

What does public health have to do with Christianity? How should Christians and churches in Atlantic Canada and beyond respond to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic? In this first volume of East Coast Theology, the faculty of Acadia Divinity College reflect biblically and theologically on these questions. Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health for Nova Scotia, offers his insights as well. This book provides church members and leaders with theological foundations and practical ideas for ministering through health care. As a result, we hope that followers of Christ will be at the forefront of efforts for relief and healing on Canada’s East Coast both today and in the future. As people called by God to care for others, our vision should be nothing less than this.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a host of critical reflections about discourse practises dealing with public health issues. Situating crisis communication at the centre of societal and political debates about responses to the pandemic, this volume analyses the discursive strategies used in a variety of settings. Exploring how crisis discourse has become a part of managing the public health crisis itself, this book focuses on the communicative tasks and challenges for both speakers and their public audiences in seven areas: - establishment of discursive and political authority - official governmental and expert communication to the public - public understanding of government communication - legitimation of public health management as a 'war' - judging and blaming a collective other - cross-national comparison and rivalry - empathy and encouragement Covering global discourses from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, and New Zealand, chapters use corpus-based data to cast light on these issues from a variety of languages. With crisis discourse already the object of fierce national and international debates about the appropriateness of specific communicative styles, information management and 'verbal hygiene', Pandemic and Crisis Discourse offers an authoritative intervention from language experts.

The book examines the impact of COVID-19 on economic and political processes, contending that the global reaction to the pandemic has been the largest failure in scientific policy in a generation. Unlike earlier crises, it has impacted the world's leading economies while also paralyzing international ties, provoking diverse and far-reaching reactions. The authors posit that no effective global response has been launched in response to this global catastrophe. Rather, governments have implemented a variety of policies based on the costs of virus protection against financial closure and isolation. In doing so, there has been a resurgence in nationalism. This book aims to provide comprehensive understanding of how the pandemic has widened political gaps, and demarcates what the long-term consequences might be in terms of policies and economics in the wake of the pandemic. Of interest to scholars in political geography, development studies, international relations, public administration, and health science, this book presents key observations on existing theories of global politics pivoted around the COVID-19 pandemic, and its ramifications on individuals, groups, and ultimately, the nation state.