Researching the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Blueprint for the Social Sciences 9781447362319

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Researching the COVID-​19 Pandemic A Critical Blueprint for the Social Sciences Daniel Briggs, Anthony Ellis, Anthony Lloyd and Luke Telford

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by   Policy Press University of Bristol 1-​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 pp-​[email protected] www.policypress.co.uk   © Bristol University Press 2021   British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library   ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​6231-​9  ePdf ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​6230-​2  ePub   The right of Daniel Briggs, Anthony Ellis, Anthony Lloyd and Luke Telford to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved:  no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.

In memory of the future?

Contents

List of figures and tables  vii Acknowledgements  ix Foreword  xi 1

Apocalypse then:  The world pre-​COVID-​19 and the state of the social sciences  1 2 Viral Armageddon: The spread and impact of COVID-​19  17 3 Apocalypse now: The (desk-​based) scramble for knowledge  37 4 Studying the COVID-​19 pandemic as it happens  51 5 Apocalyptic futures: An appeal to the social sciences  107 Notes  125 References  127

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Figures and tables

Figures 1

Now the vaccine is available, do you think life will return to normal? (Phase 3 sample)  105

Tables 1 2

Phase of study and methods utilised  53 Phase 2 data statements regarding the COVID-​19 pandemic situation in the ‘new normal’  89 3 Over the last three months, do you think any of the following measures assisted in reducing COVID-​19 infection rates? (Phase 2 sample)  100 4 Which one of the below statements reflects how you feel about COVID-​19 now? (Phase 3 sample)  102 5 How would you describe your interest in COVID-​19 now? (Phase 2 and 3 samples)  103 6 Should people show proof of vaccine to be able to …? (Phase 3 sample)  104

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Acknowledgements

We are firstly indebted to all the participants in our study who total over 2,000 people from 59 different countries around the world. Not only did they take the time to complete our online surveys but some even consented to Zoom-​call interviews. We have since made friends with many different people from all over the world, from countries as far away as Chile and China to Finland and France, from New Zealand to Nigeria and from Russia to Romania. Secondly, we are grateful for all the support from our publishers, Policy Press, who have from day one believed in our project. In particular, we extend our thanks to Victoria Pitman, Bahar Celik Muller and Lorna Blackmore. Thirdly, we are grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for taking time to consider and make comments on our proposed idea which has now become a reality. Lastly, we thank you –​the reader. There was a reason why you came across this book so we hope not to disappoint.

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Foreword

It was quite surreal, looking back. The first whispers of a new and deadly disease emerging from Wuhan in China at the tail end of 2019 were easy to ignore. But as time passed and it became clear that we were witnessing a global pandemic, and that many all over the world would die, it was impossible to look away from the media as I struggled to get a handle on what it all meant. I remember very clearly the day Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, told us to return home and remain there. The rhythms of everyday life came immediately to an end. News of panic buying worried me slightly, as did the daily figure of Covid-​related deaths. Like many people, I assume, my thoughts turned to my elderly mother and father. Older people, we were told, were the principal victims. As time passed, I became more sceptical and returned to my role as a critical social scientist. But those first days will live long in my memory. We were living through a moment of profound importance, and for many people it quickly became clear that things would never be the same again. For some, things got easier. Billionaires quickly increased their already obscene wealth, and the professional middle classes have generally benefitted from working from home, rising property prices and the new expectation that everything can be delivered quickly to one’s door. But for many others, things got a lot harder. Ethnic minorities appear to have disproportionately suffered Covid-​related deaths. Those trapped in inadequate housing suffered greatly during lockdowns. Poorly paid service workers were revealed as an unacknowledged and underappreciated force upon which we all depend. Some were trapped in a confined space with an abusive partner. Reliance on alcohol appears to have increased. And our xi

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withdrawal from social life has exacerbated many existing problems while also creating new ones. Many illnesses have been left untreated as our national healthcare systems have been refocused on COVID or moved online. Before COVID struck, anxiety was already a corrosive and ubiquitous malady, and with lockdowns things got quickly worse. From quite early in the crisis, it was possible to discern the gradual alteration of the global political economy. For the most part, these changes were unclear and failed to stir a significant popular discussion as the entire national conversation remained firmly focused upon the pandemic. A retreat from neoliberal globalism seemed inevitable. There was, in many Western nations, an acknowledgement of the great need to bolster national and local supply chains. There was also talk of a Green New Deal and a Fourth Industrial Revolution. In Britain, the Conservative government had rediscovered the magic money tree, lost in 2008 after the then Labour government had bailed out the sprawling banking sector, prompting a decade or more of destructive, selfish and economically illiterate austerity. The Conservative government’s furlough programme was a lifeline for some, and –​especially when coupled with clear signs of infrastructural investment and talk of freeports, blue hydrogen plants, new high-​tech battery factories, and so on –​indicated established conventions had been ditched and a new national conservatism was in development. All of these issues, and a great many more, need to be unpacked, contextualised and explained. In many respects, what we need now is a new social science of the post-​COVID world. The world has changed, and our disciplines must respond. New ruptures and antagonisms are opening up on the field of culture. New forms of harm are emerging, some of which affect particular populations and some of which weigh heavily upon us all. To illuminate this transformed world, we need new ideas and stringent empirical data. The dead ideas of the old world are of little use to us, and we must push past the cloying sensitivities of established academic elites and forge ahead with a determinedly new and unsympathetic account of the world as it is now. This work, by Briggs, Ellis, Lloyd and Telford, opens the door onto this new world. While many

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social scientists were, like me, floundering around unsure of what it all meant and trying to get a clear sense of where the pandemic would take us, Briggs et al were, in a very clear-​ sighted manner, doing what needed to be done:  they were beginning to gather empirical data about a world in flux. Instead of thinking about how the pandemic would affect them personally and professionally, they displayed a noble dedication to their craft. I hope many others will follow their lead. Simon Winlow 17 May 2021

1 Apocalypse then The world pre-​COVID-​19 and the state of the social sciences In the final days of 2019, reports emerged from Wuhan in China that a new strain of coronavirus (SARS-​ CoV-​ 2, or COVID-​ 19) had been detected. Within weeks it became apparent that asymptomatic human-​to-​human transmission was possible and that a major pandemic could be about to unfold. According to the World Health Organization (2021), by late April 2021, over 150 million people worldwide had been infected with COVID-​19 and over 3.1 million deaths had been attributed to the disease. In the intervening period, day-​to-​day life changed so dramatically for people around the world that it is hardly controversial to suggest that the COVID-​19 pandemic represents the most significant event since the Second World War. While the extent and nature of nation states’ responses to the pandemic have varied, most societies have undertaken social distancing measures; adopted the use of face coverings; imposed national lockdowns; and forced businesses to close, which collectively have had a considerable impact upon social life. Nation states have been required to intervene in their respective economies on a scale that is without precedent in recent history through the offering of loans, tax relief and furlough schemes to cover a proportion of workers’ salaries. At the onset of the pandemic, supply chains failed, in the UK there were accusations of government corruption in the procurement of essential services, while surveillance technologies, such as test and trace apps, have proliferated and expanded. Workers –​who were able to do so –​have had to shift to online working and with the closure of schools, colleges and university campuses, so have many children and young people, positioning domestic dwellings as the epicentre of work, familial and social life for many. Debates surrounding 1

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responses to COVID-​19 have become increasingly polarised over the course of the pandemic: anti-​lockdown protests have taken place in several states, while some politicians and scientists have highlighted the various dangers of some of the measures taken to reduce transmission. Indeed, societal responses to the pandemic have engendered a range of unintended harms, such as reported increases in domestic violence, child abuse, unemployment, heightened anxiety, mental health problems and suicide, and have meant other life-​threatening diseases have gone undiagnosed and untreated. These represent just some of the issues to emerge from the global pandemic and which are likely to have a significant role in shaping the contours of the post-​pandemic era. In this short book, we offer a critical analysis of the world into which COVID-​ 19 arrived, the world COVID-​ 19 has created and some speculation on the future. As social scientists –​people who are interested in the study of human society and relationships –​we believe our disciplines should be at the forefront of making sense of these seismic changes, utilising appropriate methods and emerging theories to offer comprehensive and credible accounts. Therefore, part of this book will turn its attention to the social science academy and consider perspectives on COVID-​ 19 from disciplines such as anthropology, economics and management, history, human services, political science, psychology, sociology and criminology. If we argue that neoliberal market-​based governance was ill-​equipped to deal with a pandemic, we also argue that academia faces its own challenges and requires a theoretical and methodological stock-​take if the social sciences are to offer guidance or understanding on the world’s various social crises. While the academy has become corporatised and market-​driven in a way that has reshaped both what we do and how we think, there has never been a more important time for social scientists to be good at what they do. Here, we offer a full-​throated critique, but also offer what we hope are useful suggestions for ways forward. When the pandemic struck Europe and its implications became clear, the four of us mobilised to both collect data in unfamiliar ways and to question our assumptions about the world we thought we knew. We challenged our existing

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theoretical frameworks and sought new ideas to make sense of what we saw emerging. We recalled how capitalism has mutated in the past and scrutinised political-​economic and cultural horizons to try to make sense of where we were going. In these pages, we present data from the various online surveys, Zoom interviews, traditional ethnographic observations and social media interactions we have undertaken since the start of the pandemic. We also offer our reflections on what this means specifically for social science and the world in general, drawing on old and new ideas. But first, this introductory chapter will take us back to the world before COVID-​19 (if we can remember those days) to consider its challenges and opportunities, and the role of social science.

The world B.C. (Before COVID)

For much of the West, a particularly virulent strain of neoliberal market-​ based capitalism had already reached an endemic state having been in circulation within its population for four decades (Harvey, 2005; Peck, 2010). While definitions of neoliberalism vary (Cahill et al, 2018), there is agreement that the primacy of market principles, the sovereignty of private property and the notion of ‘freedom’ are core aspects (Harvey, 2005). This builds on the foundational liberal belief in individual freedom (Berlin, 1969; Siedentop, 2015) and creates a Left–​ Right consensus whereby cultural freedoms are espoused by the Left and economic freedoms are the preserve of the Right (Hall and Winlow, 2015). After the Thatcher–​Reagan rightward turn in the 1980s signalled the installation of neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideological force in the West (Harvey, 2005), the subsequent adoption of neoliberalism by centre-​left parties including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s Democrats, Tony Blair’s New Labour and Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique en Marche indicated the synthesis of cultural and individual freedoms with market forces (Harvey, 2010). The power of both this ideological message and political-​economic force, but also the various ‘crises’ that emerged during its reign, generated significant critiques (Dupuy, 2014; Streeck, 2016; Mitchell and Fazi,

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2017; Pabst, 2018). Regardless, the neoliberal variant of capitalism has seemed impervious to challenges, leaving some critics to suggest the emergence of ‘capitalist realism’ among the citizenry (Fisher, 2009):  a negative ideological belief whereby it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Such critical accounts of the system have proliferated in the last decade and a half, further evidencing the role this variant of capitalism had in generating many of the challenges now facing humanity (Stiegler, 2013; Dupuy, 2014; Dorling, 2015; Streeck, 2016; Atkinson, 2020). Although the ideological coherence of neoliberalism frayed considerably in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis (Mirowski, 2013; Streeck, 2016; Winlow et al, 2017) and despite persistent criticisms, the system remained intractably resistant to fundamental change; it continued to promote market solutions to a variety of problems. To date, there seems no cure. Additionally, consumer spending is promoted both as economic necessity and the source of individual satisfaction. On an economic level, neoliberalism was associated with the promotion of global markets, competition, the efficiency of the private sector, and the retrenchment of the state. Slobodian (2019) and Mitchell and Fazi (2017) cogently argue that the state did not diminish under neoliberalism, but instead reoriented towards a market-​ support role offering institutional and military capability to facilitate its growth and spread. The expansion of ‘free’ trade, the belief in private property (including intellectual property and copyright) and the valorisation of individual achievement aligns with classical liberal principles (Zevin, 2019). Free movement of capital and goods across national borders became a common-​sense understanding of markets and globalisation: as elemental as the wind (Harvey, 2010). While the financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated the limits of neoliberal ideology and the inadequacy of the macro-​ economic tools at the disposal of politicians and economists wedded to a free market philosophy, the post-​crash period saw little deviation from this established norm. Inequality in the West grew exponentially since it restored the balance of power in favour of capital and markets, wrestling it away from labour and democracy (Piketty, 2014; Dorling,

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2015; Streeck, 2016). Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) wrote that in this period societies with higher levels of inequality also demonstrated more problematic outcomes across a range of measures including health, life expectancy, obesity, happiness, crime, violence, education and employment. The Gini Coefficient, one of the global measures of income inequality, had the UK and US at the wrong end of the table, with only a handful of countries around the world more unequal (OECD, 2021). By 2020, the richest 10% in the UK possessed 50% more income than the poorest 40% (ONS, 2020). Meanwhile, the income gap in the US not only grew over the last four decades, but only those in the top 20% regained lost income following the global financial crisis (Horowitz et al, 2020). While ‘Alpha Cities’ (Atkinson, 2020) such as London and New York open their doors to the super rich who also benefit from tax havens (Shaxson, 2012), millions rely on food banks (Garthwaite, 2016), precarious forms of employment (Lloyd, 2018) and suffer the crushing weight of downward mobility, poverty and deprivation (Standing, 2014). Despite the ideological rhetoric of social mobility and meritocracy, the ‘class ceiling’ remains in place (Friedman and Laurison, 2019). The contradictions between the reality of the financial crisis, unemployment, low growth, austerity and public sector cuts and the message of meritocracy, freedom and opportunity thus became increasingly more obvious. In the lexicon of Jacques Lacan, the Symbolic Order of ideology, the narrative that provides the subject with a coherent understanding of the world and their place within it, no longer holds for many (Hall and Winlow, 2015). Many of the poorest in our societies were living in the shadow of capitalism’s Real, working in gig economy or zero-​hour jobs, laid off due to austerity cuts, and struggling to get on the housing ladder or maintain mortgage payments (Lloyd, 2018). Poorer groups were becoming confined to neighbourhoods and housing estates characterised by poverty and deprivation (Shildrick et al, 2012). Some were facing increasingly nihilistic and problematic violence (Ellis, 2016), struggling with physical and mental ill health and addiction (Quinones, 2015; Briggs and Gamero, 2017). Meanwhile, the global elite continued

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to conspicuously flaunt wealth, status and power (Atkinson, 2020). Advertising, social media and the wider ideology of consumer capitalism not only invokes images of the consuming life as a ‘good life’ but serves to instil a ‘fear of missing out’ in increasingly anxiety-​ridden, precarious subjects searching for meaning, satisfaction and enjoyment (Hall et al, 2008). This consumer spectacle and hedonistic enjoyment represents a break from both the drudgery of work and the insecurity to which many have been subjected (Winlow and Hall, 2009; Briggs and Ellis, 2017; Raymen and Smith, 2019). However, as the post-​ crash period continued with the resumption of ‘business as usual’, political dissatisfaction grew. Financial markets doubled down on risky profit-​seeking while in austerity-​ravaged Europe and the US the working class slid further into oblivion (Winlow et al, 2015; Frank, 2016; Telford and Wistow, 2020). As austerity combined with sluggish economic growth and continued profits for the wealthy, the ‘neoliberal consensus’ broke down and some commentators argued that we had entered an ‘interregnum’, offering variations on the Gramscian notion that the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, into which a great variety of morbid symptoms appear (Winlow et al, 2017). Political dissatisfaction grew significantly in the last decade pre-​COVID-​19, leading to what some have described as an anti-​establishment revolt (Mitchell and Fazi, 2017), manifesting in the return of nationalism to the world stage (Babones, 2018; Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018; Lind, 2020). Across both the Left and the Right, an apparent desire for something beyond the centrist liberal global elite took precedence. This was evidenced in the election of Donald Trump in the US, the UK vote to leave the European Union, the popularity of socialist politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, a considerable surge in support for right-​wing parties such as Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, and the gilet-​jaunes protests in France (Winlow et al, 2015; Mitchell and Fazi, 2017). Myriad explanations emanated from politicians, journalists and social scientists for what was frequently referred to

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as the resurgence of nationalism (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018), populism (Winlow et al, 2015), fascism (Traverso, 2019), racism (Bhambra, 2017) and authoritarianism (Babones, 2018). Space prevents us from recapitulating these arguments in detail but analysis of voting patterns, exit polls, surveys and qualitative research studies demonstrated that no single causal explanation accounts for this political shift, and that political discontent and dissatisfaction were rooted in historical socioeconomic and cultural developments (Telford and Lloyd, 2020). For some, Brexit, Trump and the rise of the Right must be understood in relation to histories of imperialism and colonialism and their impact upon the present (Bhambra, 2017). For others, the rise of a nationalist or populist sentiment emerged from decades of being ‘left out’ or ‘left behind’ (McKenzie, 2017) and the misrecognition of the true source of both socioeconomic and cultural upheaval (Winlow et al, 2017). With reference to Europe, specifically the withering reputation of the European Union (EU), Lapavitsas (2019) points to a democratic deficit and a shift in favour of capital, which induced a deep sense of powerlessness among workers. Similarly, for others Brexit and Trump represented an opportunity to ‘take control’ away from neoliberal elites from both sides of the political spectrum who had long since abandoned the people of the north-​east of England or the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky (Frank, 2016; Telford and Wistow, 2020). The crisis of political representation in the West emerges from within the contradictions of liberal democracy and market capitalism. This political disintegration is exemplified within and exacerbated by the pending challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Prior to COVID-​19, most critics, commentators and social scientists would probably have identified climate change as the most important and potentially epoch-​ shaping event on the horizon. The increasing clamour for action around environmental degradation and climate change has moved from the scientific community into the political sphere, culminating in the Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2015), which committed 195 countries to a global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable

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development. However, in line with the prevailing political polarisation, the US under President Trump withdrew from the Paris accords under the rationale of US exceptionalism and climate denial. The Paris Agreement, along with the acknowledgement by Western countries that climate change represents not just a societal threat but also a national security problem, demonstrates the severity of the issue. On one level, climate change and rising temperatures represent threats to biodiversity, water supplies, weather, sea levels and agriculture (White and Heckenberg, 2014). On another level, climate change is a human story. Briggs (2020) notes how climate change represented a significant factor in the mass migration of people across the world, particularly from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe. Parenti (2011) argues that climate change ‘arrives in a world primed for crisis’ (7), as it interacts with poverty, weak failing states and the legacy of Cold-​War militarism. Tackling climate change on a global level created conflict and tension between post-​industrial consumer societies such as Western Europe and the US, and rapidly industrialising nations such as China, India and Brazil (Briggs, 2020). While the West argued that emissions and industrial pollution must be reduced to tackle climate change, newly industrialising countries make reasonable points about economic competition and the hypocrisy of countries responsible for a century of emissions. Meanwhile, focus on consumer behaviour, particularly in advanced Western societies, identified the waste and carbon footprint associated with consumer lifestyles (Smart, 2010), while international tourism accounted for significant carbon emissions (Smith, 2019). The exhortation to reduce our personal consumption and live within our means became more prominent but stood in contrast to an ideological commitment to individual freedom and the pleasures attached to consumerism (Hall et al, 2008). However, capitalism promised market solutions through the development of new and innovative forms of technology (Klein, 2014) and geoengineering (Buck, 2019). Accordingly, technological developments such as solar geoengineering or carbon capture promised to repair and

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preserve a damaged climate without fundamentally altering our attachment to capitalism. Technological solutions to climate change indicate the growing influence of digital technology and artificial intelligence across much of the world (Ford, 2015; Zuboff, 2018). Technology has always been at the centre of capitalism; but the quantum leap offered by digital and nano technology over recent decades raise significant sociological questions about jobs and labour markets (Ford, 2015), crime control and surveillance (Zuboff, 2018), friendships, intimacy and sociality (Turkle, 2011), health, care and wellbeing (Cederstrom, 2018), and the control and use of data (Beer, 2016). Using technology to ensure sustainability became a central part of urban design and regeneration (World Economic Forum, 2018). The world before COVID-​ 19 saw technology engender huge changes to the way we live our lives as well as pointing towards the future. So much so that the neoliberal elites of the World Economic Forum posited a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ that would harness the developments in technology and artificial intelligence to generate a structural shift on par with deindustrialisation in Europe and the US throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). When rumours of a new and dangerous virus emerged in late 2019, the Western world was already experiencing polarisation along several lines and expanding inequality. The pandemic rendered more visible this inequality, the limits of neoliberalism and opened up the possibility for social change (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). Making sense of the implications of these trends, developments and shifts, though, was not easy and social scientists within the academy had an important role in this endeavour. While often vocally critical of the hegemony of neoliberalism, the academy had itself become ensnared in neoliberal principles of marketisation and profit maximisation. As a result, it increasingly reflected what Munch (2014) referred to as ‘academic capitalism’, which was gradually transforming the nature of academic life and work.

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The university as a neoliberal institution

The changes wrought by neoliberalism documented in the previous section infiltrated various sectors, organisations and institutions across the UK, US and Europe. Higher education was no different and the neoliberalisation of the academy (Giroux, 2014; Blacker, 2015) had several effects, not least on the role of academic researchers in the social sciences (Winlow and Hall, 2012). The concept of ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie, 2001; Munch, 2014; Jessop, 2018) posited that the modern university adopted principles of neoliberal capitalism to become an economic entity, driven by income generation, maximising revenue streams and economic competition. In the UK, this is visible in teaching through the tuition fee increases enacted in the UK by the coalition government in 2011 and the removal of caps on student numbers, which created an ‘internal market’ whereby institutions compete for undergraduates. The neoliberalisation of the university also came with linguistic changes around ‘value for money’ and customer service, which has had profound implications for students who, perhaps understandably, believe they are buying a service. To ensure value for money and quality service, a range of nationally and locally imposed metrics are utilised to measure ‘student satisfaction’, teaching excellence, student retention, graduate outcomes and quality of degree classification. The university as a revenue-​generating entity increasingly acted as a business and was required to annually secure and grow its customer base to survive in a competitive market measured by national league tables (see Cribb and Gewirtz, 2013). At the time, for academics, this meant satisfying both employer and customer with an array of administrative tasks, marketing activities, pastoral care and support, classroom teaching, grant applications, publications, as well as striving for ‘real-​world’ impact. This placed significant demands on time that were often prioritised over research and scholarship, funnelling researchers into constrained forms of funded research to advance careers. The ‘income generation’ agenda pervaded discussions of research, with academic time increasingly only allotted to

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research activity where external funding is provided. Academic research was recast through a corporate or governmental lens whereby funding priorities established intense competition to study discrete and preordained challenges or issues, often at the expense of individual research interests and agendas (Edwards, 2020), or even those most pressing to society like myriad forms of social and economic marginalisation (Briggs and Monge, 2017; Briggs 2020). The landscape for research funding, particularly in the social sciences, became both extremely narrow and highly competitive. Moreover, researchers were encouraged to maximise their human capital and act as entrepreneurial academics, building a ‘brand’ through high-​ profile projects, social media and media appearances, thus building personal kudos (Briggs et al, 2018). As with teaching, all of this is measured and quantified by ‘impact’: what ‘impact’ does a research project or output have on the issue addressed? This often directs academics towards collaborative projects with external stakeholders such as government, local authorities, the NHS or criminal justice agencies. Of course, this work can be hugely beneficial and generate findings and recommendations that make real and lasting change. However, the funding requirement for research often forces researchers into competition to convince a stakeholder that more can be delivered with a minimal contribution from the funder. Much of this landscape is skewed according to the economic, social and cultural dominance of elite institutions who have the reputation, resource and track record to chase large research grants. Within the social sciences, the demand for research impact also affected the methodological choices of researchers who increasingly favour quantitative methods (Armstrong, 2020). The requirement for quantifiable success to demonstrate impact and meet a range of metrics creates a pressure to prioritise quantity over quality, which often means eschewing the longer-​ term, in-​ depth qualitative or ethnographic research that may produce a fascinating account of cultures and experiences but reduces the speed at which projects and publications can be completed (Armstrong, 2020). The problem of favouring quantitative methods can be highlighted through research undertaken on the international ‘crime

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decline’ (see Kotzé, 2019). Indeed, research into the crime decline often indicated a dramatic drop in recorded crime over the last two decades (van Dijk, 2010; Tonry, 2014) and was, at times, cited by politicians, particularly in the UK, as a justification for cuts or restructuring programmes affecting frontline policing (BBC, 2014). The claims of a consistent decline in crime rates are based on surveys such as the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS), which asks about specific crimes in specific countries and has repeatedly failed to address mutations in criminal markets (Kotzé, 2019). In his qualitative research, Kotzé’s (2019) respondents, living in deprived and crime-​ridden neighbourhoods, openly laughed at the suggestion of a crime decline. So, how we research the social world informs our findings, but institutional pressure to produce impactful and quality research can frame our methodological choices. Further methodological choices also shape research outputs. Buzzwords and phrases such as ‘co-​production’ took centre stage in research agendas and indicated the inclusion of stakeholders and beneficiaries in a project from the beginning, helping to set objectives and shape the project’s direction according to stakeholder need and undertake elements of the research (Newbury-​Birch et al, 2016). This aligned with the impact agenda as stakeholders shaped the research from the outset to address a particular problem or challenge they faced. Once the project offered a recommendation and helped enact positive change, impact was achieved. On the surface this is fine, but it is limited, and to address this we must return to methodological choices and the epistemological and ontological foundations of social research. Co-​ production is ultimately a positivist method in that it assumes a quantifiable and identifiable reality that can be empirically verified; a critical realist perspective recognises multiple ‘domains of reality’ that include an actual realm of experiences, an empirical realm of events, and a Real that exists beyond observation (Bhaskar, 2008). The domain of the real is an intransitive realm beyond empirical verification but includes the depth structures of ideology and political economy. In this sense, there arguably remains a role for the researcher to seek findings and analysis beyond the narrow

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context of stakeholder need. However, co-​produced funding bids that include research objectives designed to analyse the oppressive structures of neoliberalism are unlikely to win approval. We are not saying there is no value in co-​produced research; rather, our claim is that income generation and impact agendas inherently favour certain types of research and increasingly push out others that should still be valued within the academy. These types of research also have significant potential in developing our understanding of social, cultural, political and economic conditions. Finally, academia has been shaped by more than just neoliberal imperatives for profit, growth and competition. Academic activism has grown in recent decades and is underpinned by the principle that research and scholarship should work in the service of equality and social justice (Rhodes et al, 2018). Sociology, in particular, is imbued by the political movements of the 1960s and the postmodern critique of universalism to focus attention on issues of power, discourse and identification (Lloyd, 2018). Often, this has manifested in scholarly activism in the fields of gender, race and ethnicity, and sexuality, identifying the social construction of power dynamics and oppressive structures that serve to discriminate against groups (Pluckrose and Lindsay, 2020). Following Marx, their aim is not to explain the world, but to change it. This relies on a set of theoretical assumptions largely derived from the post-​structuralist and postmodernist canon; ‘reality’ as we know it is contestable, truth is relative, and society is formed by systems of power and hierarchy that, in a political sense, must be undermined and dismantled. This creates not only a research agenda but a worldview; activist academics often approach their subjects with the implicit knowledge that power structures exist and therefore oppress particular groups in a confirmation bias that justifies their continued political engagement. Ideas that challenge this orthodoxy are accused of representing and reproducing the very structures challenged by academic activism, in a feedback loop that proves the activists right. The objective search for an understanding of ‘reality’ in an ontological sense is impossible when scholarly activism is underpinned by a belief that there is no objective reality, only socially constructed ‘perspectives’

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and ‘standpoints’ from which to view power, discourse and oppression. Within other disciplines, such as criminology, academic activism is present in themes such as convict criminology (Aresti and Darke, 2016) and, more generally, a Left-​liberal aversion to the state and functions of the criminal justice system. Ideologically, politically and theoretically, social science disciplines are often in opposition to the state and its criminal justice agencies and in its extreme voices call for defunding the police or prison abolition (Brown and Schept, 2017), often without a careful and objective analysis of what that might look like in reality. Pre-​COVID-​19, sociological and criminological research also continued to be underpinned by theoretical frameworks that were increasingly resistant to challenge or critique (Hall, 2012). The social world within which we exist, outlined in the previous section, was one significantly different to that of previous generations. Few disputed this. Yet, sociology continued to rely on a handful of theorists –​Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Goffman, Bourdieu, Foucault, Butler –​to make sense of that world. Criminology continued to draw on labelling theory, strain theory and moral panics. While those theories represent important and valid attempts to explain different times, they were arguably becoming increasingly ill-​suited to explain our current juncture (Horsley, 2017) and the range of issues emerging contemporarily (see Ellis, 2019). Even ‘radical’ perspectives such as the Left-​realism of the 1980s (Lea and Young, 1993), which did much to ground criminology in ‘reality’, have ossified into rigid beliefs that cannot be challenged. Recent attempts to kick-​ start criminological inertia in the study of aetiology (Hall and Winlow, 2015) were beaten back by a praetorian guard less interested in theoretical development than protecting the citadel of accepted wisdom. Furthermore, pre-​COVID-​19, it was suggested that social scientists had increasingly favoured cultural issues to the neglect of political economy (Hall, 2012; Streeck, 2016). Journalist Aditya Chakrabortty (2012) made a similar point when he questioned why no sociologists had predicted the 2008 financial crisis. This point is not made with the intention of diminishing the importance of addressing such issues (see also Mitchell and Fazi, 2017), but a critical understanding of how

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the economic system works is vital to social science research (Horsley, 2015). Similarly, new developments in economics and how that might address or impact upon our chosen areas of study (see, for example, Kelton, 2020) represent important lines of potential inquiry. We do not suggest that all sociological and criminological theory is redundant, or that there is no value to some of the ideas currently at the heart of these disciplines. Our contention is that a degree of inertia has come to characterise these disciplines and what is vital is dialectical movement to find new ways to make sense of the reality we face: one that draws on our traditions but is also not afraid to consult other disciplines and, importantly, new ideas. We must be open to new ideas and insights from cognate disciplines, and to dispense with ideas that are potentially no longer suited to the world we live in. This brief discussion highlights, for us, some of the most significant features of the Western world and the social sciences prior to the outbreak of the COVID-​19 pandemic. We suggest that COVID-​19 provides an opportunity for the social sciences to reinvigorate its historic mission to make sense of the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. In the remainder of this short book, we attempt to do this. In the next chapter, we present an outline of events from January 2020 onwards and situate our narrative by considering this global reconfiguration and the political and public health decisions taken across the world. We consider what these changes mean in a context of power conglomeration, the multiplication of wealth for sections of the global elite and the swelling pool of the world’s poor. Chapter 3 will expand upon some of our points in relation to a desk-​based scramble for knowledge. We offer an account of the emergent academic literature on COVID-​19; the opportunities some see for a newly configured social order; and the challenges some identify in terms of attachment to existing ideological structures. We also raise some important questions about the process of undertaking research during the pandemic and the sources of knowledge and information that social scientists have been able to draw upon. Chapter 4 outlines some of our empirical findings. We demonstrate how our research emerged in response to the crisis

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and how we attempted to gather experiences of lockdown and the subsequent impact of each wave of restrictions. We have tried to do this on a global scale, utilising the considerable reach of the internet to cast our data-​gathering tools as far as possible. We appreciate this represents an ambitious approach and acknowledge that in this short book we are not able to address fully the various cultural and historical conditions of all societies in which our participants were based. Furthermore, we appreciate that there will be important variations in how the pandemic interacted with national conditions and histories, and we consider this to be just one of the many tasks to be undertaken in the future to understand the complexity of this global pandemic. Ultimately, though, similarities in experience can be discerned across societies and this chapter attempts to express some of the macro and micro-​level detail on how some lives have been affected by COVID-​19. Our conclusion in Chapter 5 ties these different chapters together and ends with an appeal to the social sciences to innovate methodologically and theoretically, to horizon-​ scan wider macro-​level developments and opportunities, and to jettison intellectual baggage in favour of clear-​ eyed analysis that makes sense of the world before COVID-​19, the world it has created, and the world that is yet to emerge.

2 Viral Armageddon The spread and impact of COVID-​19

Viral pandemics are nothing new and throughout history have generated significant social distress and suffering. Perhaps the most devastating pandemic in recent history was the 1918 Spanish influenza, since it possessed a fatality rate of around 10% and killed over 40 million people worldwide. Thereafter, the 1968 Hong Kong flu also generated considerable social chaos across the globe, being associated with over one million fatalities. The 2009 swine flu pandemic lasted for nearly two years, and by comparison generated far fewer deaths than the Spanish influenza and Hong Kong flu, killing around 280,000 people. Yet since then, scientists have persistently warned about the potential for another global pandemic, in particular virologists, who claimed that climate change, global urbanisation and the interconnected nature of a globalised world could produce the right elements for rapid human-​to-​ human transmission should a virus emerge (Žižek, 2020). Such warnings, however, largely fell on deaf ears among the global political elite. Combined with neoliberalism’s structural conditions outlined in the previous chapter, many nations were left radically underprepared for the outbreak of COVID-​19 in December 2019. Importantly, in the early period of 2020, the virus was spreading quickly, and generally the elderly or already vulnerable were dying at a fast rate. This set governments and the media into a frenzy as there was no known cure or remedy and no vaccine (Blakeley, 2020). Little was known about how the virus was transmitted and while large numbers of extremely sick patients were admitted to hospitals, some recovered quickly while others were unaffected by it. While some nation states locked down quickly, others such as the US played down the severity of the virus (Žižek, 2021). As 17

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we write, over three million people worldwide are known to have died from or with the virus. Therefore, it is important to weigh this against some of the arguments we provide in the book. We are not ‘COVID deniers’ –​people who are sceptical about the existence of the virus. We know it exists. We know it is a threat to some people. We know it has caused immeasurable suffering among millions of families. We know it has generated profound social distress. However, as we show in Chapter 4, there are other consequences emerging from government action, or inaction, in the face of the spread of COVID-​19, which generate significant issues that require attention. While several Chinese doctors attempted to notify the world about the virus after many patients demonstrated symptoms akin to pneumonia, they were reportedly suppressed by the Chinese state and informed not to propagate disinformation:  some were reported to have mysteriously disappeared (Žižek, 2020). Despite this, COVID-​19 infections rapidly increased across the world in a short period of time. While the first reported case in China was on 7 January 2020, within 13 days there were reported cases in Japan, South Korea and Thailand. The pathogen soon permeated societies across the Western world: on 21 January 2020, the US reported its first recorded case in Washington. Then, only eight days later, the UK reported its first case of COVID-​19 in the city of York. By 30 January 2020, China had recorded over 7,700 cases and 179 deaths (Durrheim et al, 2020). Simultaneously, 107 cases had been announced in 21 countries, including France and Australia. The virus had ‘spread through the veins and arteries of the world’s trade system’ (Blakeley, 2020: ix), leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (Durrheim et al, 2020). As COVID-​19 spread, panic and fear became commonplace in many countries (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). The vulnerability of global supply chains was exposed as the just-​in-​time food delivery model was unable to cope with consumer demand (Briggs et al, 2020). Many people, particularly across Europe, resorted to hoarding commodities from supermarkets, and images of both long outdoor queues and empty store shelves

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were prevalent on mainstream and social media (Li, 2021; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). Basic household essentials including toilet paper and milk became difficult to obtain. Simultaneously, many nation states repeatedly stressed the need to protect their health services and how this, along with a multitude of non-​ pharmaceutical interventions including staying at home, social distancing and wearing masks, would save lives (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). Although many governments initially encouraged these personal restrictions, what followed was the implementation of widespread national lockdowns: a policy that previously seemed to be in direct contravention of previous WHO recommendations (WHO, 2019).

Lockdown!

As China shut its borders in January 2020, European countries such as Italy and Germany followed suit, initiating nationwide lockdowns in March. Epidemiological scientists went to work. Perhaps the most renowned modelling was offered by Ferguson et al (2020), which stemmed from a non-​ peer-​reviewed paper that argued for national lockdowns and predicted that without them 500,000 people would die in the UK and two million in the US. At the time, few questioned these predictions despite Ferguson having previously forecast that 200 million would die from avian flu in 2005: something from which a few hundred died (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). By late April 2020, several billion people across the world were living in some form of lockdown. In many countries, lockdowns were cast by proponents as essential to curb the spread of the virus, save lives and protect health services (Ferguson et al, 2020). Never before had the world economy come to such an abrupt halt (Schwab and Malleret, 2020) as cultural freedoms were curtailed on a scale comparable to the Second World War (Žižek, 2020, 2021). Nation states, long decried by many commentators as powerless under neoliberalism, intervened to prevent total ‘economic calamity and a complete social meltdown’ (Schwab and Malleret, 2020:  93). Many governments, including the UK, Germany and France, offered furlough schemes to

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employees and secured mortgage freezes with banks, while self-​employed workers also obtained governmental assistance. Most communal institutions closed, including schools, cafes, restaurants and shops. Restrictions were imposed on going outdoors, and people were ordered to stay inside their homes. This was the first of a series of lockdowns –​differing in level and by country –​which occurred throughout 2020 and into 2021. This in-​and-​out oscillation of lockdowns directed our research methods, which we discuss in Chapter 4. But at the time of writing in March 2021, both rolling lockdowns and personal restrictions have become a ‘new normal’. Even though the mainstream media have been fundamental in the orchestration of the distribution of pro-​governmental public health messages, some have voiced concerns over the basis for these lockdowns. Indeed, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test quickly became the core diagnostic tool utilised to ascertain COVID-​ 19 infections among people. Yet, shortly into its use, doubts were cast over its viability for determining a ‘positive case’. There is some evidence that indicates these tests are likely to elicit a sizeable volume of ‘false positives’ (Bamji, 2020; Katz et al 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020), possibly up to 16.7%, largely due to false contamination and human error (Cohen et al, 2020). Such errors can occur from incorrect data entry or when a positive sample is analysed simultaneously with a negative sample, leading to contamination, and the amplification of target genes (Cohen et al, 2020; Katz et al, 2020; Li et al, 2020). Further doubts have also arisen. Others suggest a positive PCR test is inconclusive unless additional information is provided, including the precise parameters that were used to measure the presence of the virus (Li et al, 2020; Santos and Chiesa, 2020). A study in Wuhan of hospitalised patients with COVID-​19 found that they had tested positive for the virus on entry yet, several days later, yielded negative tests (Li et al, 2020). PCR manufacturers have also pointed out that such instruments should be used only for clinical referencing and not diagnosis (Santos and Chiesa, 2020). This has led some to refute the accuracy of statistics on COVID-​19 infections or ‘cases’, largely because they could potentially include a high number of false positives (Cohen et al, 2020; Reiss

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and Bhakdi, 2020; Surkova et al, 2020). Notwithstanding the possibility of false negatives, in a systematic review of 34 studies involving 12,057 cases, Arevalo-​ Rodriguez et al (2020) found inconsistency issues and a risk of bias in studies which were testing for false negatives, concluding that repeated testing was needed as ‘up to 54% of COVID-​19 patients may have an initial false-​negatives’ (14). Therefore, if data drive policy and questions emerge about the accuracy of data, it should raise subsequent questions over the basis of lockdown policy. Relatedly, there have been other unreported and unchallenged controversies about how COVID-​ 19-​ related deaths have been recorded. Seemingly high fatality-​ rate modelling by Ferguson et al (2020) suggested that at least 500,000 deaths in the UK would occur without a lockdown. However, little consideration was given to what Wang, Horby et al (2020:  471) allude to in relation to possible overestimates of fatalities:  ‘Importantly, in emerging viral infection outbreaks the case-​fatality ratio is often overestimated in the early stages because case detection is highly biased towards the more severe cases.’ As the pandemic evolved and a ‘first wave’ passed, COVID-​ attributed deaths in numerous countries never reached the same peak yet, at the same time, excess deaths increased significantly (Nørgaard et al, 2021), meaning other pandemic-​related collateral damage was being caused as ‘COVID-​19 cases and deaths represent only a part of the total disease, mortality and overall public health’ (1). Further challenges were made concerning the recording of COVID deaths. In the UK, for example, COVID deaths are recorded as dying within 28 days of being tested positive with the virus. In essence, this raises questions about the distinction between those that died with COVID-​19 or died because of it (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). Rao (2020: 298) draws on the case made by Italian researchers in the initial period of the first wave who recommended:  ‘…deaths with test positivity as COVID-​19 deaths could be appropriate, but these deaths should be reported with all other existing medical conditions, to enable more detailed analyses of causality or association.’ Important context such as this was often absent from media coverage and political analysis, and few social scientists

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passed comment. Reiss and Bhakdi (2020: 16) claimed that ‘this method of recording violated all international medical guidelines’, leading to deceased individuals that had terminal illnesses such as long-​ term cancer having COVID-​ 19 on their death certificate. As is now known, COVID-​19 poses a serious threat to the elderly, often those with co-​morbidities, and those with underlying health conditions such as type two diabetes and respiratory problems (Brandén et al, 2020; Sanyaolu et al, 2020). But by failing to distinguish between dying with or dying from COVID-​ 19, many deaths have potentially been falsely directly attributed to the virus. For example, this is perhaps most starkly evident from the fact that the average age of death with/​from COVID-​19 (aged 82) is above the average life expectancy for people in the UK (aged 81.26) (ONS, 2021). While all deaths are naturally upsetting and generate profound distress to the deceased family, commentators have argued that the governmental response must be proportionate to the potential risk of the virus (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020; Žižek, 2020). The complexities we have begun to outline in this chapter should ensure national lockdowns are subject to debate and stringent critique. This is particularly the case when we consider the harms arising during lockdowns, which we evidence in Chapter 4. Cast as ‘one of the largest-​scaled social experiments in history’ (Raabe et al, 2020:  2), emerging evidence points to a substantial international rise in child abuse across the world, particularly in Croatia, Uganda, Nepal, South Africa and India, as vulnerable children are confined to their dwelling for significant periods of time (Ellis et al, 2021). Domestic abuse has also increased in France and Southern Africa (Burki, 2020; Oxfam, 2020). In numerous US states, reporting of domestic violence increased between 10% and 27% during the first wave (Boserup et al, 2020). In Bangladesh, 4,249 women –​39% of whom were experiencing violence for the first time (n=1,672) –​were found to have been subjected to domestic violence (Sifat, 2020). In Tunisia, violence against women increased from 4.4% to 14.8% during the lockdown period (Sediri et al, 2020). Others highlight increases in unemployment arising due to lockdowns and the associated harms which come with it such

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as family breakdown, mental health problems and financial ruin (Briggs et al, 2020; Petterson et al, 2020). Lockdown is also likely to impact detrimentally on those social groups with existing mental health problems, like homeless populations and stateless refugees, who often suffer from acute forms of depression and anxiety (Aragona et al, 2020; Briggs, 2020). In their discussion paper on urban refugees in Uganda, Bukuluki et al (2020) highlight how this group are increasingly stigmatised as ‘disease carriers’ because of the complications related to their living and hygiene circumstances yet remain absent from policy responses to COVID-​19. Similarly, Lima et al (2020:  2) locate the specific vulnerability of homeless people in cities around the world:  ‘Many people living on the streets already have a diminished health condition, higher rates of chronic illnesses or compromised immune systems, all of which are risk factors for developing a more serious manifestation of the coronavirus infection.’ Simultaneously, there has been an increase in mental ill health among those who had previously never endured it, with some reporting severe anxiety disorders (Hacimusalar et al, 2020; Schwab and Malleret, 2020). Those currently with, or in recovery from, eating disorders have also suggested the lockdown has had a debilitating impact on their lives (Branley-​ Bell and Talbot, 2020). While many have reported increased social isolation, others have been discharged from hospital prematurely, increasing their risk of serious harm (Branley-​ Bell and Talbot, 2020). As Schwab and Malleret (2020) outline, those who claimed ‘we are all in this together’ ignore inequalities and how these shape experience of lockdown (Petterson et al, 2020). For Žižek (2021:  102), lockdowns have generated a ‘collective madness itself, or the looming collapse of our mental health’. In Spain, many children have reported enduring increased nightmares, while eight in ten Italians say they now require psychological support (Žižek, 2021). While some members of the middle class, with relatively secure jobs who can work from home, have reported more satisfaction from work and better health (Bellato, 2020; Raabe et al, 2020), much of the working class were redefined as ‘key workers’ and were on the frontline of the pandemic (Van Dorn et al, 2020). Occasionally labouring in non-​unionised

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and poorly paid jobs like care work, many employees were left to work without personal protective equipment (PPE) and subjected to verbal abuse (De-​Camargo and Whiley, 2020; Oxfam, 2020). Žižek (2021) suggests that it would be revealing to compare non-​ Covid-​ related deaths to Covid-​ related deaths to obtain a more proportionate and comprehensive understanding. Yet such an analysis remains absent while the other harms continue to emerge. As feelings of hopelessness and unhappiness have intensified during the pandemic, Petterson et al (2020) note, for example, that many states in the US have reported an increase in these ‘deaths of despair’ through suicides, excessive alcohol consumption and illicit drug overdoses; many of which occurred as a consequence of lockdowns. Similar problems have been reported in Japan where suicides have increased (Takana and Okamoto, 2020). In England and Wales, alcohol-​related deaths hit a record high between January and September 2020, rising 16.4% in comparison to the same period in 2019 (Limb, 2021). Other data from Switzerland, the UK and California point to heightened feelings of hopelessness, loss of control and emotional sensitivity (Branley-​Bell and Talbot, 2020; Dhami et al, 2020; Shanahan et al, 2020). Relatedly, emerging evidence in the UK suggests that thousands of cancer patients will die prematurely because of cancelled appointments (Hamilton, 2020). In Germany, a collective fear of the virus has meant thousands have missed routine medical appointments, which could lead to a lack of diagnosis of serious conditions (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). For Žižek (2021:  14), such subjective changes have been generated by a fundamental change in our material realities –​lockdown –​compelling us to: ‘think about the ways in which what is fiction and what is reality will change. Movies and TV series that take place in our ordinary reality, with people freely strolling along streets, shaking hands, and embracing, will become nostalgic images of a long-​forgotten  past.’ Evidently, lockdowns have engendered fundamental sociocultural change. Although preliminary evidence on lockdown’s harms continue to emerge, there has been pro-​ lockdown uniformity in opinion among both the political

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class, mainstream media and, as we will see, among some social scientists (Chapter 3). We now briefly discuss why this is potentially the case.

Post-​political pandemic

As mentioned, throughout the neoliberal era, politics was reduced to the administration of the present order. Lively political contestation about the foundations of the economy and the constitution of our shared social life had been relegated to the past (Winlow et al, 2015; Mitchell and Fazi, 2017; Telford and Wistow, 2020). Essentially, parliamentary democracy offered the appearance of change; but the fundamentals of our life remained the same (Primrose et al, 2020). Debates over micro issues around gender and politicians’ individual characteristics had transformed politics into a personality contest. While this elicited the appearance of a vibrant democracy, most politicians awarded primacy to finance capital at the expense of ordinary people’s socioeconomic interests (Winlow et al, 2015; Streeck, 2016). In effect, Thatcher’s famous dictum that there is no alternative to neoliberalism had become entrenched in many parliamentary democracies’ collective psyche (Telford and Wistow, 2020). Placed in this context, we had witnessed the death of ideological commitment and the emergence of ‘post-​politics’ (Winlow et al, 2015; Primrose et al, 2020):  politicians had become mere directors of the current order. As confidence in a different form of political economy dwindled, over time most mainstream political parties neoliberalised (Winlow et al, 2015; Streeck, 2016). Therefore, the privatisation of public assets, rising social and economic inequality, and the hegemony of financial markets were cast as inevitable. This inevitably forged a strong ideological link between politicians, private business and the mainstream media (Winlow et al, 2015). Fidelity to a political ideal, combined with a macro vision on how to organise society, were therefore absent from many countries’ political systems. This included many nation states where support from the working class for the

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Left-​ leaning parties had fallen considerably (Chapter 1), including in the UK, Germany, Holland, Spain, the US and France (Winlow et al, 2015; Frank, 2016; McKenzie, 2017; Babones, 2018; Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018). Given this context, it is not surprising that both lockdowns and the ‘new normal’ were quickly consolidated. Firstly, the core measure –​lockdown –​was given little political debate across the globe and was largely accepted, thus awarding governments ‘sweeping authoritarian powers’ (Jones and Hameiri, 2021:  15). This occurred despite one of the core academic influencers –​Professor Neil Ferguson and colleagues –​admitting that they did not believe they could ‘get away’ with a lockdown in Europe because it was the Chinese communist state, a perpetual suppressor of basic human rights (Žižek, 2020, 2021), who had first implemented it (Whipple, 2020). As Herman and Chomsky (1998) claimed, a tool used by politicians to preserve the hegemonic ideology is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum; we have witnessed this throughout the pandemic. While criticisms of lockdowns occur, they are often limited to not locking down ‘fast enough’ or ‘hard enough’. Although crisis conditions brought by the lockdown/​pandemic initially meant many people across Western Europe seemingly pledged more support to the governing party (Bol et al, 2020), as we will demonstrate, this is now dwindling as a sizeable part of the populace have become fatigued by lockdowns, personal restrictions and the absence of an alternative governmental approach. By equal measure, however, there is now a growing polarisation because there are people who remain in fear of the virus and want the restrictions to continue. Either way, there is no consensus on the most appropriate approach. Furthermore, some commentators argue that lockdowns made little difference in reducing the risk of infection; for instance, researchers at Stanford University suggested that there was little difference between infection rates in countries1 that used ‘more restrictive non-​pharmaceutical interventions’ (ie stay at home orders and business closures) compared with those that used ‘less restrictive non-​pharmaceutical interventions’ (Bendavid et al, 2021:  4). Essentially, they concluded that

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there was no strong evidence for supporting the use of lockdown in early 2020. Moreover, Goolsbee and Syverson (2020) argued that mandated lockdowns had little significant effect because, in the end, they claimed that people managed their own risk and choices to limit interactions during the pandemic, potentially contradicting the approach of many governments throughout the pandemic. Many people across the world were also galvanised around supporting their health systems and services, even if they were already under pressure following austerity cuts (Mitchell and Fazi, 2017). Indeed, as mentioned in Chapter 1, in the post-​political epoch austerity had been in place across much of the globe for the previous ten years (Telford and Wistow, 2020). Austerity measures hinge upon an assumption that transiently retrenching state investment and deflating wages will stabilise the economy, boost business confidence, and generate future investment and therefore economic growth (Telford and Wistow, 2020). However, austerity has brought internal chaos to many health services across the globe; yet this was barely mentioned by politicians, media and, as we will see, social scientists (Chapter 3). For example, the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain has been subject to several phases of marketisation, culminating in around 14% of the service being run by private providers including the multinational company Serco (Davis et al, 2015). Targets have been repeatedly missed and waiting times have increased, due to a lack of capacity to cope with patient demand (Davis et al, 2015). Many care homes around the world such as in Italy, Spain, the US and Canada have also been privatised and are run strictly for profitability irrespective of patients’ wellbeing (Davis et al, 2015; Primrose et al, 2020), leaving many health systems unprepared for the pandemic/​lockdown (Primrose et al, 2020). While a large proportion of global COVID-​ 19-​ related deaths have occurred in care homes (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020), many care workers across the world have laboured under difficult conditions including poor pay, non-​unionisation, and often the absence of PPE (Primrose et al, 2020). Primrose et al (2020) contend that the dominant response has been ‘post-​political’, focusing on individuals adhering to restrictive

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measures rather than the structural conditions that resulted in overwhelmed health services. Accordingly, politicians, the media and numerous academics have seemingly concerned themselves with individualised symptoms rather than structural causes, such as austerity. Moreover, presenting the crisis through a securitised lens, such as an existential threat or even a ‘war’ (Lohmeyer and Taylor, 2020), depoliticises why many health services struggled to cope (Primrose et al, 2020). Such post-​political logic has been intensified by other strategies, including the ‘clap for carers’ initiative in the UK as well as banners stating ‘thank you health workers’, which have been prominent across the world, particularly in Europe. Although Britain, Italy, US, France and Spain’s healthcare systems were believed to be best placed to deal with pandemics, they have in fact performed the worst. Jones and Hameiri (2021) highlight a shift towards a depoliticised mode of governance under neoliberalism, in which health systems are marketised, capacity is hollowed out and therefore the state’s role in managing and supporting public health problems is reduced. Perhaps a clear indicator of this is the perpetual shortage of PPE, particularly in Britain, whereby its production had been outsourced to the private business Movianto (Jones and Hameiri, 2021). This led to an inadequate stockpile of PPE, particularly at the start of the pandemic. It was reported that 45% of PPE had expired, compelling many health workers to wear snorkels for some protection against COVID-​19 (Jones and Hameiri, 2021). South Korea, conversely, had reversed years of privatisation in their health service and were thus able to quickly counteract their initial shortage of PPE as well as deploy mass testing of the population (Jones and Hameiri, 2021). While some suggest it is no surprise the virus left many health services overwhelmed because of the quick rate of infection, others claim this is a fallacy given the WHO had been preparing for pandemics since the 1990s (Jones and Hameiri, 2021). The depoliticisation of the crises in healthcare has therefore been clear from the start of the pandemic, with governmental messaging across the world such as ‘protect the health service’. However, the raison d’être of health services is to protect the public, offering assistance and care,

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not the other way around. Relatedly, images of overcrowded hospital corridors and patients on ventilators, particularly in Italy, cluttered mainstream media during the first lockdown (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). Understandably, this generated fear and panic across much of Europe. Yet few were talking about how Italy’s national health system had been subject to downsizing for the last 30 years because of austerity (Prante et al, 2020). Italy’s health service therefore had far less capacity than most of its European counterparts, particularly in acute care hospitals and ICU beds (Boccia et al, 2020; Prante et al, 2020). Indeed, only Japan has a higher elderly-​aged population than Italy in the world (Boccia et al, 2020). But there are further important factors which make Italy particularly vulnerable. The country harbours high numbers of smokers and thus high rates of lung-​and heart-​related diseases, thus proportionally putting far more people at serious risk (Boccia et al, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). In this context, Chaudry et al (2020) suggest that the number of cases and overall fatalities has more to do with a country’s health conditions, such as obesity and an aging population, rather than interventions like lockdown. Data from East Asia, the Americas, Europe and Sub-​Saharan Africa corroborate this (Farzanegan et al, 2020). These structural deficiencies are not standalone nor unique to Europe; the loss of trade and thus revenue brought by lockdown has left many health services in Africa such as Malawi and Zimbabwe unable to cope, compelling them to use boarding schools as quarantine sites (Oxfam, 2020). As these structural inequalities have become exposed during the pandemic, both politicians and the mainstream media have worked hard to avoid discussing them and often engaged in discourses of fear and panic (Briggs et al, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, COVID-​19 became the first virus in the world to receive 24/​ 7 news coverage (Chaiuk and Dunaievska, 2020), with the media offering daily figures on ‘new cases’ and ‘death rates’. People across the world have been subject to ‘disturbing pictures and frightening numbers –​morning, noon and night’ (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020:  118). War-​like terminology such as ‘battle’ and ‘combat’, coupled with headlines including

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‘out of control’, were persistently utilised to describe the pandemic (Chaiuk and Dunaievska, 2020), yet important contextual conditions and explanations were often omitted. As we will show in Chapter 4, this ideological bombardment of ‘messages’, ‘practices’ and ‘warnings’, reinforced in public spaces, has impacted detrimentally on many peoples’ mental health. Nonetheless, the media has persistently drawn upon the same set of ‘experts’ to offer commentary on the pandemic, perhaps stifling more open and critical discussion (Lenzer, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). This has given credibility to the common governmental claim that they are ‘following the science’; but there are many scientific experts who disagree with both lockdowns and the severity of COVID-​19 (Lenzer, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). Such an idea is thus perhaps reductionist, not least because many ‘governmental scientific advisors’ have reportedly conflicting interest shareholdings in COVID-​19 tests and vaccines (Abbasi, 2020). The few other countries who have approached the management of COVID-​ 19 differently have either been critically scrutinised (more so than in other countries) or overlooked by media institutions. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Sweden, who refused to lock down. While this approach has been criticised by politicians and media around the world, Sweden has fared comparably to other countries because it relied on ‘individuals’ self-​responsibility and high level of trust in Swedish society’ (Yan et al, 2020: 765). The Belarus government ‘dismissed the threat of COVID to public health’, kept the country operational and to date it has one of the lowest COVID-​related death rates in Europe (Reade et al, 2020: 4). In contrast to most Western nations, elderly people in Belarus live in private residences rather than care homes, meaning they could be more easily protected (Karath, 2020), and football fans still attend matches (Reade et al, 2020). Throughout the pandemic, the state in Singapore –​ having already had experience of the 2003 SARs outbreak –​ offered messages of ‘defensive pessimism’ (Wong and Jensen, 2020: 2), describing the crisis as ‘serious’ and ‘not to be under-​ estimated’ as a way of ‘preparing people for future risks’. Yet, the country has fared better than many Western states (see Woo, 2020). South Korea avoided a large-​scale lockdown

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in the first wave, and thanks to sizeable investment in the country’s healthcare capacity, it too had lower death rates than many Western countries (Jones and Hameiri, 2021). Although we acknowledge that we are not epidemiologists or public health experts, as critical thinkers we do need to debate why –​if there was an alternative to lockdowns –​they were not considered or debated. Why, having learnt nothing from the first wave of COVID-​ 19, did governments not immediately invest in healthcare to ensure better preparation for a potential second wave? Why, having had knowledge and recommendations from researchers about the significance of air pollution and population density on COVID-​ 19 vulnerability, was nothing planned better? Why were strategic policy responses so inadequate when reoccurring waves surfaced in countries across the world? (See Coccia, 2020.) Growing frustration became apparent through The Great Barrington Declaration. The declaration was published on 5 October 2020 and was spearheaded by scientific experts at Stanford, Oxford and Harvard universities (Lenzer, 2020). At the time of writing in March 2021, it had been signed by 754,468 concerned citizens, 41,458 medical practitioners and 13,705 public and medical health scientists from countries afar as Australia, Russia, New Zealand, Poland, Chile, Brazil and Argentina. The Act called for ‘focused protection’ (Lenzer, 2020:  1) of vulnerable social groups such as the elderly, directing more resources and care to protect their health and wellbeing. This is because older citizens are reportedly 1,000 times more likely to die of COVID-​19 than younger people, suggesting the latter group should be able to lead active lives with the maintenance of non-​pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing and regular hand washing (Lenzer, 2020). While proponents of the Act potentially contradict the mainstream scientific consensus and hoped it would initiate a debate about alternative public health interventions to lockdowns (Lenzer, 2020), it has received limited attention in the mainstream media and has been barely mentioned by political leaders.

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Heightened inequalities and social atomisation

Žižek (2021: 132) states that ‘the pandemic functioned as a kind of detonator that exploded already existing tensions in our societies’. While many workers across the globe possessed a lack of employment protections under neoliberalism, as we will see in Chapter 4, the pandemic/​lockdown has been responsible for increasing levels of unemployment (Blakeley, 2020; Briggs et al, 2020; Jones and Comfort, 2020; Žižek, 2021). Those at the lower ends of the social structure have been more likely to be made redundant, as they already endured cyclical forms of precarious employment and were thus disposable (Lloyd, 2018; Schwab and Malleret, 2020; Streeck, 2016). Estimates suggest that unemployment could reach 12% in the UK and 15% in the US in 2021 (Blakeley, 2020), leading Žižek (2021) to claim an economic downturn bigger than the 1929 Great Depression could be on the horizon. Growing global joblessness is particularly bad news for women, since globally they possess less secure forms of employment and form the bulk of single-​parent households (Burki, 2020). Therefore, during the pandemic women have been undertaking increased unpaid labour in the home, including looking after children and ill family members (Burki, 2020; Oxfam, 2020). This gender and social class crossover disproportionately affects women in some of the most precarious circumstances. For example, border closures across Southern Africa have meant cross-​border traders –​80% of which are women –​have been unable to work (Oxfam, 2020). Joblessness, food insecurity and psychological distress have therefore increased. Notwithstanding, most people in Southern Africa tend to work in the informal economy, thus lacking a social safety net to ameliorate social and economic insecurity (Oxfam, 2020). Indeed, the poor are acutely vulnerable to the impacts of lockdowns, which pose issues for work and education. Labour analysis focusing on the UK, Germany and the US shows how COVID-​19 is exacerbating current inequalities (Prassl-​Adams et al, 2020). Workers in companies which do not work from home or where tasks are too small to share will see job losses, affecting women and those without qualifications the most

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(Oxfam, 2020). Many industries also employ low-​skilled staff on zero-​hour contracts, and this immediately makes them more vulnerable (Ali and Ali, 2020). As Chiou and Tucker (2020:  25) note, this means ‘income inequality moderates the effectiveness of social distancing measures in the wake of the spread of coronavirus’. For example, it is now clear that socioeconomic status played a significant part in an individual’s ability to socially distance. Raghunath and Tan (2020) show that people with higher socioeconomic status are more likely to be undertaking jobs which permit the work-​from-​home option. Conversely, those from a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be in positions which require them to leave the house. This disproportionately exposes this group to an increased risk of virus transmission as well as additional stress and anxiety (Stogner et al, 2020). Those from poor socioeconomic backgrounds in the BRIC countries are also far more likely to both transmit and die from COVID-​19 (Dash et al, 2021), since they often have worse health and more severe conditions like diabetes (Žižek, 2021). This is particularly worrying for poor, disadvantaged people in the US, since millions do not have access to basic healthcare (Van Dorn, 2020). In Europe, data from Barcelona in Spain indicate that those in low-​ income communities are more likely to contract the disease (Olmo et al, 2021), particularly poorly paid frontline workers who cannot follow what Reiss and Bhakdi (2020: 24) call ‘the chant that sounds around the world: “Stay at home”’. High-​density cities such as Barcelona (Olmo et al, 2021), as well as in parts of Southern Africa where overcrowding is prevalent (Oxfam, 2020), also make it difficult to socially distance and thereby increase the risk of infection. Of course, many self-​ employed workers across the globe cannot afford to stay off work, increasing their likelihood of contracting COVID-​19 (Oxfam, 2020; Olmo et al, 2021). Home schooling under lockdowns is widening inequalities in education since pupils from more affluent backgrounds receive more support and tuition from their parents (Leigh, 2020). Despite vulnerable children being able to access key worker provision, many of these children are not in regular contact with schools, colleges or social services, meaning they

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are at an increased risk of being recruited to gangs and therefore participating in criminal activity. For example, according to the National Youth Agency (2020), youth workers in the UK report that years of work with vulnerable children has been wasted. Notwithstanding, particularly in ‘rich countries’, the lockdown has increased the number of children and families seeking basic sustenance from food banks around the world (Human Rights Watch, 2020). This is felt far more acutely in Sub-​Saharan Africa where 216 million students have no access to a household digital device (Oxfam, 2020), detrimentally impacting upon their life chances. While lockdowns have evidently swelled the ranks of the ‘unemployed, worried, miserable, resentful, sick and hungry’ (Schwab and Malleret, 2020: 85), they have coincided with enhanced wealth generation among sections of the global super rich (Blakeley, 2020; Žižek, 2020, 2021). Recent reports suggest the total wealth of the globe’s ten richest men has increased by £400 billion during the pandemic –​a figure which could pay for the worldwide eradication of poverty as well as vaccines for everybody (BBC, 2021). The super rich, particularly from the US and the Middle East, have purchased country estates and castles in England to escape lockdowns (Neate, 2020). Equipped with housekeepers, gardeners and butlers, many of these properties are priced at over £15 million and often contain swimming pools, tennis courts and wine cellars. Amazon, Netflix and social media giants like Facebook and Instagram have also witnessed a huge rise in demand for their services (Blakeley, 2020). For instance, during the first lockdown 16 million more people across the globe signed up to Netflix (Briggs et al, 2020). Despite increased profitability for some of the world’s largest corporations, other industries are on the cusp of collapse. In the US, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package in 2020 which included loans to struggling businesses, increasing already record levels of private indebtedness (Blakeley, 2020). As economic uncertainty and unemployment intensify, many of these small–​medium businesses will likely default on their loan settlements, forcing many outlets to close (Blakeley, 2020). Given the closure of borders across the world, the airline, hotel, cruise ship and car rental industries have

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experienced sizeable drops in revenue (Sharma and Nicolau, 2020). Some have questioned whether the cruise ship industry will be viable in a post-​COVID world (Sharma and Nicolau, 2020). The troubles prevailing the cruise industry have far wider social ramifications which have been felt acutely in regions where the economy is dependent on tourism such as the Caribbean, leading to mass unemployment and associated cultural problems. Jones and Comfort (2020) suggest that with global travel transiently curtailed, the hospitality industry –​including accommodation, restaurants, night clubs, bars, cafes and package holidays –​have been significantly affected. This, they add, could be catastrophic given that over 212 million people across the globe are employed in hospitality and 49 million jobs look set to be lost in the industry in Asia alone (Jones and Comfort, 2020). Although at the start of the pandemic there seemed to be a transient burst of community spirit, with many people reporting increased kindness towards those most vulnerable to the disease (Briggs et al, 2020), Žižek (2021) argues that this has morphed into various cultural divisions. As we will show in Chapter 4, the virus/​lockdown has intensified pre-​existing social antagonisms and generated forms of conflict over social interaction in public spaces and accusations of selfishness in relation to the level of adherence to measures. For instance, many citizens in the US have responded angrily to the state’s demand to wear masks, viewing them as an impingement upon their individual liberty (Aratani, 2020). Evidence from Canada also highlights the intensification of social atomisation with many avoiding contact with healthcare workers through fear of infection (Taylor et al, 2020). Shaming terms such as ‘covidiots’ have also emerged to describe those who act ‘selfishly’ in breaking rules to see family and friends (Reicher and Drury, 2021). As we have begun to outline in this chapter, the health effects of the virus, its interaction with existing socio-​structural conditions, and both government action and inaction, have produced numerous casualties. The general tone of this chapter has been critical in documenting the response to, and impact of, the pandemic, particularly given the constricted public debate on appropriate responses to the crisis. We feel

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critique is essential at this time of great social and economic upheaval and continue this approach in subsequent chapters. In the next chapter, we discuss efforts from colleagues in the social sciences to address the pandemic. While some have provided useful contributions, we argue that some of these studies are reductionist, omit political economy and often rely on dated theoretical tools.

3 Apocalypse now The (desk-​based) scramble for knowledge As the previous chapter outlined, the most significant ‘event’ of the 21st century has the potential to drastically change the political, economic and social coordinates of the world. While some scholarship has been erudite, linking the micro to the macro and speculating on what the future political economy will look like (for example:  Matthewman and Huppatz, 2020; Primrose et al, 2020; Saad-​ Filho, 2020; Scambler, 2020; Sumonja, 2020), other social scientific work is often theoretically and/​ or empirically absent. Although space constrains how much literature we were able to review, in our critical analysis of some of the work devoted to capturing, understanding and conceptualising how COVID-​ 19 is affecting us and changing society, we suggest they fall into one of the following categories or, in some cases, a combination of studies/​commentaries which: • Handwash social harm –​endorse central ideological messaging associated with COVID-​ 19 such as the lockdown and downplay the resultant social harm. • Represent empirical curfews –​fail to step outside their discipline, romanticise reality and impose deaptive theories like moral panic. These works lack depth in capturing people’s experiential realities during the pandemic and are often empirically limited. • Disinfect reality –​do not place reality within its macro political-​economic context and provide snapshot efforts to dissect social feeling/​ experience into measurable variables and graphs. • Reflect an academic lockdown –​are not studies but commentaries alluding to the glorification of the author’s hobby or previous publications. 37

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In this chapter, we critically review these studies and commentaries. We question the worth of these contributions against the backdrop of the kind of world we described in Chapter 1 –​which is swiftly becoming something much worse (Chapter 2). Why? Well because some social scientists appear to have failed to ask some of the most pressing questions raised by the inception of COVID-​19 and its political management. For example, from what we can see there has been a dearth of analyses that challenge the political management of the virus or the overwhelming political and media consensus on lockdowns. Given that the life trajectory, transmission potential and possible mutations of COVID-​19 are partially shaped by political interventions, we find this troubling. If the social sciences were in a healthy state, scholars would be unrelentingly critical of what has occurred since the onset of the COVID-​19 pandemic. We partially put this down to the embeddedness of ‘academic capitalism’ and its deterioration of the conditions necessary for intellectual contestation in universities around the world (Chapter 1). We suggest this has created a ‘social scientific distancing’ from the post-​COVID world and further discuss the implications of this.

Handwashing of social harms

We find abundant in the literature on COVID-​19 numerous studies/​ commentaries which endorse central ideological messaging associated with COVID-​ 19 and the existing neoliberal apparatus: this represents a ‘handwashing of the social harms’ resultant from the pandemic, particularly lockdowns. Many studies and commentaries endorse pro-​governmental decisions by exploring the measures implemented by governments without questioning their implementation, efficacy or the balance of harms associated with restrictions. For example, economics researchers working from the UK and Pakistan assessed government policies and their ability to flatten the curve (Arshed et al, 2020). Published in the Journal of Public Affairs, the article uses complex modelling strategies to, like Ferguson et al (2020), conclude that ‘contact tracing, stay at home restrictions and international

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movement restrictions are most effective in controlling the spread and flattening the COVID-​19 curve’ (1). Similarly, Koh et al (2020) working at the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies advocate the ‘effectiveness’ of social distancing measures and lockdowns in reducing infections. Their modelling, based on the COVID-​ 19 Government Response Tracker –​a dataset covering 170 countries –​ concluded that ‘lockdown-​ type measures had the largest effect on limiting viral transmission, followed by travel bans’ (48). These academics are therefore, perhaps unknowingly, forming part of the general evidence base which endorses measures and approaches to the pandemic where there was little initial debate or consultation (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020). These reports are not only confined to endorsing lockdowns and social distancing. Publishing in The Lancet, public health researchers Cheng et al’s (2020) two-​ page commentary recommends mask wearing and that this practice ‘actively involves every citizen, and is a symbol of social solidarity in the global response to the pandemic’ (2). Yet other scientists, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO), dismiss mask wearing as an effective measure to prevent the spread of infections. For example, Reiss and Bhakdi (2020) have reported that masks may increase the risk of infection because of poor filtration and the accumulation of microorganisms. Vainshelboim’s (2021) exhaustive review of the evidence suggests that they are of little use because COVID-​19 particles can penetrate the mask fibres. Despite this, in many countries, masks continue to be mandatory. Some governments quickly drew upon ‘science’ when making policy decisions about COVID-​ 19. Researching only a week after Israel’s first COVID-​19 case in February 2020 (and publishing in June), Bodas and Peleg (2020) found that compliance with public health measures was high when respondents knew there was ‘compensation’ (97%) yet the figure almost halved (57%) when this benefit was removed. Thereafter in July 2020, stimulus financial support mechanisms were approved by the government. There are also studies which reach no significant conclusions, as well as those that undermine many potential COVID-​ 19-​ related survey studies on compliance. For example, in an international study

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which boasted 8,317 participants, Clark et al (2020) sought to test voluntary compliance with preventative COVID-​19 measures, ascertaining that women were more likely to comply than men and there was no correlation with age. These studies arguably give limited insights into the COVID-​ 19 pandemic and downplay the unintended resultant social harms. This is despite emerging evidence on the impact of lockdowns, which as we will further consider in the next chapter, include homelessness, premature deaths, mental health problems and unemployment (Aragona et al, 2020; Branicki, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020; Schwab and Malleret, 2020). Yet, many social scientists continue to turn their heads away from these realities. While some have eruditely critiqued neoliberalism (Primrose et al, 2020; Saad-​ Filho, 2020; Scambler, 2020; Sumonja, 2020), few papers critique lockdowns which have exacerbated neoliberalism’s inequalities (Chapter 2). Propositions on ways out of what is happening arguably do not rely on rethinking how we live and the structure of society, but instead are defined by ‘capitalist realism’: a negative ideological belief that there is no alternative to neoliberalism (Fisher, 2009). Some social scientists recommend neoliberal solutions to the problems of neoliberalism itself. For example, Rattern (2020) uses a ‘social entrepreneurial perspective’, which is made up of the collaboration of the private-​for-​profit and non-​profit sectors, to suggest that the current pandemic has ‘produced innovative benefits to society’ and that ‘in order to adjust to the new reality more entrepreneurship is required, particularly social forms that focus on value co-​creation’ (1). In Social Sciences and Humanities, Armstrong et al (2020) call for ‘Appreciative Inquiry’. Based on ‘Appreciative Intelligence’, which is a ‘process for facilitating positive change in human systems’ (2) and elements of Positive Psychology, essentially the authors call for more resilience during this intervallic period by thinking positively, looking for what we have in common and therefore working together towards positive change. ‘Resilience’ is another term that has grown under academic capitalism (Fisher, 2009; Streeck, 2016), compelling people to focus on individualistically tinkering with their behaviours and attitudes rather than identify structural or ideological

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problems that exacerbate their conditions. Such thinking fails to transform atomised discontent into politicised anger, aiding neoliberalism’s hegemon. In effect, Armstrong et al (2020) inadvertently suggest we should deny knowledge of the harm caused by lockdowns and what has happened to those less fortunate and simply change the way we think to reach individual psychological stability. Similarly, instead of critiquing governmental decisions about how to manage the pandemic, some academics have considered how population ‘compliance’ can be achieved. Bellato (2020) is one such example. Bellato makes recommendations on how messages should demonstrate empathy and ‘potential rewards’ such as ‘working from home and enriched family relationships’ (3). Of course, this applies only to the employed and not those who have been made redundant, lost their tenancy, become homeless, developed mental health problems or who die waiting for cancer or other treatments because health systems are prioritising COVID-​19 patients (Aragona et al, 2020; Branley-​Bell and Talbot, 2020; Dhami et al, 2020; Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020; Žižek, 2020, 2021). Belot et al (2020) offer a descriptive analysis of how citizens (n=6082) from China, South Korea, the US, the UK, Italy and Japan behave in pandemic circumstances ‘calibrating certain parameters used in economic and epidemiological models, or for documenting the impact of the crisis on individuals, both in financial and psychological terms, and for understanding the scope for policy intervention by documenting how people have adjusted their behavior as a result of the COVID-​19 pandemic’ (205). While potentially interesting, the commentators do not consider if this ‘behavioural adjustment’ could foster further policies which infringe on basic human rights while plunging millions of people into economically precarious and/​or socially uncertain circumstances (Chapter 2). Bol et al (2020) are another example of academics endorsing governmental public health measures. In their financed survey which was cast across Western Europe during the early part of the lockdown in March and April 2020, they found that Europeans were more likely to vote for their party

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leader and felt increasing trust in government and democracy in COVID-​19 times. They note that: …our findings bring some good news. It seems that citizens have understood that strict social containment was necessary, and have rewarded governments that decide to enforce it, at least in the short term. Furthermore, our findings suggest that it has had a positive spillover effect on support for democracy and its institutions. (Bol et al, 2020: 6)

Although this builds upon debates on COVID-​19, the authors tend to omit the scientific divisions over how to handle the COVID-​ 19 pandemic. They also omit how cynicism, scepticism and fatalism about politics and social change have grown under neoliberalism (Chapter 1). The next section turns to another trend in the literature –​the ‘data curfew’.

Data curfews

Werron and Ringel (2020) suggest that theoretical analyses which indicate that the COVID-​ 19 epoch offers the opportunity for empirical investigations often merely involve desk-​based literature reviews of secondary data. We suggest this represents a ‘data curfew’:  a limitation on what can be produced as meaningful and detailed research. While lockdowns, social distancing and travel bans mean our mode of research is transiently confined to the virtual world, we should still seek to gather the complexity of people’s thoughts, feelings and hopes during this historically unique period. As academics under neoliberalism are often individualistically compelled to publish in high-​profile journals and compete against one another (Chapter 1), they often operate in isolation. Epidemiologists do not consult sociological insights. Psychologists stray no further than analysing the individual subject. Evident from almost all the literature reviewed is that social scientists are often confining themselves to their own niche theories and do not delve into other disciplines to

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improve their analysis or acquire knowledge in fields/​theories potentially beyond their expertise. In this context, many studies have idealised what the COVID-​19 pandemic represents. In our review, the most common form of idealised perspectives came from studies/​ commentaries about social solidarity and the environment. For example, while it is argued that the pandemic evolved as it did because of weak and unprepared global health systems (Vigo et al, 2020; Volpert et al, 2020; Wang, Horby et al, 2020), there now presents an opportunity to rethink society and global health systems (Supady, 2020). What we need to do, according to Taylor et al (2020), is form ‘global solidarity’, which will help ‘reimagine the structure of International Health Regulations’ to ‘counter the threat of emerging and re-​emerging pathogens’ (82). This form of global solidarity, suggest Tomson et al (2020), can also ‘counter inequalities from demographic, environmental, technological, and other megatrends’ and ‘control pandemics’ (1). Although this is a laudable goal, it tends to omit the social atomisation, depoliticisation and sense of powerlessness that prevails in many parts of the world, particularly in relatively deprived localities (Fisher, 2009; Winlow et al, 2015; Streeck, 2016; Telford and Lloyd, 2020). Nonetheless, other social scientists suggest global solidarity is growing as communities are working together and assisting each other in the ‘fight against the virus’ (Arora et al, 2020; Bin-​Nashwan et al, 2020; Federico et al, 2020). Contrarily, other evidence points to how this feeling of social solidarity disintegrated after the first lockdown as people individualistically attached themselves to the comforts of consumer culture including cyberspace, Netflix and takeaway food (Briggs et al, 2020). Relatedly, Cheval et al (2020) and Muhammad et al (2020) highlight the positive changes in the environment because of travel restrictions and lockdowns as air pollution reduced, seawater quality improved and environmental noise was hindered. However, they gloss over the negative secondary aspects of how this evolved in the concentration of waste and further endangerment of contamination of physical spaces (water, land and air).

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When social scientists apply a one-​dimensional lens to the problem of COVID-​19 in the context of neoliberalism, we are in danger of overlooking why problems exist in the first place. The same applies with some theoretical viewpoints. Writing in Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, Awaludin (2020) claims the COVID-​19 pandemic generated a ‘moral panic’. In his analysis of media articles written in Indonesia during the first part of the lockdown, Awaludin says an ‘overcriminalisation’ was applied to people who ‘refuse the burial of bodies infected with COVID-​19, the spread of hoax news, hoarding of consumer goods, misuse of social assistance to violations of quarantine of the region’ (613). Moral panic theory has also been applied to Indonesian Muslim citizens’ rejection of a Covid-​infected corpse to pass through grieving and burial rituals (Labib, 2020). The theory was also used to explain the toilet-​roll panic-​buying behaviour evident in many countries during the lockdowns (also see Long and Khoi, 2020). Writing in the International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Li’s (2020) analysis of media and social media material (see also Satawedin, 2020) found that the ‘mass media and social media played an important role in leading Americans to perceive excessive consumption in terms of a consumer panic, thus contributing to a moral panic’ (38). While the moral panic theory has done much to stimulate debate, applying this theoretical framework to the COVID-​19 pandemic omits social harm, neglecting both the social distress and intensification of inequalities outlined in the previous chapter. The framework also hinges upon a subjective belief. But, as mentioned in Chapter 2, research claims many people in the post-​political epoch are sceptical and fatalistic; in effect, they are no longer subjects of belief (Winlow et al, 2015). For instance, in recent decades general elections across the world have overseen a huge fall in voter turnouts. Given this context, Telford and Wistow (2020) suggest people are passive and indifferent rather than vulnerable to being victims of a moral panic. Going further, suggesting the pandemic embodies a moral panic serves to cover up how the current period is historically unique, perhaps indicating that there is not much to empirically investigate (Hall, 2012;

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Critcher, 2017; Horsley, 2017). Despite change, attachment to older theoretical frameworks remains. Harris (2020), for example, provides interesting data exploring ‘misbehaviour’ during lockdown and participants’ justifications for breaching measures. As is often the case in criminology though, as discussed in Chapter 1, Harris relies upon rather dated ideas to theorise this. In a mixed-​ method attempt to consider the emotional impact of COVID-​19, Jean-​Baptiste et al (2020) use a survey (n=205), two focus groups and 34 interviews to document coping strategies used by people. Although important demographic data were absent from their study –​which may have given important clues to who was able to cope and who was vulnerable and why –​their findings generally point to the importance of social capital via online mediums assisted to cope with stress.1 However, it could be argued that social capital omits a macro constitutive context –​neoliberalism –​and similarly to Armstrong et al (2020) suggests the answer to people’s distress lies in adopting individualised mechanisms. In consequence, people are encouraged to bolster their personal networks rather than pursue structural reconfiguration, thereby securing the core political economy and its associated social problems (Chapter 1).

The disinfection of reality

There are also some social scientists who seek to dissect social life from its structural context, thus disinfecting it from its own reality. Though dissected, there is no mention of the body or, in other words, the statistical results do not consider their macro/​ political-​ economic context. They propose to research social life in objective ontological conditions and seek to cleanse and disinfect reality, presenting it as if it were the universal truth. For example, in one financed international study which captured a cohort of participants from four different countries (the Netherlands, the US, the UK and Germany) over the course of 24 hours, Hameleers et al (2020) sought to examine the role of misinformation and disinformation in the context of compliance. While

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there are no details on the sample profile, the results show that people exposed to misinformation (inaccurate) sought out more information to clarify and this correlated with their adherence to measures. Conversely, those exposed to disinformation (deliberately misleading) were less compliant with COVID-​ 19 measures. Such analyses are an example of ‘abstracted empiricism’ (Wright Mills, 1959; Hall and Winlow, 2015), that is, when data are severed from their broader context and people are presented as floating above the complexity of life. This methodological replication of the hard sciences and its search for a fundamental cause covers up how the social world is messy rather than both linear and characterised by simple cause and effect. In this way, as Kotzé (2019) suggests, too much social science stems from a positivist desire to find verifiable facts and correlations. For example, in a study on whether conspiracy theories jeopardise public compliance with COVID-​ 19 measures, Allington and Dhavan (2020) looked for statistical correlations to confirm if compliance with social distancing and lockdown measures were influenced by the spread of conspiracy theories. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found that conspiracy theories jeopardised compliance (also see Romer and Jamieson, 2020). Working at the Centre for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University, Bargain and Aminjonov (2020) make use of data on human mobility and political trust at a European level. They suggest compliance with these containment policies depends on the level of trust, based on either high-​or low-​trust regions. While in the former compliance was high, in the latter it was low. Like many of the aforementioned studies, this omits a macro context, offers little in terms of theory construction, and ignores how humans are characterised by emotion, ambivalences and contradictions. By narrowing the lens onto variables and testing pre-​ formulated theories, these studies perhaps offer little in the quest for intellectual advancement. Indeed, it could be argued that swapping variables around and seeing what correlates statistically offers us little understanding of the complex reasons why people comply with or defy restrictions. Nevertheless, French psychological researchers Brouard et al

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(2020) examined compliance with the government’s measures using the ‘Big Five personality framework’ (McCrae and John, 1992). The model argues that individual differences in personality can be summarised in five dimensions, namely openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Though inconclusive in their findings, they initially hypothesised that ‘conscientious individuals tend to be duty-​bound and have a high sense of obligation’ and ‘neuroticism should be positively associated with compliance’ (254). Essentially, this means compliance is guaranteed by people who have personality traits such as being diligent and attentive as well as those who are nervous/​ anxious. As mentioned in Chapter 2, such a climate has led to the application of terms like ‘covidiots’ (Reicher and Drury, 2021) and masks the psychological and social distress many people have endured during the pandemic, particularly under lockdowns. Relatedly, Chan (2020) examined adherence to COVID-​19 social distancing measures based on concepts such as ‘caring’ and ‘fairness’. Chan found from his study of 1,033 Americans ‘that caring and fairness concerns predict complying with all behaviors, while sanctity concerns only predict compliance with wearing face masks and social distancing’ (1). While this enhances debates on COVID-​19, it might be argued that moralising people’s behaviours during the pandemic is a depoliticisation mechanism, covering up the post-​political response from many governments across the world (Primrose et al, 2020). Nevertheless, behavioural scientists from Brazil measured compliance with ‘containment measures’ (Miguel et al, 2020). They found that people with ‘anti-​social behaviour’ tendencies including callousness, deceitfulness, hostility, impulsivity, irresponsibility, manipulativeness and risk-​taking were less committed to such measures. They conclude that these traits are partly responsible for increasing numbers of deaths and cases. Consequently, this perhaps offers ‘magical thinking’ and ignores important contextual conditions, including underfunded and privatised health systems left unprepared to deal with the pandemic (Chapter 2). Similarly, the suggestion made by international researchers from a collection of reputable sociology, psychology and

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criminology departments in three different European countries is that young, poor, uneducated and delinquent people are largely responsible for increased cases and deaths. Nivette and colleagues (2021) undertook a longitudinal study of young people in Switzerland to gauge adherence to public health measures. Non-​compliance of measures such as cleaning or disinfecting mobiles and/​or standing 1.5m apart was: …higher in young adults who had previously scored high on indicators of ‘antisocial potential’, including low acceptance of moral rules, pre-​pandemic legal cynicism, low shame/​guilt, low self-​control, engagement in delinquent behaviors, and association with delinquent peers. Young adults with low trust, including in the government’s measures for fighting the virus, also complied less. (1)

They add:  ‘For young adults with low self-​ control, self-​ monitoring, environmental restructuring, or nudging may increase compliance. Long-​term investments into integrating youth with antisocial potential into society may decrease rule-​breaking behaviors, including during pandemics when compliance saves lives’ (1). American School of Law and Criminology researchers from the Netherlands and the US (Van Rooj et al, 2020) found that compliance with public health measures was predicated on ‘people’s capacity to obey the rules, opportunity to break the rules, and self-​control’ (1). While potentially interesting, such analyses are short of context, complexity and motivation and highlight what has defined some social scientific research for some time –​the continued presence of abstracted empiricism in approaches (Wright Mills, 1959; Hall and Winlow, 2015).

Academic lockdown

While this book partially exposes some of the harms of lockdown, we also propose that a lockdown has been tentatively placed upon social scientific thought, since many academics have not adequately critiqued the restrictions and impact of governmental lockdowns. How can we escape from

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this straight-​jacket? As the world faces the biggest crisis since the Second World War and neoliberalism faces structural difficulties yet again, some social scientists have only been able to reflect on their own personal experiences and feelings about the pandemic. While on the one hand Ward (2020) rightly suggests that COVID-​19 brings opportunities for new sociological theory, his paper is a presentation of his lockdown artwork, which tries to conceptualise the crisis by rehashing existing theories including risk society and liquid fear. While there are some merits in autoethnographic reflexivity and its potential capacity to bring people together to unite against potential suffering and stress caused by the COVID-​19 pandemic (see Gates et al, 2020; Logan, 2020), we question the utility of some of the accounts offered so far. For DeGarmo (2020), performative reflexive autoethnography provides the means to embrace our individual capacity to ‘express ourselves’ during the harsh realities of COVID-​19. Although this can be read in Qualitative Inquiry, here is a preview: I created masses of audiotaped, photo/​videographed, visual arts, and written materials functioning as performative reflexive autoethnographic field notes, including daily three-​ page journal entries coded with weekly reflective summaries; work logs/​mind maps with visual arts; a poetry chapbook fashioned from a gardening log; assignments from the massive/​ microscopic global autoethnographic work group; Facebook posts, messages, and texts; and new and existing biweekly-​alternating and monthly programs broadcast by my New York City dance organization. (6)

Raimondi’s (2020) performance autoethnographic poetry also offers little theorisation or conceptualisation of the wider spectrum of trauma and social distress taking place during the pandemic/​lockdown (see Ellis et al, 2021): I question myself:  What is (not) to be in the frontline? Where is the frontline? Who are (not) there? Who are (not) we fighting against? Unpredicted times (?!) … for whom? Under what circumstances? “New normal” … is it possible? Again, for whom? Under what circumstances? (2)

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These researchers seem to suggest that through their self-​ reflection they are connecting themselves to the macro processes, or, in the words of Sakar (2020), seeking to ‘explore more deeply how my fraught COVID time experiences intersect with the multiple COVID times of others’ (1). Describing both home schooling and improvements in the relationship with her daughter, she writes: I am experiencing and witnessing diverse granular experiences and massive awareness/​es of present COVID time intersecting unevenly in offline and online transit spaces. At some of these intersections, I can enact a temporal politics to free COVID time from its bind. My daughter and I freely connect beyond her scrutinizing and binding school time, and share our COVID times in ways that respect each other’s boundaries, yet give us meaningful together-​time.  (4)

Zheng (2020) considers a 14-​day quarantine period spent in a hotel, describing a ‘fight against the fear, frustration, and depression’ typically associated with self-​ isolation. Zheng suggests this provided ‘self-​inspiration and encouragement’, which ‘will support us to change the way we think, live, and deal with difficulties, not just now but in future’ (1). While offering insights into the experience of self-​ isolation, the article tells us little about neoliberalism’s current structural crises and how capitalism may once again mutate in the near future. While these researchers have attempted to build knowledge on the pandemic, we ought to reflect and rethink how we –​as social scientists and as committed empathetic people –​engage with, analyse and conceptualise the social world. Outdated theories, reductionist analyses, artwork or poetry are arguably not enough. There must be a collective push to find out –​ more than ever –​how this change is being experienced by people outside our realms of privilege and how we can transfer that to wider audiences and conceive of an alternative, fairer and more just future. Accordingly, in the next chapter we outline the emergent empirical findings from our ongoing global study on the COVID-​19 pandemic.

4 Studying the COVID-​19 pandemic as it happens As Rhodes and Lancaster (2020: 177) highlight, ‘public health emergencies are rarely studied as they happen. But they should be’, and this is what we have tried to do: document what is happening at each stage of the evolving pandemic. Though ambitious in its design, we wanted to find out how this was affecting citizens globally to consider how the pandemic was –​and still is –​not only exacerbating neoliberalism’s existing inequalities, but potentially reshaping society’s political, economic and social institutions as well as our subjective outlooks. There was no time to wait for a funding call and continue along further bureaucratic pathways should project finance emerge. We are experienced researchers who were faced with a unique opportunity to research the most significant event so far of the 21st century and had to act quickly. Therefore, we wasted no time in devising our research tools and immediately set about our study.

Studying the ‘here and now’: the aims and methods of the project

The aims of this study were to understand people’s experiences of this unique global event and to chart how COVID-​19 is reshaping social life and society. To do this, it adopted a flexible inductive approach which allocated different research methods to consider what we identify as three stages in the development of the pandemic. The initial stage examined the first lockdown experienced by over 100 countries. This was followed by the emergence of what was broadly termed by global entities –​and in tandem with the World Health Organization (WHO) –​as the ‘new normal’, where measures 51

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such as self-​ isolation, social distancing and masks begin to dominate social life. As the ‘new normal’ was generally embraced or rejected, we then arguably entered a period of uncertainty marked by what many governmental scientists termed as the advent of the ‘second wave’. In some countries like the UK and US, commentators suggested this then became a ‘third wave’ and billions were invested in potential vaccines. Given that there were significant limitations on where we could go as researchers due to the restrictions placed upon us, we had to be creative with the methods we employed (see Table 1). Phase 1 documented the experience of the first ‘lockdown’ enacted in over 100 countries worldwide which, between January and May 2020, went into either partial, local or national lockdown. The 52-​question, semi-​structured online survey which was open from the end of March to mid-​ May 2020 was completed by 985 people from 59 different countries around the world and we complemented these data with the use of digital ethnographic methods in ten ‘Facebook COVID forums’ (see Briggs et al, 2020 for a detailed discussion of the methodology). As countries around the world emerged from their respective lockdowns, we engaged the second phase of the study, which analysed the advent of what was termed the ‘new normal’ by the political elite. Non-​ pharmaceutical interventions like self-​ isolation, social distancing, mask wearing and, in some places, curfews became either strongly recommended or enshrined in law. In Phase 2, we therefore devised another semi-​structured, online survey which received 540 responses from people from 40 different countries from June to September 2020. In addition to the continuing online fieldwork in Facebook forums, we started to complement the data with in-​depth Zoom interviews from around the world (n=16). These were participants who had wanted to comment further having either completed the online survey or actively participated in a Facebook debate. Thereafter, we entered a period where virus case numbers started to increase again and lockdowns once again dominated. Evidence from our research indicates that during this period some felt increasingly fearful, while others described a

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Table 1.  Phase of study and methods utilised Research method

Phase 1 Lockdown

Phase 2 ‘New normal’

Phase 3 Viral hiatus

Rationale

Desk-​based analysis of reports, articles, commentaries







To inform the ongoing direction of the study and questioning made in each phase of the research.

Semi-​ structured online survey

985 responses from 59 different countries

540 responses from 40 different countries

407 responses from 33 different countries1

To cast our study out to as many people as possible around the world, thus enabling a more global insight.

Digital ethnography (interaction and debate in ten different COVID-​19 Facebook forums)

40 hours

60 hours

80 hours

To bolster themes generated from the above and to test emerging findings.

Open-​ended Zoom interviews

–​

N=16

N=30

To test emerging findings in a more detailed, confidential manner.

Ethnography

–​

15 pages of field notes

10 pages of field notes

To provide broader support to our online work, evidencing how the above plays out in social reality.

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‘coronavirus overload’ and became more critical of public health measures and restrictions. Amid efforts to obtain an effective vaccine, many of the measures adopted to reduce infection and hospital admissions remained in place. To us, this marks Phase 3:  a kind of ‘hiatus’ period where strict measures remain in place, significant numbers in some nations remain on furlough schemes, while the economic impacts begin to manifest in redundancies and unemployment. To capture this continued uncertainty, we devised a shorter semi-​ structured online survey (407 responses from 33 countries); undertook digital ethnography in the Facebook forums; and organised open-​ended Zoom interviews (n=30). Between the brief periods permitted to us to be in public in our respective countries –​both of which have been significantly affected by the pandemic (Spain and the UK) –​we gathered ethnographic observational data wherever possible. This took place between October 2020 and the end of February 2021. COVID-​ 19 currently affects almost everyone around the world for various reasons. In this respect, the sampling methodology has not discriminated against anyone. The sample of participants across all three phases are from different age groups, cultural backgrounds and social classes, providing diverse perspectives on experiences of the pandemic: such as an unemployed transport driver from the US; a furloughed waitress from India; a swimming instructor from Ireland; a hairdresser from the UK; a full-​time mother from South Africa; a teacher from Chile; a web designer from Croatia; a street market worker from Morocco; a student from Syria; a child care worker from the Philippines; a research trainer from Russia; a charity worker from Israel; and a retired man from Portugal, to name a few. As the pandemic and lockdowns caused the deaths of considerable numbers of people and plunged societies, economies and health systems into crisis, we canvassed them about their views and fears. All our online surveys were advertised via LinkedIn and Facebook forum discussion rooms dedicated to the subject of coronavirus (see Conroy et al, 2012 for a similar approach on Facebook in the context of political engagement). There was no budget for this study which could assist with advertising the online survey on Facebook, so we joined ten different

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public and private Facebook coronavirus discussion forums which covered Europe, America, South America and Asia. The numbers of participants in these groups stretched easily into the thousands with the smallest having 4,000 members and the largest 240,000. General posts advertising the study with the relevant language links were posted twice a week combined with posting general discussion questions (based on an element of the survey). When participants responded, critical debate ensued. At the end of these debates, which would typically run a day or two, the survey was further advertised at the end of the discussion.

Weaving COVID-​19 into the post-​political fabric

Data from our study show that, mainly because the virus was associated with China, nearly two thirds, 63% (n=619), were either not worried or a little worried about COVID-​19 when they first heard about it (Phase 1). In tandem, as the virus spread from China into Western countries (Chapter 1), provoking many countries to take significant political decisions and preventative measures, people started to feel otherwise. In this respect, the spread of a virus is not necessarily an organic process for, as we will see, actions by governments and adherence by citizens all play a part in how a virus circulates. Almost all our participants concurred that their governments were slow to respond to the virus in the interim, but when infections started to emerge in their respective countries many said that quite quickly the virus became part of a governmental political agenda. For example, regarding the criminal justice system in New Zealand, due process has often been compromised because of the rushed use of remote court technologies while prisoners have been kept in their cells often for over 24 hours (Stanley and Bradley, 2020). In Hong Kong, Ismangil and Lee (2021) report that new COVID-​19 regulations have been weaponised against a politically unsettled country which was experiencing high levels of political protest because of the proposed extradition of criminal suspects to Mainland China. Or the consistent state

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refusal to include refugees, people seeking asylum and other non-​citizens in the urgent national public health response to the pandemic in Australia, thus perpetuating the suffering of this already-​politically abandoned group (Vogl et al, 2020). Similarly, and as our data show, in the UK, political pledges were made to protect and support the vulnerable: The necessary measures were put in place, but far too late. This is reflected in the overall number of deaths in my country. I think once these steps were taken, they were effective, but would have been more so if implemented earlier. I don’t think enough was done to protect and support those most vulnerable during this crisis economically meaning that many were forced to put themselves at risk in order to work. The virus has greatly exacerbated the already existing situation here because the poor and vulnerable have inevitably suffered the most … I feel like the worst is yet to come. I don’t have any faith in the government effectively handling the economic crisis in the aftermath of the virus. (Phase 2, P240, Student)

Yet, it is precisely the elderly and vulnerable who have been most affected in the UK and this also seems to be the case across the world (Guilmoto, 2020). In Armenia, a country impacted by what was considered a short national lockdown, the government was eager to avoid paralysing economic activity. When the country reopened, politicians were criticised as infections and deaths increased and the subsequent lockdown had left greater unemployment and job insecurity (CRRC, 2020). One Armenian self-​ employed woman said:  “they could have taken better preventive measures but, since it is a populist government, they went on with their political agenda” (Phase 2, P21). However, for some countries such as Serbia, Poland and the US, COVID-​19 was seen to be a good excuse to assist/​prevent certain political processes: Our government manipulated the information and the situation for a sake of political elections; they used the Covid situation to blame protesters who went out on the

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streets to protest against political corruption. From the other side there were some good measures, but those are more measures on [an] operative level. (Phase 2, P10, Serbia, Self-​employed)

My country [Poland] was one of the first introducing very hard measures. It affected us badly with the online classes for children. But then the government officials broke their own restrictions by meeting other reluctant world leaders openly. Additionally, there were planned elections during the lockdown which were downplayed by the government as they were losing in polls. (Phase 2, P154, Poland, Self-​employed)

In America, there are two views, and they are completely opposite. In general, the mainline news outlets are doing a great job. The right-​ wing, conservative group which support Trump are giving false information about the virus to try and make him look better. (Phase 1, P171, US, Flight attendant)

In particular, Donald Trump, who had started the process of defending his Republican presidency at the beginning of 2020, suddenly found that much of the work he had done to try to improve economic opportunity for Americans was being jeopardised by COVID-​19. Trump downplayed the gravity of the virus to retain his electoral advantage and logistical deficiencies in testing paraphernalia, leading to a massive underreporting of tests (Balogun, 2020). He and his political aides were quoted in interviews stating the virus was ‘contained and it’s —​going to be just fine’, ‘it will go away’, ‘it is flulike’ (Greenberg, 2020), suggesting that COVID-​19 not only reflects existing political divisions, but also creates new ones. However, this political denial hampered strategic prevention measures and was complemented with the spread of misinformation about COVID-​19 in news media channels (Balogun, 2020). It was unsurprising that infection

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rates and subsequent deaths increased in the United States. The actions of governments have a key role to play in the transmission trajectory of a virus and, resultingly, the way in which that particular society adjusts its activity to assist/​quell the infection and death rates. Governments were thrust into making decisions about balancing public health against the economic functioning of their respective countries. Indeed, perhaps the most controversial intervention used by nation states were lockdowns. Interestingly, the WHO (2019) guidelines on public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza –​published one year before the pandemic –​do not recommend the use of lockdowns. The document offered ‘recommendations for future influenza epidemics and pandemics based on existing guidance documents and the latest scientific literature’ (1) but directly opposed ‘in any circumstances … quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening and border closures’ (3). Their recommendations on the use of lockdowns are ambiguous and, even in later documents, the WHO do not extend beyond a possible option for governments ‘according to the local situation’ (WHO, 2020): Large-​scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions, often referred to as ‘lockdowns’, can slow COVID‑19 transmission by limiting contact between people. However, these measures can have a profound negative impact on individuals, communities, and societies by bringing social and economic life to a near stop. Such measures disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups, including people in poverty, migrants, internally displaced people and refugees, who most often live in overcrowded and under resourced settings, and depend on daily labour for subsistence.

Despite these reservations, many of the WHO recommendations were afforded little debate and lockdowns swiftly became the default approach of governments around the world (Ellis et al, 2021). Thereafter, borders were shut; flights were cancelled; educational institutions were closed;

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and places of public gathering were left empty. Empirical evidence presented in the following section gives weight to the WHO’s expressed concerns over the implementation of lockdowns.

Polarity in the experience of lockdown: privilege versus poverty

As industries shut down, at-​risk, precarious workers started to lose their jobs and their housing was jeopardised, while the more privileged transferred their workloads online and stayed at home. For some of the latter, the experience of lockdown tended to be reported more positively. This single, self-​employed young woman from the UK said: Ah many [advantages of lockdown]! I love the quiet. I love working from home. I love spending time with my husband. Just the pace of life being much slower and just focusing in on the essentials. Speaking to people much more and having a shared problem. The feeling that the country has pulled together after the awful Brexit years.… Ability to do things in the house that have been put off. Less need to consume so saving a lot of money. Time to reflect. I’ve just decided to work with a career coach to help me think about my long-​term career future … More time for hobbies. Less pressure at work. Not having to see people has advantages! The fact the environment is improving –​less pollution in London! The fact that people are valuing migrants and low-​paid workers and see the importance of the NHS. If it wasn’t for the hideous killer virus, I love this lifestyle. (Phase 1, P349)

With the transfer of their life and work online, the first lockdown for some in more privileged positions was considered novel and exciting, permitting experience and exploration of new opportunities. This was the reverse experience for people already working in precarious circumstances. If anything, the onset of the virus aggravated their life conditions. In less economically stable countries where work tended to be more informal and insecure, the lockdowns meant more repressive

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suffering. In Chile, the strict lockdown was matched with oppressive policing and limited movement: only one person was allowed out once a week to do one activity (supermarket, for example). Workers, however, relying on informal economies for low wages to be able to eat and support their families, were suddenly facing life and death situations. This social researcher, Pedro, from Chile said: There is a lot of informal work in Chile. Like people live their lives working and what they earn that day is what feeds them and their family. Of course, the people with formal jobs got government support, money, but the poor people didn’t so this generated tension, conflict, and division. It polarised the country and this was when the problems started. Remote online working? Almost impossible for hundreds of thousands of people.

Prior to the arrival of COVID-​ 19, Chile was already experiencing political and economic difficulty. In the wake of suffering its worst drought on record, continued deregulation of its economic system and privatised social security, food shortages ensued and ‘many supermarkets were burned or pillaged particularly in the poorest areas’ (Kanter and Boza, 2020:  971). The advent of COVID-​ 19 aggravated pre-​ existing social unrest and quickly put the livelihoods of 3.6 million poor rural farm workers in jeopardy. The rapid spread of the virus generated collective fear and insecurity for some, as one of our interviewees Michael –​a Greek man working in Belgium –​explained: “everyone became just as vulnerable as the disadvantaged … through the consequences of ‘social distancing’, people around the globe can now experience the same vulnerability that was before only felt by some”. First-​ world issues such as not being able to go shopping or go out to a pub compared starkly to how the COVID-​19 lockdowns and subsequent economic downturn affected developing nations. In such countries, the evolution of the pandemic past the lockdown stage inevitably aggravated already-​fragile social and economic conditions. After a stringent lockdown because of the “scary police” in his poor township, Babu, an unemployed man from Uganda in his 20s, said “The poor go

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without food in my community.” Yet with the advent of the coronavirus, poverty has increased, vital volunteer aid does not get through and there are violent disputes over food aid. Babu said: The government promised to give food parcels during lockdown; what they did they gave people old, rotten food with insects in it. Rotten food. So, people cannot stand for that, enough is enough, we need no promises, no nothing; we will do things on our own. We [are] overthrowing government slowly; some people don’t even vote now including me. I don’t vote for any President because they [are] not helping with anything.

Countries devoid of adequate health infrastructure (Chapter 2) such as Cameroon struggled to support people. One young student told us that in his country “no measures were taken to support the lockdowns. Many suffered of unemployment, and ended up died of starvation” (Phase 2, P144). He added that the lockdown disproportionately affected the “poor and vulnerable”: I don’t think enough was done to protect and support those most vulnerable during this crisis economically, meaning that many were forced to put themselves at risk in order to work. The virus has greatly exacerbated the already existing situation in my country. The poor and vulnerable have inevitably suffered the most.

Similarly, coronavirus is potentially rife in Sam’s community in South Africa, partially because “poor people like us cannot afford masks”, he says. The “future is hard”, he summarises, as he reflects on how his friend committed suicide when he tested positive for COVID-​19 and his neighbour was beaten to death by the police for disobeying the strict lockdown curfew. In Costa Rica, Nacho, a trainee lawyer who fears the loss of his job, observed a troubling impact on the inequality barometer:

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Here there is lots of informal work; people need money to work or they die of hunger. People sell all sorts on the streets; they have to do something to earn money. Here the inequality gap is massive. Years ago, it was quite equal but now there is far more inequality and Covid lockdown has exacerbated this, more difficulties. If it is difficult for me, can you imagine how they survive?

With tourism such a prominent industry in the country, Nacho foresees a “massive problem” for “many, many unemployed people”. Costa Rica avoided a complete national lockdown, and some hailed this approach for its suppression of the virus (Fuchs, 2020). Yet, tourists have not returned to the country. By the summer of 2020, unemployment had risen, the country plunged into debt and the state started to contemplate privatising more of its public industries. Its subsidy programme –​used for those legally registered to obtain financial support –​became insufficient for people to survive on in the wake of increasing inflation. Moreover, there is no such allowance for tens of thousands of undocumented migrants and the already unemployed prior to COVID-​19, who have been subject to politically inarticulate xenophobic attacks (Jillson, 2020).

Lockdown: exposing fragile health systems

Chaves et al (2020) commend Costa Rica for its unified, universal healthcare system in their comparative study of suppression strategies in Costa Rica, Panamá and Uruguay. Mindful of events unfolding in Europe, Costa Rica spent two months planning for the pandemic, learning from countries such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea almost absent from Western media reporting, which was favouring pro-​lockdown measures and ‘fearmongering’ the electorate (Chaiuk and Dunaievska, 2020) (Chapter 2). These countries avoided widespread lockdown measures and successfully galvanised the populace to follow particular measures. Compliance and trust between citizen and government was considered significant in achieving this,

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underlining important historical political, cultural and social differences between the West and Far East. When COVID-​19 arrived in Western democratic countries –​in which many elderly citizens lived –​not only was such trust relatively absent but governments struggled to gain conformity from the populace. This was recognised by one astute French NGO worker: Because we are countries with plenty of old people and with States which can financially help most of its citizens. Not so sure of the impact or usefulness of curfews and lockdowns in less developed countries with younger population and a majority of people working in the informal sector. In some way, I am shocked however by the way governments have decided on measures without any people or local authority consultation. (Phase 3, P130)

Furthermore, as pressures on primary care mounted and hospitals started to fill up, this exposed already dishevelled and underfunded health systems (Chapter 2). Governments essentially abandoned the care of other patients by cancelling operations and screening sessions for serious health illnesses to prioritise ‘COVID patients’ (Chapter 2). This self-​employed British disabled women in her 30s was certainly feeling the brunt of these changes: Lack of money, lack of clients and leads. I am disabled and my pain levels have been a lot higher. I can’t get access to my treatments and my hospital appointments have been cancelled. (Phase 1, P82)

Not only were health systems adversely affected, the implementation of lockdown measures in many countries required law-​enforcement authorities to redirect their time and resources. In Argentina, Paula, a counsellor, told us how police resources were redirected towards policing lockdown conditions in her home city of Rosario, which meant no authorities were responding to “the amount of violent crime

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related to the drug dealing in the poor barrios and no one was responding to attending murders in the outskirts”, as she described it. Rosario has been labelled ‘The Argentinian Capital of Crime’ (Infobae, 2016) and in the first ten months of 2020 had seen 159 murders, accumulating a homicide rate three times the national average (Infobae, 2020). Such a context was causing many people in Rosario to fall into debt and increasing social angst. Paula said: People feel tired and worried, people are getting into debt, people are getting divorced, some services are still not up and running to support people, there are delays in government financial support, people are starting to lose their properties, people want to go out and want to work and it feels like a permanent tension between balancing public health and restarting the economy.

In India, there were similar delays to not only limiting the spread of COVID-​19; but also, logistical impediments related to the movement and health provision of its 1.3 billion population. This young Indian teaching assistant said: I feel that the lockdown should have had more restrictions now that the cases are rising. Closing of borders is a must, and they’ve opened up Delhi borders, which makes this city a high-​risk area due to the immense employment stations located in and around Delhi. (Phase 2, P244)

Perhaps her concern was valid:  research shows that when the country went into lockdown, the infrastructure shut down and tens of thousands of migrant workers could not access healthcare and many were left to walk back hungry to their homes, hundreds even dying on the way (Dey, 2020; Saria, 2020). In Pakistan, an unemployed former welfare worker said the country was experiencing a “lack of facilities in hospitals and lack of safety kits for medical staff” where “poor people couldn’t get help” (Phase 2, P141). Indeed, in Pakistan, as well as Bangladesh, Kenya and Nigeria, the onset of the COVID-​19 pandemic had exacerbated already

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scarce healthcare facilities and services for the disadvantaged and vulnerable (Ahmed et al, 2020).

Lockdowns, the media and a social climate of anxiety

Perhaps it is unsurprising that people reported feeling differently about the virus at the height of the first lockdowns: one third (35%, n=347) of our Phase 1 sample reported feeling quite worried while half were very worried (50%, n=494). The seismic shift in daily routines and exposure to incessant media reporting on the issue meant that COVID-​ 19 dominated everyday discussions: 38% (n=374) of our sample were talking about it ‘quite a lot’ while 17% (n=168) found themselves talking about it all the time. Such conversations and debates on social media were often generated from the charts and graphs shown on the COVID-​19 daily news briefings and continued media reporting about the numbers of people dying. The media were “unprepared, no fact checking” (Phase 2, P8), said a female Bulgarian factory worker in her 40s. A young male Indian ticket inspector said: “the media is full of bullshit” (Phase 2, P187). Another female playschool teacher in her 30s from the Netherlands said the constant reference to COVID-​19 was about “intended fear as a tool to control masses’ behaviour” (Phase 2, P60), while a young female shop assistant from Slovakia claimed the “shock value seemed more important than facts” (Phase 2, P34). In a balanced reflection, this Spanish woman suggested: I believe that not all measures taken by the Spanish government have been effective. The media make it worse. I believe that there must be some way to reconcile the economy and social life with this virus, since because of these restrictions many businesses have been forced to close. On the other hand, I believe that the psychological burden that this pandemic carries is going to mean a considerable increase in psychological consultations and the government is not taking this into account. I understand that this is a difficult situation to address but I feel that public opinion is never taken into account when taking action and that there

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should be a place of debate where the citizen can at least set out his point of view and be heard. (Phase 3, P156)

High levels of anxiety and fear about the virus were reported during the first lockdown periods. While 41% (n=402) of our Phase 1 sample said they were ‘unaffected by it’ and 11% (n=112) said they were ‘less anxious’, nearly half (48%, n=474) said they were ‘more anxious’ during the first lockdown. Andy, a homeless outreach worker from the UK who was working on the empty streets, got particularly worried about exposure to the virus: I was taking my temperature three times a day as my wife at the time had a second kidney operation and was vulnerable. I thought to myself when I came home ‘will it be today I kill her’. There was no one on the streets, in lockdown. We were the only people going out. My colleague felt the same as we didn’t know about the virus and she would go home thinking she may kill her children.

Participants linked feelings of anxiety and media consumption. This self-​employed French translator in his 40s said of the media coverage: Appalling. I stopped watching news [during lockdown] due to the constantly contradicting “expert” opinions. I found news coverage too anxiety-​inducing –​as I have found it to be during other events (yellow vest movement in France, terrorist attacks, etc.). (Phase 2, P347)

This spa assistant from the UK in her 50s said the coverage had “triggered her PTSD” (post-​traumatic stress disorder): I have tried to limit my exposure to the news as I found uncertainty caused me anxiety and sometimes triggered my PTSD. I think the broadcast media mostly reported

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well given that they were being given a lot of waffle by politicians, which they didn’t attempt to challenge. (Phase 2, P346)

Evidence of how embedded this feeling of internalised anxiety had become was determined from questions we asked our participants about which particular measures they took to avoid contracting the virus. Almost all followed governments’ guidance on increased hand washing (97%, n=955), while there was confusion about the benefit of masks. Even now, and despite the widespread use of masks in many countries, evaluations of their effectiveness generally remain inconclusive (Abbasi, 2020; Chapter 2; Heneghan and Jefferson, 2020). At the time of the first lockdown, institutions like the WHO and governments were ambiguous about personal measures people could take, very often inconclusive in their stance on wearing masks. In some cases, this ambiguity was evident within the same country and even the same city: I am Slovenian but live in Belgium. The reaction here is very uncoordinated, meaning that different rules apply to different communes within one city (depending on the mayor). For instance, in the city centre, masks are not obligatory, not even in shops. Yet a couple of metro stops further, in another commune, you get fined for not wearing the mask in a street! (Phase 2, P315)

For this reason, at this point in the evolution of the pandemic, it was not mandatory and only recommended in some countries. However, over a third (35%, n=347) of our Phase 1 sample wore surgical gloves in public and 39% wore surgical masks (n=386). Their concern was two-​fold:  1) they were at risk of severe illness/​death from COVID and/​or 2) they could be asymptomatic and transmit the virus to those who are potentially vulnerable. A lack of contextualisation on the most at-​risk COVID-​19 profile –​ie elderly and comorbid groups –​combined with incessant media reporting on the ‘death’ and ‘case’ statistics resulted in fearful and uneasy experiences in public for a high proportion of our participants: very often

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when they encountered other people who were not wearing masks or wore them ‘incorrectly’ or when their personal space was compromised. Over two thirds (69%, n=683) of our Phase 1 participants said they ‘got nervy if someone sneezed or coughed near them’, while 79% (n=776) said they ‘crossed the road or moved away from someone if they came within one metre’. But we also found more evidence of this insecurity. In a middle-​class neighbourhood in downtown Porto Alegre in Brazil during April 2020, Roberto and his wife, both in their mid-​30s, said they were so nervous about contracting the virus that every time they went out shopping (the only time they left the house), they got back and showered, disinfected their phones, washed their clothes, and then proceeded to wash each individual product they had purchased from the supermarket. This was also in part related to widespread campaigns which stated that the virus could stay active on plastic surfaces for up to three days. Eva, a woman in her mid-​60s who lived with her husband who had survived cancer in rural Spain, said she often made their cleaner drink coffee outside and leave the mug outside for three days before bringing it in and disinfecting it. On some flights the lead researcher took frequently between Madrid and Majorca at the height of the first lockdown, passengers were often seen with two surgical masks and plastic protective equipment such as visors, gas masks and, in a few cases, entire white surgical suits.

Discrepant solidarity

While lockdowns and social distancing caused considerable disruption, some participants reported a greater sense of communal solidarity or expressed a desire for this (see Briggs et al, 2020; Primrose et al, 2020):

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I hope for solidarity, finding better ways to communicate ecologically, more humanity hopefully. (Phase 1, P124, Russia, Female, Workplace trainer) [I think we see a] Sense of solidarity, care for our neighbours, time to work out what is –​and what isn’t –​important in life, notice what is happening environmentally during lockdown and learn that we need to be far more aware of climate change and that we can do something about it. (Phase 1, P255, UK, Female, Church receptionist) Maybe it [COVID-​19] can expose the contradictions of capitalism, make people more aware of how the rich are just trying to screw us up. And maybe start some new solidarity networks? I just joined one to help! (Phase 1, P431, Brazil, Male, Videographer) It [lockdown] makes you realise the importance of so many things, the health of your family, ecological problems we have and the need for solidarity. (Phase 1, P760, Venezuela, Female, Trainee doctor)

However, our findings indicated that this sense of solidarity began to dissipate for numerous reasons. Over a third of our Phase 1 participants tended to think that responses to COVID-​ 19 –​at the governmental, institution and social levels –​represented solidarity (35%, n=345) while, conversely, nearly two thirds said it tended to expose society’s fragility (65%, n=640). The longer the lockdowns went on, many participants –​particularly those from Western countries –​ had pangs for life pre-​COVID-​19; they missed the cultural freedoms of eating out at McDonalds, going to see a film, going out to drink and party, and going on holiday. This group yearned to be able to indulge in consumption, even if it had been temporarily alleviated by the convenience of online shopping, gaming and entertainment forums such as Netflix (see Briggs et al, 2020). For example, Paul, a student who comes from a deprived northern town in the UK, said:

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I think at the start there was a lot of pseudo solidarity, clapping for the carers and ‘we’re all in it together’ and I feel that was just piecemeal, temporary. Everyone was asked to volunteer like help vulnerable people and this was surely what government should have been doing in the first place! All the solidarity has been lost now. We just want to enjoy ourselves as much as possible now, go shopping and spend money. I am just as bad, I wanted that too; I had money to spend and I held off for so long but the consumer in me was just too powerful.

In other countries, our participants observed a similar pattern as they watched the communal solidarity accrued from lockdown quickly evaporate: In Italy, people have immediately forgotten the concept of solidarity and in the very moment the lockdown ended they go back caring for themselves. (Phase 2, P272, Male, Private investigator) After a while when the State of Alarm had finished [in Spain] you could still see some solidarity but shortly afterwards most people just forgot about it. (Phase 1, P29, Female, Unemployed)

Secondly, as scientists started to learn more about the virus, questions were raised concerning its severity. While to this day this continues to be countered by mainstream media, at the time of the first lockdowns, some of our participants similarly questioned it, like this young Spanish operations manager: At first an extreme lockdown in Spain felt justified; however, after observing the numbers in northern countries (Netherlands, Sweden, Norway) it became apparent that a strict lockdown had no substantial effect on the number of infected people or mortality rates, as those countries, without the imposition of strict rules, had a lower rate of infected people and no IC overflow in hospitals. As for the recent measures, such as a curfew and a closure of some autonomous regions, those feel rather like a restriction of

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rights than for protection of citizens:  neither has it been proven that those measures actually have some kind of positive effect on the amount of people infected, or a lower occupancy rate on IC of the hospitals. (Phase 3, P313)

Similarly, ‘dissenting scientists’ who also expressed similar concerns were silenced by mainstream media and big tech companies who owned social media institutions such as YouTube and Twitter (Chapter 2). In Facebook forums, dissenters were labelled ‘deniers’ and restriction breakers –​such as those who did not wear masks correctly –​were branded ‘covidiots’. One Spanish student said “it’s pretty alarming the spread of pseudoscientific and conspiracy ideas amongst the populace. It contributed to worsening the pandemic outcome”. In one Facebook forum, David, an unemployed fitness trainer from the US in his late 20s, was regularly targeted by other members of the group for being extremely critical of COVID-​19. He said: Covid-​19 represents the complete destruction of humanity. Not a human being to talk to. People are freaked out about meeting someone they don’t know (so how does a person meet anyone?) No public events (so how does a person meet anyone?) I think an entire generation has been driven to hopelessness, to the point where death may be more appealing than life, all due to government stupidity over a fraud. Take the masks for example. Their purpose is emotional isolation, dehumanising, erasing of identity. If you put a muzzle on a dog, it suppresses free will. That is the only purpose of the masks. I sometimes refuse to wear the mask when shopping, and I see people give me dirty looks, or walk wide around me like I’m a leper for having a face. Even if in the most vulnerable age range, there is only a 0.0056% chance of death if infected, and my State has 0 to 5% infection according to PCR tests which are known to be 80% false positives.

Another of our interviewees, Lee, recently unemployed in the UK, had to sell his flat to generate money to live on. The first

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lockdown hit Lee, aged 39, hard and he started doing his “own research”: I fucking hate Covid almost as much as the ridiculous measures taken by governments around the world, which have been far damaging than the actual severity of Covid itself. I firmly believe that this mask and curfew etc. business is part of a larger scheme whereby the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class get subdued also.

In this respect, the indignation and anger tended to come from those impacted by COVID-​19 lockdown measures, while the fear and paranoia was more associated with contracting the virus. For example, this unemployed Finnish woman said: During lockdown, somehow a wave of solidarity came, and now it seems people are more divided, aggressive towards each other; the danger becomes ‘other people’, who are considered as potential health threat. (Phase 2, P133)

Evidently, social division became increasingly visible as the pandemic evolved. Media reports of some politicians and celebrities breaching lockdown restrictions undermined unifying notions that ‘we are all in it together’. Yet, individualising ‘responsibility’ around virus transmission prevention inevitably led to conflict between people, as this female UK care worker and Australian hospital cleaner explained, respectively: The governments whole ‘clap for carers and the rainbow slogans’ was a good ploy to bring the country together in unity whilst at the same time making those at the bottom end of the pay scale feel like heroes even though they had no choice but to work. Then the county became divided. Neighbours spying on each other and arguments erupting in shops because someone has walked too close to another.

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I had a few scowls when I went shopping and took my four-​year old daughter. (Phase 2, P334, UK, Care worker) I don’t think highly of the government, especially [the] Queensland Premier as she froze the pay-​rise for essential health workers; they were waiting since 1st September 2019 for it but since [then] the unemployment benefit has doubled. A real slap in the face for the essential health workers. (Phase 2, P341, Australia, Hospital cleaner)

This student from Barcelona in Spain and an international aid development worker from the UK suggested that while attention may have been on recognising the efforts of some frontline health workers, little attention was being paid to austerity measures, which their respective governments had instigated upon public services, hampering the delivery of adequate services to COVID-​19 patients (Chapter 2): Pablo: The other problem I have with the applauding is that on one hand, we salute and applaud the medical workers, but on the other, the government continue to cut their services and resources. Fred:  The attempt to go for herd immunity by increasing infection and then lockdown to reduce infection are clearly contradictory. The PM leading by shaking hands then getting COVID was equally ridiculous, as is the policy of thanking the NHS, which has been decimated by the same party. We should have utilised the opportunity of being an island to lock down borders, hand out masks and identify the most vulnerable. (Phase 2, P155)

Additionally, as the lockdowns progressed, there was also increased scepticism about how ‘cases’ and ‘deaths’ were both reported by the media and recorded by medical professionals advising the government. The predominant tool used by numerous governments to diagnose a positive COVID-​19 test

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–​the PCR –​was reported in fringe media to be responsible for ‘false positives’ and ‘false negatives’ (Chapter 2). Yet, to date there has been minimal debate concerning the potential impact upon how we interpret the risk COVID-​19 poses and, subsequently, our response to the disease.

COVID deaths

Quite quickly into the lockdown numerous governments were recording ‘COVID deaths’ as those who had tested positive within 28 days of their death. This conflated those who die with COVID-​19 with those who die of COVID-​19 (Chapter 2). This was particularly the case in the US, which to date leads the world’s statistics for cases and deaths. A participant, a woman in her 50s having lost her job because of the pandemic, noted that unclear guidance on the threat of the virus would inevitably lead to ambiguous collective commitment to reducing infections: This virus clearly is no hoax. If a President or other leader uses these words or otherwise downplays the risks and is not supportive of the action that are deemed necessary … you have already lost a group of people so any measurement taken will be less effective from the very start. Trump is only dividing the nation and does nothing to help people through this. In fact, he does the opposite. (Phase 2, P283, US, Unemployed)

Without healthy questioning of measures, societies are often at the mercy of an effective fearmongering media. This can leave the residue of an unquestioning compliance that is indelibly reproduced by self-​managing citizens. Joel, from Chile, said: It was not clear if people died because of Covid or because of the pandemic conditions. There was not this analysis. No one was allowed to see many people that died so it was very mysterious. People who were religious struggled. Then there were protocols which I don’t know if it made

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it better or worse … People became convinced that if they followed the measures, they wouldn’t get ill like masks and distance, but it was like they were kidding themselves.

The consequences of the lockdown produced therefore a paradox:  on the one hand, avoidance of one public health risk (the COVID-​19 virus) with the inadvertent production of other public health risks (unemployment, exacerbation of poverty, mental health illness, enhanced risk of domestic violence, child abuse, etc.). This Swedish social worker elucidated how: It [lockdown] can easily lead to mental illness, especially among those who already suffer from some kind of mental illness or have a psychiatric diagnosis. People who live with someone who abuses them are now constantly exposed to the person who is hurting them. (Phase 1, P63)

In such cases, we saw personal predicaments overlap: emotional, psychological and social infringements caused by lockdown overlapped to the detriment of many of our participants’ mental health. This Spanish office worker explained more: No freedom. Not able to go outside like a prisoner having done nothing wrong; it’s not right at all. Being inside stressed completely lowers your immunity, which makes it more likely everyone will catch it. I disagree with government policy; but you can get fined if you disobey even if some of the policies and measures don’t make sense. Spending more time on the internet, which I try to avoid normally. My savings have gone as am only on 70% of my normal wage. Can’t see family or friends. The list goes on really; it’s a fucking joke. Those that are in the category most likely to die should be in self-​quarantine from the beginning. The economy should not collapse for this. (Phase 1, P59)

Almost a quarter of our Phase 1 sample (24%, n=239) said they had known someone who had died because of COVID-​19.

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This Spanish man was stuck in London at the time of his mother’s death: Alberto: Covid has a similar mortality rate as the flu; I don’t understand the panic. The day I managed to get back, which was two months later, my mum died. There were no flights, no trains and because of the lockdown, I couldn’t pass from province to province. It was so fucked up; like something out of a movie. Because of Covid, only three of us were allowed to be at her funeral. It was my dad, my brother and me. Five-​minute prayer and into the ground, so surreal. She had multiple organ failure and was severely ill and old anyway. But something doesn’t add up because they didn’t put that on the death certificate; they put she died from Covid. It’s funny as she had no difficulty breathing when she died my dad said, her body just gave up and this was how we expected her to die.

By comparison, at the time, very little attention was given to early studies which shed light on who was mostly being affected by COVID-​ 19. Those early studies, mainly from countries who felt the brunt of virus deaths in the initial period (Chapter 2), found that elderly (80+) and those with comorbid health problems were most at risk (Brandén et al, 2020). People between the ages of 20 and 75 in our sample, who got the virus, tended to think of it as a ‘bad flu’. This French carpenter, who had had the virus, said: “the virus is a mild disease compared to obesity, cancer, Spanish flu and many others, it affects fragile people, like many illnesses” (Phase 3, P334). An unemployed woman in the UK said: “the government had done nothing but crash the economy, brainwash and pump fear into people”, adding how she does not “trust the government. It’s all a part of the agenda. COVID-​19 is just part of the flu family; they [are] using it to take away human rights” (Phase 3, P340). This Turkish student said:

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Every year it’s the same. Normally when you catch a flu you go home, take recommended meds, fluids, etc., rest, sleep and wait for it to pass so you can resume normal life. What the governments and WHO have done is an experiment on the ability to take under control the billions of people on the earth. (Phase 3, P267)

And this Dutch waiter said: I feel they [the measures] were exaggerated. The percentage of people who recover from the virus shows that it maybe isn’t as serious as we’re being told. This is being done at the detriment of people’s mental health, wellbeing and also the livelihood of many.

Yet despite this, COVID-​ 19 became the central focus of death, the potential to die or the possibility to get ill. This kind of ‘death anxiety’, write Menzies and Menzies (2020), has recently been shown to predict anxiety-​related disorders to COVID-​19 but also to play a causal role in various mental health conditions aggravated by the existence of the virus and the potential to be infected from it. Harry, an insurance worker from the UK, attributed all illness, suffering and death to COVID-​19. He said: I have had the virus, and so have many of my friends. Several have been hospitalised, and now months after their release remain physically and mentally affected by the experience. Several of my friends have lost their elderly parents to the virus. Three days ago, two of my neighbours living either side of my house were rushed into hospital. One is on a ventilator; one is on oxygen. They are both in their 50s.

Interviewer: This was all because of Covid? I mean did these people have other health complications? The neighbours they are quite elderly? Harry:  Well, yes, they did but it was still Covid.

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Similarly, María in Spain said she felt ill with fever and headaches during the first lockdown and self-​quarantined. She also wore a mask at home. She was so worried that she paid €250 for two separate COVID-​19 tests –​both were negative –​yet insisted on a further period of self-​isolation. Relatedly, this female council worker from America said: My grandmother died of Covid-​19 in a nursing home, alone. My dad got sick with a septic condition a year ago and I have been helping to take care of him, having to live with my sister and virtually going nowhere because his infectious disease doctor told us Covid would kill him. My sister is an elementary school guidance counsellor and had to take a leave of absence from work for my dad’s sake even though she wore an N-​95 mask every day. I’ve had to drive back home because my son has to have surgery and I am wearing an N-​95 mask now but can’t get over a sinus infection now, compared to when I was wearing a surgical mask, but I do it for my family. (Phase 2, P297, US, Female)

In South Africa, Steve’s grandmother was in a care home and suffered from severe Alzheimer’s, yet he attributes her demise to COVID-​19: Two years after my grandad died my gran started asking lots of questions about how I’d met my girlfriend using online dating. She had her hair done especially before asking me to take her profile pic for a dating site. She met her special someone who brought her a great deal of happiness in the final part of her life before Alzheimer’s removed her in stages, but it was Covid-​19 that took her from us completely.

In conversations with Steve after the passing of his grandmother, he maintains a pro-​lockdown stance and gets angry at other people who, in his words, “don’t respect/​ follow the measures”. When he sees people disobeying rules, he seems to attribute the death of his grandmother to them as if they are the potential killer. Like 90% (n=882) of our Phase

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1 sample, he felt lockdown was the right measure at the time, only he believes countries should have locked down “faster and harder”. In their study of grieving during the COVID-​19 pandemic, Eisma et al (2020) found higher levels of prolonged grief disorder and persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD) among respondents who had known someone die of COVID-​19 than other natural or unnatural causes. So the risks and destruction attributed to the virus are having considerable subjective impact upon individuals, fuelling fear, confusion, division, anger and anxiety. Subjective shrinkage

The upshot of many of the lockdowns was that much of the world’s population increased their reliance on digital modes of communication. In our study, two thirds of the Phase 1 sample reported using their mobile more during lockdown (66%, n=650) while 55% (n=541) were watching more films/​ series on channels such as Sky, HBO and Netflix during the lockdown period. Briggs et al (2020) show UK residents’ daily internet usage time increased from an average of 3.5 hours in 2019 to 4 hours a day during lockdown and, during the same period, Netflix subscriptions increased by 16 million, as did the number of livestream gamers from 2.3 million in January 2020 to 4.2 million in April 2020. While some of our participants were content to indulge in the seemingly endless possibilities of the online world, others were more concerned about what the pandemic meant on a social and subjective level. A teacher from the UK explained: I feel more disconnected from others at the moment and think that many people have retired into their own microspheres, which I find very worrying and wonder whether face-​to-​face communication –​which was already being seriously eroded in a post-​ social age of online oriented communication –​will ever recover. (Phase 2, P139)

Another perhaps unforeseen consequence of this exposure to continual online digital media was the ability to distinguish

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fact from fiction, reliable information from sensation and manipulation. An indicator of this doubt was in the high rates of scepticism. Roozenbeek et al (2020) show in their comparative analysis of the distribution of ‘misinformation’ about COVID-​19 in the UK, Spain, Ireland, the US, and Mexico that many people find it ‘highly reliable’, while, at the same time, a smaller group find factual information about the virus ‘highly unreliable’. Similarly, we found that only 4% (n=42) of our Phase 1 sample believed everything they were told about the virus, including how it is contracted and its effect on people. Half our sample, however, believed most of what they were told via media (52%, n=516) while well over one third were sceptical (41%, n=406). Four per cent (n=39) believed nothing. This disparity meant that one third were ‘unsure’ about the statistics provided on COVID-​19 ‘cases’ and ‘deaths’ (33%, n=321), while one quarter 25% (n=249) said they were ‘completely inaccurate’. Consequently, nearly three quarters (72%, n=706) sought out alternative information by their own accord, which would either confirm or contradict what they were told/​had heard. Even though, in many instances, most of the mainstream media very much aligned with governmental policies around the world, some people still had questions. The problem was that forums to engage these doubts were generally unsupportive of such questions:  with protesting banned in many countries because of the risks of transmission, the only remaining spaces were online platforms. In the Facebook forums, questions were posed by a minority of people who labelled those complicit in following preventative measures such as lockdowns, social distancing and mask wearing as ‘sheep’. Posts –​which were permitted by the administrators –​were repeatedly uploaded about contradictory reports, interviews and data which went against the general messages governments were trying to transmit. Those messages were often met with sarcastic memes, abuse and, in some cases, threats. Chat administrators frequently patrolled the forums, closing off exchanges and banning members for persisting in potentially offending people. Indeed, YouTube have a policy to take down content which contravenes WHO guidance, and Facebook donate money to ‘independent factcheckers’ to

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moderate the content which is shared on its sites. The online spaces people thought was available to debate these issues during the lockdowns were, in fact, heavily policed. We noticed that since the advent of lockdowns and the establishment of COVID-​19 Facebook forums, for example, it became increasingly difficult to have alternative debates which contravened government messages. In one forum, dominated in the main by pro-​lockdown participants, messages or posts projecting anything other than positive messages supporting the health service or in favour of the vaccine were quickly dismissed. Stephanie, a young Croatian woman living in the UK, said: I see ‘saving lives’ the same rhetoric as ‘saving the planet’. ‘So, you don’t believe there is a virus’ is the same as someone calling you a ‘denier’. It’s there to stop any debate. Or anti-​ vaxxer … It’s been the same since the beginning: toe the party line or else. Deifying of the NHS. Lots of scaremongering throughout, whilst defending all restrictions and demanding more of it. Any dissenting voice treated with contempt. And now when it’s about the vaccine, they’re up in arms and calling out on ‘fear mongering’ if you dare to question the narrative. Lots of members talking of getting the jab and ‘feeling great’.

Interviewer: Do you think people have completely submitted to the ideology or do you think it’s more that certain characters have an ulterior motive in the forums? Stephanie: I would say it’s more of the latter. I have no proof, but it is my instinct. When I post something, it could be a long read or a video or whatever. And laughing at emojis and dissing of the content comes with speed. It’s like they have a job to [do].

With public street-​based protest unavailable, privately owned big tech online spaces become the only medium for protest –​ only in these forums critical voice is also policed and silenced.

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An unemployed man from the UK also questioned the severity of COVID-​19 and the real motivations behind the ‘measures’: Mick:   No one ever trusted a politician, or the media … But for some strange reason they all trust them 190% now [because of Covid] … Hahaha, can’t make this shit up pal. I keep getting banned and deleted by Facebook because of it. Interviewer: Why? Mick:   Broadcasting the truth. Why are people trying to contain a virus which everyone is going to get? This is the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In ten years’ time, there will be no work mate. It’s agenda 2030.

Consequently, people such as Mick, who challenged the narratives of established bodies like the WHO or respective government institutions and criticised measures, were either branded ‘deniers’, ‘covidiots’ or ‘conspiracy theorists’. Agenda 2030 refers to the UN’s 2015 pledge to reconfigure the way life works on the planet by eliminating poverty, enhancing prosperity and limiting environmental damage. Mick believes that societies around the world are being reconfigured economically, politically and ecologically along these lines. For his penance for having these views on Facebook, however, he is now using his third Facebook account as the two previous ones were closed eight times before being permanently erased. Certain elements of the Agenda 2030, and the more recent World Economic Forum publication of The Great Reset (see Schwab and Malleret, 2020), have some credibility, as we discuss later. Mass unemployment because of the pandemic will require governments to rethink how societies operate. In the absence of a job for all in a potentially ‘greener world’, universal basic income is certainly an option. Very few participants were making these kinds of observations apart from this Finnish secondary school teacher who was perplexed at the disproportionate measures taken because of what she described as “almost non-​existent COVID numbers” in her country:

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The measures are lighter in Finland than in many other countries in Europe, as they are not many people who got Covid affected. The virus is almost non-​existent, Covid numbers here; there is no need for wearing a mask or social distancing. There is a virus but it’s not as dangerous as the manipulated media state. There is a lot of big business –​ big money plans behind all this story. (Phase 3, P310)

She went on to add how “people don’t believe me or dismiss me when I have this view; they think I deny it all”. Another man from the UK said: “I do not believe life will ever return to how it was before as I think COVID-​19 was used as a smoke screen to keep the public occupied while governments collaborated to change laws and monetary systems” (Phase 3, P387). When people called Mick a ‘denier’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’ he says “I just laugh at them … Some people you just can’t help … They are in their little secure bubbles, bless em.” With such uncertainty thrust upon so many people, it was unsurprising that the COVID-​ 19 pandemic placed many doubts in people’s minds about the future. Over one third of our Phase 1 participants said the advent of the virus raised many doubts about their professional futures (26%, n=252), while nearly half were ‘to some degree’ worried (49%, n=485). The main dilemma was, in this period of public health crisis, whether priority should be directed towards protecting people’s health (56%, n=551) or ensuring economic stability (53%, n=520). The marker of what COVID-​19 means in relation to history was felt strongly by participants. By comparison, very few felt that things would return to pre-​COVID normal (17%, n=167), while over half felt the pandemic marked an opportunity to rethink society (57%, n=563). Over a quarter, however, recognised that this was a significant moment by confirming that ‘the future had already been drastically changed’ (32%, n=319). A Spanish housing worker said: I think it is grave, not the virus, but the political-​ economic situation. The virus will accelerate a series of transformations which are already under way like climate

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change and the collapse of the planet. Scientists say that the destructiveness of the biodiversity will bring more viruses. We will see a much more polarised society, violence, racism, like in the States there are serious levels of civil violence. The inequality. Now in Madrid they are taking decisions on confinement in poor parts of the city. The data reflects that the virus has more impact there. Covid-​19 is polarising society.

Lockdown hangover and the ‘new normal’ Andy: I don’t know what will come out of this. After lockdown it was scary as I was used to having a bus to myself, then you see people as the enemy and you see people and think ‘you don’t have to sit next to me, sit over there’… I think for the people I work with (homeless people) I can see them getting abandoned. There won’t be money for my client group; they will slowly die out. I think things will go backwards. I don’t think people will come out of this to a brave new world where people are looked after, cared about, and accepting. Lockdown has made us less accepting of people. The humanity is gone. There wasn’t much to begin with. And what there was is just shrinking and I don’t see us coming out of that to be honest. During lockdown, people were nicer, doing shopping for each other and you don’t see anything like that now. We are more self-​centred [than] before. We need to blame somebody. I had hopes in lockdown; I thought we’d come out to a better world, but it dried up.

Lockdown left an indelible marker on many people in our sample. Even though as Andy suggests here it may have brought people together, for many, that unity faded as people emerged into what politicians described as the ‘new normal’. This term started to appear in the media across the world to signpost that the organisation of society and daily life out of lockdown would be different. As the WHO claimed the threat of a younger cohort getting infected and passing on

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the virus (Chapter 2) remained in many societies, the ‘new normal’ had to account for a return to social and economic life. As a result, maintaining some of the measures from lockdowns such as social distancing and mask wearing were cast as important. Many of our participants emerged from lockdowns loaded with a sense of duty to others, having spent a significant amount of time subjected to the ideological messaging related to the risks of COVID-​19: I have become more responsible as to my role in society. I must do whatever I can to avoid large gatherings, so as to avoid the further spread of the virus. (Phase 2, P256, Bulgaria, Male, Call centre worker) I am more careful and adhere to social distancing as best as I can (except for when meeting with my parents). I am more tuned in to other people’s attitude towards the pandemic. I wash my hands regularly still, more than before the pandemic. My social circle has shrunk dramatically. (Phase 2, P333, Netherlands, Female, Secondary school teacher) Society is wearing masks; I am wiping everything with alcohol and there is no physical contact with anyone. It’s a little sad. (Phase 2, P212, Turkey, Female, Teacher) Everyone should wear a mask, respect and practise social distance, and use hand sanitiser. Get the vaccine and do not jump the line in front of frontline workers or the elderly. (Phase 3, P302, US, Male, Mechanic)

An indelible residue of fear and caution remained for a significant number of people. We found in our Phase 2 data that while 40% (n=217) had been able to cope with lockdown, 44% had ‘struggled’ (n=240), 10% felt vulnerable (n=55) and 5% (n=28) had been severely impacted by the lockdown. Healthy changes to work and family routines post lockdown had benefitted one third of our sample (33%, n=178), around a quarter said things had ‘stayed the same’ (26%, n=140),

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while a larger proportion of people said that such changes had been for the worse (41%, n=222). I lost my chance of employment in Ireland because I had to wait for the lockdown to pass and they still haven’t called me, so I am still unemployed. There is no work, my parents are paid much less and there is more misery and more hatred, fear and aggression in general in the population. The politicians think they have more power and talk a lot of nonsense. (Phase 2, P502, Spain, Female, Unemployed) Yes, I am more isolated in my home –​with my family –​ work more from home, [we] are less motivated, less social and more sad. My husband is so afraid of dying of Covid that he drinks more alcohol than before. He hardly speaks of his pain, which –​paradoxically -​makes us more and more isolated from each other in our quarantine in our home. (Phase 2, P34, Sweden, Female, Retired) Covid-​19 is changing us, the social isolation, even though I have finished the lockdown and my subsequent quarantine when I was ill, it is still affecting me, as well as my work and my projects. (Phase 2, P487, Peru, Male, Manager) Even out of lockdown now, I still wear masks and [am] afraid to meet people, even my friends. (Phase 2, P93, China, Male, Mechanic)

Other participants reported that family relations (31%, n=167) and relationships with partners (20%, n=107) improved because of the lockdowns, while lockdown was perceived to ‘make worse’ some aspects of people’s lives. Two thirds (66%, n=359) said their social life had been negatively affected, work had become problematic (47%, n=253), while people reported deterioration in their mental (44%, n=239) and physical health (39%, n=213). A participant from Spain, a former clothes shop worker, exemplified how many of these experiences intertwined. He was already critical of the media

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because of “the massive amount of paranoia, negativity and anger portrayed by global press … this, in a period of crisis and under a lockdown, did nothing more than inflate polluted minds with more harm”. He also reflected on his depression after losing his job: Life has changed in different aspects related to my mental health, my positioning towards life and relative matters. The period of isolation caught me off guard, in the beginning of my entry in the job market. So, I lost my job. The long waiting period coupled with a devastating working panorama have severely affected my mental health … It is like [a] fight against giants. Young people like me are struggling against structural processes and we have no control. This has been like a burden, like where my feelings of frustration suddenly come over me and spread over other parts of my life … Personally, it is my anger and frustration. Resentment has grown in me.

The sense of personal suffocation is evident, which initially stems from the loss of his job but seems to dominate his everyday experience. Similarly, a young French student studying in Ireland, who had seen her mental health impacted from the lockdown, felt guilty that someone as young and healthy should want to seek help from underfunded services, knowing that there would be many others also seeking support. The young woman said her “friendships had been affected” because she wasn’t able to go out but in addition could not see her family or boyfriend: Annette: I still can’t see my boyfriend who lives in my country. My mental health has greatly suffered because of it and I feel isolated and alone from everyone even when I know I’m not. I’m also dreading getting help since I know there will be a massive backlog of people once this is all over, considering our mental health services were underfunded even before this. I just don’t feel right and hopefully I can get back to where I was.

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Pressure continued to accumulate in the post-​ lockdown period with the added burden of many similar conditions being extended into the ‘new normal’. Aside from the suffering, pain, deep resentment and anger, further division revolved around perceptions of the virus as the autumn and winter period of 2020 approached.

Divisions and contradictions: ‘sheep’ versus ‘deniers’, ‘covidiots’ and conspiracy theorists

For some people seemingly unaffected by the virus -​seeing perhaps improvements in family life, little change in work prospects or able to adjust their way of life to lockdown and ‘the new normal’-​it was easy to blame rising infections on ‘irresponsible people’ who did not abide by the measures. A participant from Spain, who retained her job as a vet having established her own practice, exemplified this. On arriving home every day from work, she would disinfect her shoes and shower before greeting anyone in the family. While she was critical of the government and media, saying: “they had lied from start to finish”, she was similarly discerning for her fellow citizens when she said:  “people need to be responsible and not break the rules otherwise they risk the health of everyone else”. In a similar case, this Serbian youth worker, trainer and online yoga teacher, who had already adapted her work online “ready for the digital future” during the lockdown, wanted “people in my country to be more responsible, in solidarity and focused in making things become better in COVID situation”. Contradictions, however, became evident from data we took from the second Phase when we asked participants to what extent they agreed with the statements given in Table 2. The data highlight various contradictions. On the one hand, participants generally sided with government-​backed campaigns to recognise key and health workers as the ‘heroes’ of the crisis (69%) –​even if, on the other hand, these very workers were subject to delivering services from depleted healthcare industries and denied pay rises (50%). Over half our participants said that both the media and government

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Table 2.  Phase 2 data statements regarding the COVID-​19 pandemic situation in the ‘new normal’ Statement Coronavirus is a threat to the existence of humanity There was too much hype surrounding the risk of the virus Deaths could have been avoided if our health system was not vulnerable and depleted Applauding key and health workers every night was important Media and government collaborated in how the virus and its risk was presented Anyone of any age can die from the virus The virus became less important for me when media coverage eased off Key and health workers are the heroes of the crisis and saved the nation In one year, we will have forgotten all this

N=540 % 235 44% 212 39% 268 50% 259 48% 291 54% 328 61% 97 17% 375 69% 91 17%

collaborated in how the virus and its risk was presented (54%) and over a third agreed there was too much hype around the virus (39%). “Lots of scaring people”, concluded a male South African student in his 20s, while one unemployed Finnish woman in her 40s said “they tried to scare us for sure”. This Bulgarian internet researcher said: Even though I conscientiously keep social distancing and wear a mask when necessary, I do feel like the consequences of the virus and the impact to society has been greatly exaggerated. At least in my country the death toll is smaller than practically any other known disease. Since the measures are widely not followed through, I believe that if the illness was at least half as severe as claimed by the media, we would’ve had a much more significant death toll. (Phase 2, P203)

Returning to Table 2, conversely, nearly two thirds (61%) felt that ‘anyone of any age can die from the virus’ and almost half felt that the virus posed a threat to the existence of humanity (43%). For this reason, variables such as age didn’t necessarily

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correlate with this fear because as many young people as older groups had been affected. Gabi, a German student in her late 20s, observed how many people in her country who came out of lockdown seemed not to care about ‘new normal’ measures such as social distancing: Gabi:  Most people here don’t care about each other now. They did in the beginning when there was a deep fear of the unknown but now people are back to their selfish nature. Its dividing people now. Everyone stuck to the rules, because of this fear … But now people are annoyed; it is a self-​centred thing. They missed their summer, and they think ‘it won’t bring death to me’ and the selfishness feels more aggressive now. I think people just got more annoyed; it is a big thing to close the country. We are fighting for freedom and rights and we are injured from our history so going into lockdown was not an option. We can’t believe it happened. It was right even [if] it was not legally correct. It was hard to accept for people. They find it hard to delay their gratification, like shopping for clothes for example.

Note how Gabi observes how people wanted to return to their consumer existence because it is this, as we will argue, which laid the foundations for further changes to our personal freedoms. Gabi still disinfects her phone and avoids going to the shops. As evident from the Facebook forum discussions, this kind of collective attitude which seemed to negate the potential risk of the virus aggravated many others who still seemed to be following government guidelines and were taking seriously the possibility of a viral resurgence. Nearly two thirds of our Phase 2 sample feared being around lots of people (64%, n=347) as they came into the ‘new normal’ scenario and other qualitative data highlight this collective  fear:

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Still avoiding public places as much as possible, showering on return from any trips to public places such as supermarket. (Phase 2, P126, UK, 30–​39, Doctor) I feel like it has been being free to [be] suspicious of everything around me. (Phase 2, P167, UK, 50–​59, Unemployed) I wear a mask, use hand sanitiser, and carry it with me when I go out. I wash my hands all the time. I will not eat vegetables or salad for fear of contamination of the virus. A trip to the store takes a long time because I have to wait in long lines. So, I don’t go out as much as I did before lockdown. (Phase 2, P198, US, 20–​29, Teacher)

Gema, a student in her early 20s, had only been out of her house twice in the three months after lockdown: Interviewer: Are you worried about going out in public? Gema:  Oh yeah, yes definitely. I took a bus into the city and was quite nervous. I wore a mask, and I wouldn’t have done that a few months ago. Walking around I got nervous [of] people who didn’t have them or who came into my space. It was more random people coming into my space. Interviewer: Do you avoid going out? Gema:   Yes. I mean I have only been out twice in three months. But it’s ok if I am around people I know and trust. Interviewer: But isn’t there the same risk? I mean you don’t know where they have been, and they could have gone out. Gema:   Yes, I realise this. I have only been near one person though.

As Gema sees it, the ‘careless’ and ‘selfish’ people that jeopardise her safety and psychological security are returning to pre-​ COVID practices. Indeed, in numerous Western

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democratic countries, increased infection rates –​which did not necessarily translate to the ‘first wave’ –​were very much blamed on such ‘careless and selfish people’ (Chapter 2). Some believed misinformation continued to dilute mainstream prevention messages and jeopardised commitment to following governmental advice. A young female Dutch activist said, “There is really no rules, all is dedicated to the individual responsibility. It is good the freedom, but it kills people” (Phase 2, P23). This teacher from Russia explained how the advent of the ‘new normal’ had seen the virus supposedly “defeated” in her country –​even if cases continued to be reported: Inessa: During these months there was a lot of misinformation, as nobody was prepared for this situation where the whole world would be paralysed in this way. The way they have handled this process has been without logic and with very little information:  They closed borders and ordered quarantine when there were barely 1,000 infections per day (in all Russia where the population is huge) but then they announce that the quarantine ends at the beginning of May when there is every day (and for more than a month) more than 8,000 new infected cases per day. Not to mention that as of today, June 24th, 2020, the news and digital newspapers literally announce that “Russia has defeated the coronavirus” when there are still more than 8,000 new cases per day.

This female council worker in her 30s in Belgium concurred: Mila: There was an atmosphere of fear promoted by (most) media, whereas simple facts would be sufficient in most cases. I have friends who work in hospitals (Belgium) and they said, that even if it was hard because they had to adapt and change their working methods, it was not nearly as tragic as described in the media. I have gotten

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allergic to the war-​time terms used (‘fighting the virus’, ‘combat the enemy’) in some countries. (Phase 2, P315)

Commitment to the measures was also believed to have diminished when evidence of some politicians and celebrities (Chapter 2) breaking measures and restrictions began to surface. This young unemployed woman from the UK said: Rob: The UK government have been useless and prioritised money, as always. The track and trace app is a disaster. So many people stopped following the rules once Dominic Cummings drove to that castle.

Dominic Cummings worked until November 2020 as the Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Having consistently endorsed lockdown measures and restrictions, he then broke lockdown rules by travelling from London to Durham, around 270 miles. Many others broke the restrictions, including, ironically enough, Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the influential epidemiological researchers pivotal in advising the UK government to lock down based on modelling at Imperial College (Chapter 2). He was forced to resign. Kay Burley, a pro-​lockdown newscaster for Sky News who became renowned for fiercely criticising public figures in national broadcasts who broke lockdown rules, flouted the restrictions on her 60th birthday. The UK is not unique in this respect. In Majorca, Spain, the President of the Balearic Islands broke the curfew orders she put in place when she went drinking until 2am. California Governor Gavin Newsome frequently broke mandatory guidelines at social gatherings by not wearing a mask. At many of the private events which President Trump attended during the pandemic’s ‘new normal’ period, few if any of the attendees wore protective masks while many Americans continued to do so. In Lavorgna and Myles’s (2021) online ethnography of Italian social media, she differentiates between ‘receivers’, ‘supporters’ and ‘providers’ of medical misinformation throughout the pandemic. Alternative medicines and health regimes promoted as beneficial in tackling the virus, either as

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profit-​generating mechanisms for alleged expert ‘providers’ or according to personal belief by ‘supporters’, represent ‘information pollution’ that has harmful consequences. Scepticism of official narratives also represents epistemic mistrust and positions people in opposition to received scientific wisdom. Our data confirm Lavorgna’s suggestion that difficulty abounds in recognising and differentiating legitimate criticism and outright falsehood.

Viral hiatus: lockdown part II and the second wave resurgence Yvette: I admit I have been more cautious. I’ve lost an uncle and aunt due to Covid. My dad lost his brother and sister within 17 hours of each other. But because of lockdown I couldn’t comfort him. My dad has been in hospital (ICU) but not Covid-​related. I have been in hospital not with Covid but possibly lockdown-​related issues. But I agree, lockdown is having a devastating effect on me and my kids. My 16-​year-​old son’s classmate committed suicide last week. My son is also supposed to be doing his A-​levels just now but is giving up hope. Keeps saying ‘what’s the point?’ We are just one family, struggling with issues that I think lockdown has intensified. I see other parents in the street that I know when going to the shop and some of them cried saying ‘they don’t know how much longer they can take’. This is just the slither of the tip of the iceberg. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors and all doors are closed right now. But we are some of the slightly fortunate just now; there are far, far many in the world going through worse. No proper homes. No running water.

Even in the face of considerable suffering experienced by herself and her family, Yvette viewed death as inevitable, describing it as “something that happens –​whether it is Covid, cancer, car crashes!” As we write, she still encourages her son as much as possible and receives treatment for her stress-​related anorexia, which has seen her lose 15 kgs; she now only weighs 48 kgs. As the excerpt from her interview indicates, she suspects

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others are at breaking point, juxtaposing her suffering against that of someone else in much more dire circumstances. Her story is representative of others who have had to suffer the disruption of further restrictions in the autumn/​winter period of 2020. Rising infections in November and December 2020 prompted numerous governments including the UK to re-​ introduce strict lockdowns and the closure of schools and businesses. This female German social worker was concerned: It felt like the government was too hesitant [the first time around] regarding the measures and should have reacted earlier. A stricter lockdown would have been needed. The measures now feel like a weird compromise. They especially affect young children/​young people and people who are already coming from a disadvantaged background. This can’t continue very longer, or a lot of people will suffer from long-​term consequences. (Phase 3, P200)

The ‘second wave’ in Spain began early in autumn 2020 and was even speculated to merge into a ‘third’. While there was some support, albeit reluctant, for the resumption of strict measures, this Spanish special needs worker felt otherwise: No, they [the measures] were far too draconian and didn’t taken into account other vulnerable people like victims of domestic violence, child abuse or those suffering with mental health/​drug/​alcohol problems. These people have been abandoned. (Phase 3, P32)

In Canada, the arrival of the ‘fall’ saw infections increase: Rebecca: The lockdowns in the spring and now in the Fall were a result of trying to keep capacity in hospital ICUs. The repercussion however on small businesses and individuals’ mental health have been significant. Time will tell if this pre-​ emptive pain was really worth it. The public’s obedience and patience are being sorely tested,

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The same was observed in South Africa by a tourism worker who said “fire all politicians; they have killed more lives than Covid. Start focusing on the depression death rates due to not being able to work or socialise”. Equally in the UK, some talked about how the “human cost” post lockdown was outweighed by news media reporting on ‘out-​of-​control case numbers’ and ‘new strains’. This high-​street banker said: I think the human cost we have had to pay in the UK in terms of mental health, unemployment, redundancies, businesses folding and children falling behind in their education is difficult, if not impossible to justify. There are now hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people applying for every job advertised, families unable to pay their bills or effectively feed their families, and the amount that the government has had to pay for schemes such as furlough will impact the country’s economy, employment prospects and taxes for years to come. (Phase 3, P323)

During this period, our data point to a gradual increased awareness about the unintended harms of lockdown measures, which affected more than just the lower part of the class structure (Chapter 2): Yes [the current measures are justified], but at the cost of rising social inequality among the young generation. The most vulnerable groups –​children from low-​educated low-​ income families –​were largely neglected. Furthermore, the public shaming of the youth for seeking social contacts while older generations had other options to meet in disguise fuelled intergenerational conflict. (Phase 3, P190, Germany, Female)

Others in more privileged positions were able to enjoy some freedoms over the summer of 2020, but quickly saw them

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disappear with the advent of a COVID-​19 ‘second wave’. Flouting of the rules and restrictions were said to result in the reported increase in ‘cases’ towards the autumn of 2020 and disobedient electorates were blamed for relaxing their attitudes to the seriousness of COVID-​19. In many countries, this led to the re-​instigation of previous COVID-​19 measures such as lockdowns and curfews. This often manifested in a sense of collective shame in the Facebook forums: ‘how is it we are so stupid?’ and ‘why can’t we stick to the measures?’ were common discussions. In another example: Some of these measures were successful, albeit untimely and poorly implemented. Politics should not interfere with health and we are sheep following bad political decisions. (Phase 3, P141, Spain, Male)

Despite this, the pro-​ lockdown stance prevailed in many countries –​even if, like Yvette, private pain was evident for many as a result. Given some of the data presented so far, at the end of Phase 2 in our study, when we asked whether people or the economy were more important, resoundingly our participants felt the former was more important (87%, n=469) than the latter (13%, n=71). Curiously, when asked whether they would prefer a ‘new world order’ or the ‘same before coronavirus’, there was a greater affiliation for the former (74%, n=401) than the latter (26%, n=139). Was the acceptance of and commitment to further lockdowns therefore about enduring a period of suffering to emerge into a ‘brave new world?’. The advent of subsequent lockdowns saw a re-​run of the daily governmental briefings and media attention on top of more pressing social and economic tension and hardship. This unemployed Spanish woman in her 20s exemplified this concern: They [media and government] portray it as the end of the world, catastrophic and at the same time they lie to us

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every day saying that there was less virus and that it would be over for good when we came out of the first lockdown. (Phase 2, P380)

Even workers in frontline services were critical. Angry at the lack of government preparation and investment in healthcare, one Colombian nurse described the media’s coverage of the “inevitable second wave” as “shit, they have no idea and are not informing us with the details” (Phase 2, P290) while one Spanish police officer said:  “the media collaborate with the lies and false data the government produce” (Phase 2, P400). He went on to state: I think the media have gone too far by causing unnecessary alarm and generating a negative and extreme alternative reality that people are reluctant to accept because of their personal defence mechanisms. People cannot accept so much negativity and so denialism is growing. The fact that the media is almost exclusively devoted to the pandemic 24 hours a day leaves little room for the necessary escape, particularly in older people, and in adolescents it generates rebellion.

This participant proceeded to reflect on how he and his colleagues had been ordered to concentrate their operations on policing young peoples’ movements, which, in his words, made him “feel bad; they are young, and it doesn’t really affect them”. Though generally publicly accepted, second and third lockdowns were met with private scepticism as governments were perceived to be revisiting previously failed measures. At social meetings, people often deferred the COVID-​19 topic to avoid encountering the invisible division it was creating. Many people were asking themselves how was it that they were once again encountering the virus after hard lockdowns and preventative measures such as social distancing, mask wearing, etc. This was aptly summarised by this NHS pharmacy technician who said: Hindsight plays a great part. Information needed to be gathered more from other countries and a more

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collaborative approach taken. There was a lack of clarity and enforcement has led to no point in [the] current guidelines. There is no firm point made around each guideline coming across as it seems more a tag line than policy. There are many contradictions and silly rules reduce faith and trust. (Phase 2, P76)

We witnessed first-​hand many of these contradictions in both the countries in which we reside like, for example, being permitted to board full planes and sit centimetres from each other only to then be badgered by officials in fluorescent jackets or radioactive-​protective clothing to socially distance while waiting for luggage. These contradictions made little sense to everyday people and further polarised societal divisions. To put it in simple terms: people who saw ‘rule flouters’ got more nervous/​frustrated/​angry, while, conversely, people who saw ‘contradictory rules’ eased their attitudes and approach to daily life. Additionally, there were major doubts about how the implementation of such measures would be managed and policed. For varying reasons, 28% (n=151) of our Phase 2 sample broke the first lockdown rules and restrictions and in qualitative answers many commented on the ease with which they did it. An overemphasis on individual responsibility coupled with perceptions of the low risk of being caught lessened the seriousness of what was taking place. When this was observed among the public and under the guise of authority figures, this cast further doubt over collective commitment to the cause: I still see people not following the rules (not wearing masks for example) and the appointed authorities (cashiers, security guards, etc.) hardly ever do much to enforce them. (Phase 2, P109, Bulgaria, Student)

Still, confidence levels seemed to remain high in the measures many governments continued to implement, who were becoming increasingly accepting of the idea that lockdowns, social distancing and mask wearing were here-​to-​stay features of a post-​COVID world. Certainly, we can see that the world’s cities are now laden with public health messages, which act as

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the visible symbolisms of an emerging post-​COVID world (see Young, 2021). Indeed, when asked about how ‘effective’ the measures had been in reducing infection rates, many were confident of their use (Table 3). To date, many governments and many academics within the social sciences have seemingly failed to question, test or evaluate some of the measures in Table 3 across Western countries, particularly curfews, lockdown and face masks. Nation states, however, who had ‘successfully’ controlled infections and quelled death rates, on the other hand, have already published their findings (for example, see Yixiang et al, 2020 for Singapore; Wang, Horby et al, 2020 for China). Yet our data show that public reasoning over the appearance of a ‘second wave’ was that countries did not lock down quick enough or sufficiently hard enough in the first place. Criticism was widespread and harsh in this respect: All policy makers fucked up miserably and never knew exactly what to do … They are fucking idiots and morons were more interested in controlling people with fear factor … son of bitches… (Phase 3, P100, Pakistan, Male) It was not taken seriously enough. This is now a pestilence of immense proportions. The world was unprepared but should have been. It could have been contained early within China. Wasn’t. Personal sacrifices needed, and yes, maybe for up to two years. Only vaccination now will put a lid back on it but until then it can only be contained, in

Table 3.  Over the last three months, do you think any of the following measures assisted in reducing COVID-​19 infection rates? (Phase 2 sample) Measure Handwashing Social distancing Mask wearing Lockdown Curfews

N=540 356 349 337 329 202

% 66% 65% 62% 60% 37%

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part. However, people hate curtailing their normal lives, so it’s not contained. (Phase 3, P204, Turkey, Female) I feel lockdowns are effective, but the first was implemented too late, causing them to last longer. I think it would be better to have shorter, but stricter measures. (Phase 3, P24, UK, Male)

The cure for capitalism? Vaccinating fear with social control

While the standard development of a vaccination is usually at least five years (Reiss and Bhakdi, 2020), quite quickly big pharmaceutical companies alongside world-​leading scientific academic institutions received billions from governments to develop effective vaccines. The European Commission alone, for example, spent $8 billion to find vaccine candidates. By the summer of 2020 –​before the subsequent second and perhaps third waves, Moderna and Pfizer had emerged as the leaders in this race to vaccinate everyone, holding Phase 1 and 2 trials which were considered successful on 14 July (Moderna) and 12 August (Pfizer). When the increasing case numbers of the autumn and winter of 2020 were matched with further strict measures on social life, much of the political and media focus was then directed to vaccines. Our data very much reflect the anticipation of the vaccine as the ‘magic bullet’ since 67% (n=273) of our Phase 3 sample said they would have the injection. These people made references to wanting to ‘return to some sort of normal’, while, at the same time, they formed part of a desperate public yearning to exit the intermittent cycle of lockdowns in which many countries were ensnared. While generally accepted as the necessary means for social life to progress, there were a few sceptics:

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Still many unanswered questions regarding the vaccine … will it be effective against new variants? And is it still transmissible after one receives the vaccination? (Phase 3, P68, Ireland, Female) I am having doubts about the vaccine and this is not related to a belief. On the contrary, vaccines need a research process and medical testing that are not being respected with Covid. I would absolutely use the vaccine if safety conditions were guaranteed. (Phase 3, P187, Argentina, Female)

As pharmaceutical companies entered the closing stages of their testing, adherence to the governmental measures remained strong, aptly reflected in support of their continual adoption and people’s continued compliance with them (see Table 4). Many people had come to accept that the virus would seemingly remain in circulation even despite the vaccination and that, with time, we would have to co-​exist with COVID-​19. A British secretary and sales rep, respectively, said: Risks are always an everyday life occurrence … this was unexpected and affected the whole globe; it has been a huge task in trying to understand how and when this got into the atmosphere. We need to learn to live with viruses as done in the past, unfortunately sometimes with high mortalities. Once-​ a-​ year vaccine same as flu should be

Table 4.  Which one of the below statements reflects how you feel about COVID-​19 now? (Phase 3 sample) Statement We should continue to take seriously the threat of COVID-​19 It doesn’t seem as bad as we thought but we should still be careful I am bored of it and want normal life as it was to resume ASAP Unanswered

N=407

%

270

66%

55

14%

74

18%

8

2%

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introduced and [people] given the option to have this. The only thing with the unknown is then given an approach by the media and journalists to come across and put fear into people and not much positivity for a better outcome. (Phase 3, P40) I think there’s a fundamental issue to address about the fear that’s been instilled in the population, which means that people are struggling to accurately risk assess their behaviour. Some are terrified to even leave their house and that’s not going to go away just because we have a vaccine. Others are angry and therefore defiant, refusing to let ‘it’ affect their lives. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but the hype and fear has created a problem that’s not going to go away soon. (Phase 3, P 194)

A feeling of belief and potential ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ was marked by the development of the vaccine, likely also reflected in increasing levels of interest in COVID-​19-​related information. When we compared data on ‘people’s interest levels’ related to COVID-​19 from Phase 2 to Phase 3, we found that there was greater interest (Table 5) in Phase 3. However, within this same period, speculation started to circulate around whether the vaccine would be necessary as a means to access pre-​COVID freedoms. While there seems to be a belief that current COVID-​19 measures are reducing infections (see Table 4), there is less belief that vaccines should

Table 5.  How would you describe your interest in COVID-​19 now? (Phase 2 and 3 samples) Statement I follow more COVID-​19-​related information Same as always I am less interested in COVID-​19

Phase 2 N=540

% Phase 2 Phase 3 % Phase 3 N=407

57

11%

89

22%

260 223

48% 41%

210 108

51% 27%

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Table 6.  Should people show proof of vaccine to be able to …? (Phase 3 sample) Action Travel See loved ones in homes or hospital Go to theatres and music events Go to pubs, restaurants and clubs

N=407 222 193 140 137

% 55% 47% 34% 33%

act as the vehicle for accessing previous freedoms. The idea of a ‘digital health passport’ was circulated in some countries like the UK, which provoked more threats to current global networks and the hospitality, aviation and tourism sectors. As shown in Table 6, our sample were seemingly divided about whether the vaccination should be required to travel, less so to see their own loved ones in hospital or act as a kind of ‘health verification’ if going into a music event or a restaurant or pub. People seemed confused about whether the ‘new normal’ was now the ‘foreseeable normal’ or if it was, indeed, the future normal (Figure 1). This confusion left many in a sort of personal doldrums, and like this young German woman, looking for ways to self-​justify breaches of the restrictions, if only to feel a bit ‘normal’ again: I am not as cautious as I should be. Maybe concerning the social distancing. I see less people, but those that I see (two friends), I don’t socially distance but hug them. The situation is getting surreal for me; I find myself being cautious in one moment and generous in another. This vaccine-​action will take the rest of the year to show any results like reducing society-​ wide measures, so I don’t understand all the fuss about the hurry. (Phase 3, P176)

Relatedly, a Canadian woman who said she would take the vaccine said:  “I just want life to be it all again, but I don’t think that will ever happen. Old normal is gone. Travel and restaurants and concerts would be nice” (Phase 3, P245). One half of the world seemed to celebrate this rapid development of vaccines, which was touted by politicians and the media

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Figure 1.  Now the vaccine is available, do you think life will return to normal? (Phase 3 sample)

as the potential magic bullet. The other half were dubious of the seriousness of the virus and furthermore suspicious about the rushed development of the vaccine. Within this cohort, a smaller group who had been speculating about so-​ called ‘conspiracy theories’ came to the forefront again. The main ‘theories’ posited by these people were either one or a combination of: 1. The risk 5G mobile phone radiation posed to people’s immune systems or, in some cases, 5G was responsible for the transmission of the virus. 2. Bill Gates’ supposed quest for world domination by being responsible for the installation of microchips inside the vaccine that his foundation had funded. 3. COVID-​ 19 being engineered as a means for high-​ level biological warfare:  that the virus was devised by Chinese scientists as a subtle modern-​day weapon of mass destruction. 4. The possibility that COVID-​19 does not exist at all, and because it is no worse than flu, that it is just a collaborative governmental manoeuvre to increase the social control governments have over an increasingly passive populace. 5. The suggestion that the US military implanted the virus in Wuhan to destabilise China as a world superpower.

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Around the same time, however, the scientific community had started to report mutations of COVID-​19 in different geographical locations (Mercatelli and Giorgi, 2020). Later studies published in November 2020, such as that of Zhang et al (2020), found that emerging strains were more infectious. The potential for increased infectiousness was quickly reported among the media and ‘new strains’ were identified in South Africa and the UK. Intense speculation about what this would mean for overworked and underpaid frontline medical staff and over-​burdened and under-​pressure health systems –​many of which had not received much investment after the first lockdown –​led to the adoption of new, harsher measures. Anger and frustration grew in our participants’ responses from both first world and developing countries, particularly over the distribution of the vaccines and if they would prevent these ‘new strains’. Despite the approval of several vaccines, uncertainty remains in many states as we approach the spring and summer of 2021. We will continue to follow the pandemic’s evolution in whichever direction it may take us, and our study will seek to adapt its methodology accordingly. We have been prepared to wade through a lot of conflicting information to hopefully be able to say something critical about the pandemic, shedding empirical light on this historically unique and intervallic period. By doing this, we feel we are contributing something useful to wider society so that other people and social institutions have some awareness of the broader context of the pandemic. We do not pretend to have covered everything Covid-​related in our study. But we have sought to explore how people across the world have been affected by the pandemic and have put those experiences in their political, economic and cultural context. The concluding chapter outlines some potentially useful theoretical tools and then speculates on what the future may look like.

5 Apocalyptic futures An appeal to the social sciences

When we reflect on COVID-​19 and the lockdown restrictions enacted around the world, it is inevitable that some people will have experienced a ‘good lockdown’ in the way that some participants in the previous century’s defining moments, the two world wars, spoke of enjoying a ‘good war’. Time to stop and reflect, identify priorities, learn a new skill, spend more time with family, work from home, enjoy Zoom quizzes. They will come out of this crisis financially better off, professionally secure and emotionally centred. For them, the world post-​COVID-​19 will likely be one of opportunity and advancement. However, the rich empirical data presented in this book show that these experiences speak to privileges not afforded to all. The world into which COVID-​19 emerged was one of heightened inequality, increasing polarisation and tension, and a growing post-​social arrangement whereby the challenge of social cohesion was fraught with difficulty. The pandemic has exacerbated many of these tensions and created new ones. New social divisions appear, and new fault lines represent challenges that will define the coming era. Social inequalities have grown, both economically and culturally, as some elites have enjoyed unprecedented growth in wealth, the ranks of unemployed in Western economies swell with each business failure and high-​street closure. Elsewhere, in poorer developing nations, the pandemic has burdened states lacking adequate healthcare provisions and with considerable numbers of citizens that rely on the informal economy for work. New global contours are emerging and the fundamental building blocks at the heart of social science are now questioned anew: how does the pandemic affect the relationship between individuals and society? What do new inequalities and fault 107

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lines mean for social cohesion? Will the pandemic usher in new configurations of social control? Rather than provide a summary of the main points made so far, this chapter will aim to draw together the threads of our argument to look towards the future, both for society and for the social sciences. We feel it is important to start asking the right questions and be willing to look for those answers. It is imperative for social science to undertake research that reflects reality in all its messy complexity. The impact of the pandemic and the response of governments around the world have had, and will continue to have, consequences for people everywhere. For some, those consequences will be advantageous; for others, the consequences will be crushing and tragic. Some consequences will be hidden and will not be revealed until well into the future –​this is true of both economic trajectories and the delayed aftermath of traumatic experience (Ellis et al, 2021). If social science is to have ‘impact’, it needs to understand the myriad and complex issues brought to the fore by COVID-​19 and the governmental response. We implore our colleagues to go out and research the social, political, economic and cultural impacts of the pandemic in a variety of ways. Funding agendas are likely to align with the pandemic response so we should all possess a strong fidelity to knowledge and our understanding of the world and, where funding is not available, still develop projects, undertake research, engage with people, find out what is happening and how people are dealing with the effects of the pandemic. As our data show, people in all parts of the world, in all manner of socioeconomic and cultural conditions, have experienced the pandemic in a range of ways and are trying to make sense of what has happened, what is happening and what may happen in the future. Our findings offer opportunities for future research into the medium-​ and long-​term impact of the pandemic and governmental response and we encourage multi-​and interdisciplinary approaches. As we have tried to step outside our disciplinary boundaries, we suggest that bringing expertise from a range of areas can yield significant insights and thus contributions to knowledge, policy and practice. Societies are complex open

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systems and therefore a range of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches should be considered. However, we acknowledge that the research presented here is not completely devoid of limitations and neither is this short book without limits. We translated our backgrounds in ethnographic and qualitative methods into a range of online activity, both quantitative and qualitative. Online research represented fairly unfamiliar territory then for a group of researchers largely accustomed to building trust with participants, achieving ‘immersion’ and collecting data in person. While this transition was managed, we appreciate this generates methodological and epistemological questions, particularly concerning the level of trust and thus detail that can be obtained via online methods in comparison to the face-​to-​face methods we were personally accustomed to (see Howlett, 2021). In addition, we also recognise that while online surveys have proved successful in other studies (Gu et al, 2016; Bennetts et al, 2019), there remain limitations concerning their representativeness. Despite these limitations, we felt impelled at the inception of the pandemic to mobilise and capture as best we could, given the circumstances, a semblance of people’s experiences of this unique situation and the most significant and tumultuous event in recent history. The pandemic is both global in scale and in its ramifications. We sought to capture experiences from different parts of the globe and provide an overall analysis of the commonalities of experience we found among our various participants. We used the tools at our disposal, despite lockdown restrictions, to venture out into this new and changing world, to find out what was happening, and to understand how people were experiencing restrictions. Online surveys, promoted through social media and the limitations acknowledged notwithstanding, did generate vast amounts of data. Follow-​ up interviews allowed participants from around the world to tell us their experiences of COVID-​19, their feelings about government restrictions, their hopes and their fears for the future. As restrictions eased, we were able to undertake some ‘traditional’ ethnography and capture observations from different parts of the UK and Spain. We

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also endeavoured to undertake desk-​based research, analysing data and research from a range of disciplines and perspectives. All of this was underpinned by an analysis that sought to triangulate findings, identify themes and challenge assumptions. Our desk-​ based scramble for knowledge led to a typology which reinforced the decision to immediately head out into the (virtual) world to capture experiences as the pandemic unfolded. As with all typologies, some studies do not neatly fit any category, but much of the early literature reflects our critique of our disciplines. Indeed, the qualitative components of our mixed-​ methods study, in particular, should be at the centre of the social sciences’ development in the future, not least for their elicitation of rich and nuanced empirical data. When government restrictions are lifted, it is incumbent upon researchers to head out into the real world to speak to people and conduct ethnographic observations, building a picture of the post-​ pandemic world from the ground up. This will enable researchers to link sentiments and behaviours at the micro level to the macro world of capitalism’s possible next phase, which we outline shortly. In addressing the messy complexity of the pandemic and the deleterious effects of lockdown measures, we maintain a realist paradigm. We have argued here and elsewhere that the micro level of daily life, interaction and experience is connected to the intransitive realm of society’s depth structures –​political economy and ideology –​and that the complex interplay between subject and society is one that requires careful thought and theorisation. For us, positivist research that quantifies experiences and opinions and searches for correlations and monocausal explanations is partial and misses the multi-​faceted nature of ‘society’ as an ‘open system’ (Bhaskar, 2008). Social constructionism that focuses on discourse and language, fixates on subjective interpretations and standpoints as a reflection of multiple truths, misses the real objects and forces in the world that exist independent of the researcher and respondent (Hall and Winlow, 2015). Realism proposes that ‘reality’ exists beyond our sense of perception or subjective experience and critical realism’s ‘domains of reality’ offer a positive platform for understanding the pandemic and its effects; the ‘actual’ realm of experiences

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and the ‘empirical’ realm of events, those things we are aware of but have not experienced directly, can be captured through the means and methods employed in this project. However, without the realm of the Real, the intransitive realm of depth structures, those hidden forces that shape our experiences and the events in our lives, our knowledge of the world remains partial. Ideology is vital in understanding the pandemic, the response and the future. On the level of political economy, neoliberal ideology has proved surprisingly resistant but increasingly deaptive (Johnston, 2008). The story neoliberalism tells us about free markets, competition, minimal state intervention and fiscal discipline failed to stand up to scrutiny following the 2008 financial crisis. In response to the pandemic, the famous dictum ‘there is no magic money tree’ disintegrated in a burst of state intervention not seen for generations (Blakeley, 2020; Tcherneva, 2020). After a decade of austerity and repeated insistence that fiscal discipline was the only way, that belts needed to be tightened, that we had to live within our means, that the government budget should be considered akin to household budgets, governments instantly found billions to fight the pandemic. In his review of the pandemic and health inequalities, Sir Michael Marmot (2020) referenced a key insight from Albert Camus’ The Plague:  the pandemic is at once both blight and revelation. The blight has been made evident in the previous pages of this book. The revelation was that ideological adherence to neoliberal economics and the policies of austerity were political decisions and not the only economic tools at our disposal. According to Pavlina Tcherneva (2020: x): Tomorrow, when politicians ask ‘but how will the government pay for this program?’, the answer should always be ‘the way we paid for the pandemic’. If we can pay for all the interventions necessary to stem this crisis, we surely can afford to guarantee jobs, homes, healthcare, and a green economy. What we cannot afford is to emerge out of this moment with the same economic problems and inequalities that created so much suffering and devastation even before the current pandemic.

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Economic ideology has been undermined by the reality of the pandemic and response. The economic toolbox is perhaps bigger than we thought. How does the government magic up billions of pounds or dollars to support workers and businesses, to procure PPE, to bolster healthcare systems, to fund the development of vaccines? Those countries, such as the UK and US, with fiat currency, the ability to create money via its own central bank, can always pay for the things it requires. This insight, spearheaded by economists from a Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) perspective (Mitchell and Fazi, 2017; Kelton, 2020; Tcherneva, 2020), potentially provides us with a fresh understanding of macro-​ economics. MMT is neither conservative nor progressive: it is simply an explanation of how the economy works and it exposes arguments perpetuated for decades by economists of both Left and Right. The household budget analogy, used to justify a decade of austerity, disintegrates in light of the argument that we and you differ from the government in one key way: we cannot create money in order to cover our bills, but the state can. We are currency users, not currency issuers. As Tcherneva’s quotation demonstrates, the genie is out of the bottle and we have seen proof that money can be found for whatever we need, when we need it. Critics of MMT raise the spectre of inflation and point to examples from Weimar Germany or Zimbabwe as cautionary tales in profligate spending and currency issuing (Palley, 2015). However, MMT argues that spending to harness the productive resources within an economy such as full employment can minimise inflation while taxation also serves to balance the economy. This is the key point behind MMT:  balancing the economy is better for everyone than balancing the budget (Kelton, 2020). If the government is in deficit, it means the public (businesses and consumers) have money to spend in the economy. Countries without control over their central bank or fiat currency (for example, European Union nations) have fewer options at their disposal. This has been evident during the pandemic as EU countries had to agree to a collective bailout that in some cases has not been sufficient to tackle the effects of the crisis. In collecting data from around the world, we have been able to demonstrate

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the impact of different governmental responses and the conditions this creates for people trying to go about their lives, earn a living and look after their families. Returning to ideology, we see how stubborn discredited ideologies are and how they linger despite their efficacy in adequately explaining the world we live in waning considerably (Hall, 2012). On a macro-​ economic level, neoliberal ideology is increasingly discredited by its own former adherents, including the World Economic Forum (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). However, it lingers in collective understandings of how the economy functions. In March 2021, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented a budget designed to support the UK on its route out of the pandemic. Ultimately, the policy direction signalled by the UK government was one wedded to potentially outdated ideas about budget deficits and ‘paying back’ debt accrued to cover the cost of the pandemic (Fazi, 2021). MMT’s insights that a balanced economy is more important than a balanced budget have not yet broken through the increasingly frail and tattered veil of ideology. Politicians and commentators continue to talk of budget deficits as a long-​term problem that must be addressed, despite a coherent macro-​economic perspective that demonstrates clearly that recovery from the pandemic and its economic consequences can look very different (Tcherneva, 2020). This is where MMT economists can benefit from social science and its ability to understand culture, belief and change:  why are new ideas stubbornly refused or rejected? How can those ideas be presented and in ways that people will hear and listen? What problems may emerge in convincing large numbers of people that this is how our economic system works? Will an MMT-​focused policy initiative benefit some and not others? While social science research requires an understanding of macro-​ economics, economists require a better understanding of social relations, culture and subjective motivation. Therefore, we encourage an interdisciplinary investigation of the viability, implications and consequences of an MMT approach to public policy and future societal challenges. This raises the second important point about ideology and fundamentally requires us to step back and think about

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the relationship between the individual and society. At the heart of philosophy, sociology, criminology and other social sciences is the tension between subject and object: how the individual subject is shaped by and in turn shapes the culture and society it finds itself within. This is fundamentally true whether one posits political economy, culture or individual identity as the dominant ‘variable’ in the equation. We ask social science to question whether our domain assumptions adequately explain that relationship, considering what we have witnessed during the pandemic and thus the data deployed in Chapter 4. Are we subjects of rational choice and thought? Are we flexible, contingent subjects of discourse and language, able to change according to how we feel? Do we give up part of our unconscious drives to live in a state of culture? Do we ‘embody’ the culture, norms and values of the society in which we live? If so, how does that process take place? These questions reflect a variety of positions within social science that attempt to address the fundamental questions of structure and agency and, crucially, the way the two interact. We suggest here that the pandemic tells us something about the relationship between structure and agency and the important role that ideology plays in shaping this connection. Some participants argued that COVID-​19 represents an opportunity to slow down, rethink the world anew, and create a fairer and more equitable society. However, our data appear to suggest that most people do not want a ‘new normal’, but instead want the lives they knew before 2020. They want the comforts and symbolism of consumer culture, of the reassuring routine of their old lives, despite the inequalities and hardships they often endured. Many dismissed the idea that a better world would come out of the pandemic because people were selfish, were atomised and social cohesion had frayed beyond repair. There appeared to be little collective agreement on what a new world would look like and it was often characterised in response to individual circumstances –​what a better world would look like for me and my loved ones. Social science has long posited issues like climate change as the event that will change how we live our lives. COVID-​19, in some respects, offers a dress rehearsal for that

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event (Žižek, 2021). While our material conditions may have changed significantly, inequalities exacerbated a growth in unemployment, ill mental health, isolation, domestic violence and abuse; our ideological attachment to the world we knew remained incredibly strong. We ask whether social science adequately theorises this relationship and considers the reasons why people remain wedded to belief systems that we seemingly know are personally and collectively problematic. We explore the influence of psychoanalytical theories associated with Freud and Lacan and built upon by contemporary thinkers such as Adrian Johnston (2008) to make sense of the depth of attachment the subject has to an ideology (Ellis, 2016; Ellis et al, 2018; Lloyd, 2018). In drawing upon insights from philosophy and psychoanalysis, we have recently suggested (Briggs et al, 2020) that the commitment our participants showed to resuming their consumer lifestyles post lockdown reflected a deep libidinal attachment to the Symbolic Order of consumer capitalism. Unconsciously, the subject seeks to escape a traumatic encounter with the Real and find comfort in a Symbolic Order (Johnston, 2008; Hall, 2012). The Symbolic Order represents the norms, values, codes, language and ideology of a given social order and the subject unconsciously solicits this to make sense of the world in which it lives. In line with transcendental materialism (see Johnston, 2008; Hall and Winlow, 2015), ideology not only influences us on a surface level, but it also transforms our brain’s neuronal receptors and reconfigures our internal wiring to adapt to the world around us. We then act in the world and shape that environment in turn. Ideology, in this understanding, shapes the way we think on a symbolic, discursive and material level and is therefore hard to change. Moving from one Symbolic Order to another risks a traumatic passage through the Real. The pandemic fundamentally disrupted societies at both micro and macro levels and may have provided a context to rethink our individual and collective existence. However, the distance between thinking about different configurations and acting on them is vast. This requires collective endeavour and commitment from political representatives around an alternative Symbolic Order, two things that appear to be largely absent. When

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faced with the comfort of the familiar or change towards the unknown, people will often, understandably, stick with the devil they know. The concept of ‘fetishistic disavowal’ offers a valuable insight here (Fisher, 2009). This term suggests a fundamental reframing of the way in which ideology works in practice. While Marx may have suggested that ideology acts as a veil of false consciousness and therefore functions at the level of thought, the postmodern turn and subsequent undermining of the notion of universal truth reconfigures the way ideology works (Žižek, 1989). If we no longer believe in grand narratives and truth projects, we are not going to be duped by ideological exhortations; we are too knowing for that. We know politicians lie to us. We know market capitalism is a rigged game. We know consumerism is unsustainable and damaging to the environment. However, despite knowing all of this, we continue to act as if we don’t know. We continue to consume. We continue to vote for an increasingly narrow band of elite oligarchs. We continue to believe that government deficits are a problem we need to fix. Ideology no longer works at the level of thought, but at the level of action. In doing so, the subject represses uncomfortable knowledge to act as if everything is ok and carry on with their lives. Many of our participants knew that the pandemic would create fundamental challenges for our future society, they were aware of the various inequalities and injustices it further exposed, many even suggested that it presented an opportunity to rethink aspects of our lives, but they often continued to act as if they didn’t know this to resume the lost comforts of their consumer lifestyles. Fetishistic disavowal is a powerful process which has profound implications for collective efforts to change the future, to enact policy shifts, to generate an alternative Symbolic Order. The response to the pandemic and government restrictions is hampered by a collective repression of uncomfortable truths. We would also argue that our data raise fundamental questions about belief in contemporary society. Our participants showed a fundamental absence of belief in official narratives, in government data, in scientists and in media commentators. There was a deep scepticism about the

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accuracy of case data and death rates, the efficacy of face masks and lockdown restrictions. In our desk-​based work, we found peer-​ reviewed evidence and critical discussion about these measures which would only fuel the absence of belief. We also found a longing to believe in something, in anything that made sense of a contingent set of circumstances. Lives have to have meaning and the events in our lives require explanation. The rise in conspiracy theories and the belief that Bill Gates or the 5G network was responsible for the pandemic is reflective of this longing to believe in a world shorn of belief. How we make sense of this as social scientists is crucial for understanding the deep fissures and fault lines emerging in our society. As we look for theoretical explanations for these developments, we are again drawn to psychoanalytical and philosophical perspectives that, for us, are valuable tools. The ‘postmodern turn’ from the 1960s onwards has challenged the modernist principle of universal truth. We accept that the grand narratives of Christianity and Marxism no longer adequately explain the complexity of individual and collective existence and experience. In the Lacanian register, this represents the death of the big Other:  the network of social institutions, morals, values and rules into which we are socialised. The big Other is entirely symbolic but structures our social action because everyone believes in it; it acts as a fundamental fantasy or collective fiction that we all buy into and thus provides consistency and coherence to our lives. Western society is one without belief in a big Other; various ‘little others’ exist to fill the void and provide some degree of consistency and authority (Winlow and Hall, 2012). As the symbolic efficiency of the traditional Symbolic Order erodes, ‘little others’, including conspiracy theories, attempt to provide some semblance of consistency and meaning. The problem with ‘little others’ is the absence of universalism, which leads to an absence of agreement on what to do about it. In an era of post-​politics, we are witnessing a decline in symbolic efficiency and a ‘loss of faith in any adjudicating authority that might govern our world’ (Winlow and Hall, 2012: 401). The absence of belief in ‘concrete universals’, those things that we collectively agree upon, is reflected in the

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data presented in Chapter 4 and represents a fundamental challenge to social cohesion and social order. Many argued that the first lockdown saw a wave of social cohesion and collective bonding (Corvo and De Caro, 2020), which suggested the dawn of a new beginning. Others argued that the pandemic placed strain on deprived communities and weakened cohesion (Borkowska and Laurence, 2021), while panic buying and breaking lockdown rules reflected the selfish side of humanity and an absence of social cohesion (Li, 2020). As our data show, all of these things occurred, and we have seen the best and worst of humanity during this crisis. The dismissal of lockdown sceptics as ‘covidiots’ and the incredulity towards those seeking safety and protection as ‘sheeple’ mindlessly following the government’s narrative points towards a new fault line in social relations. Rather than a unifying event that brings nations together, the longer the COVID-​19 pandemic continues, the more our post-​social tendencies begin to emerge. Social cohesion, the ties that bind us, is at the centre of social science and the emerging evidence from the pandemic suggests that COVID-​ 19 and the response from governments have further implications for this central issue. Acts of kindness and support continue across the world, but simultaneously, intolerance, anger, fear, violence, abuse and harm have also been prevalent. As many have suffered, some have been able to utilise the wealth and resources at their disposal to get through lockdowns in relative comfort. Across social class groups, some individuals have wilfully broken restrictions in the pursuit of their own gratification and enjoyment. We must fully address the challenge of social cohesion and ask the fundamental question:  why are some people willing to inflict harm on others? Especially at a time of great crisis, why have the vulnerabilities of some been sometimes ruthlessly exploited by others? And why have some felt entitled to break rules? As the pandemic and lockdown restrictions reveal spikes in child abuse, domestic violence and other forms of crime (Ellis et al, 2021), this further emphasises the need for a full social scientific investigation of the various health and social harms of COVID-​19.

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In terms of social control, governments around the world have extended their reach into our lives in an unprecedented manner. Legal mandates to stay indoors, forced closure of businesses, fines for breaching lockdown rules, and encouragements to contact authorities to report rule breakers have become part of our lives. The frequency and efficacy of attempts to enforce rules of mask wearing and ‘stay local’ pronouncements raise questions about compliance with and enforcement of COVID-​19 laws. As travel and movement have become further restricted, these control measures will continue to be experienced differently according to a range of existing inequalities; refugees and asylum seekers and migrant workers will experience restrictions differently to business travellers and those who can afford the quarantine fees imposed by countries such as the UK. The reach of the state will vary across the world as governments respond to the pandemic in different ways, but formal mechanisms of social control have transformed in response to the crisis. Our data show this in terms of increasingly authoritarian police interventions in numerous countries. At the time of writing, the UK government and the EU member states are investigating the possibility of introducing ‘health passports’ to facilitate safe travel for those vaccinated against COVID-​19 (Brown et al, 2020; Stewart, 2021). This is just one example of the ways in which formal social control mechanisms may shape our social, cultural, political and economic lives in the future, and it raises questions that social science must address. These are pressing questions at the heart of our disciplines. Our position on this is simple: a methodological and theoretical stock-​take is required to make sense of the impact that the pandemic and global response to it has had on our societies. It is incumbent upon social scientists to search for theoretical frameworks and inspiration from a range of disciplines to make sense of what we find in our communities, regions and across the world. We have reached beyond the boundaries of criminology and sociology to find possible interpretations of the world as we find it; insights from psychoanalysis, philosophy, neuroscience and history enable us to make sense of the world. MMT, transcendental materialism, symbolic efficiency and fetishistic disavowal all represent useful insights

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and offer ways to explain and make sense of our data and the world as it is now during a pandemic. We encourage other researchers to reach beyond their comfort zones to make sense of these events too. This undertaking is challenging enough but framed within the context of the neoliberal university, we recognise the scale of this task. As outlined in Chapter 1, academic capitalism has transformed the sector into a competitive market that, through targets, metrics and performance management, as well as unrealistic workload models, results in burnout and exhaustion; the illusion of ‘activity as productivity’ acts as a barrier to the sort of reflection and stock-​take we suggest. The neoliberal university cannot continue in its current formation without failing its employees and students. While as social scientists we reflect on our disciplines and their contribution to understanding the world we live in, we encourage university managers, union leaders and government to reflect on the true nature and purpose of education and knowledge production.

Horizon scanning and fragments of the future

The COVID-​19 pandemic, and our research into its effects, raise crucial questions about the future. Critics from Walter Benjamin to Slavoj Žižek have told us that fragments of the future are visible in the present. As well as asking what the impact of COVID-​19 has been on lives, communities and economies around the world, we also believe that horizon scanning is important to understand where we might be going. Here, we suggest that a glance at political economy can provide some important insights on possible future directions. Past crises have been used to further consolidate economic power, exploit market opportunities and renew capitalism. Recently, Naomi Klein’s (2007) book The Shock Doctrine examined the opportunities for capitalist advancement following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Following the financial crisis of 2008, Philip Mirowski (2013) argued that neoliberalism ‘never lets a crisis go to waste’. In Grace Blakeley’s (2020) early analysis of the ‘corona crash’, she indicates an opportunistic shift from finance capitalism to

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monopoly capitalism by a small band of elites. It is hardly controversial to suggest that the rich take advantage of crises to consolidate and extend their wealth and power. We should assume no different here and have already seen the personal fortunes of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and others increase since March 2020. However, there are also indications that a more fundamental structural shift is underway, one which will have a fundamental impact on the way we live, the way we work and our social relations. In 2017, Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, published his short treatise on The Fourth Industrial Revolution. In it, he suggested that advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) had engendered opportunities for fundamental restructuring of economic, political and civic life and that the scope, scale and speed of technological development would drive this agenda forward. Since then, the continuing climate crisis and the pandemic has brought some of these developments to the fore. Schwab’s latest publication with Thierry Malleret (2020) promotes The Great Reset and comes with the slogan ‘building back better’. Although ridiculed as a conspiracy theory, the Great Reset represents a strategy for structural shifts in the direction of green and sustainable growth, decarbonisation, shorter supply chains, ‘smart’ cities and de-​globalisation. Indeed, the head of a group that represented neoliberal ideology par excellence over the last four decades, Klaus Schwab, acknowledged the limits of neoliberalism and the need for a shift towards stakeholder capitalism (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). Across Europe and the US, we have begun to see early shifts towards net-​ zero and decarbonisation policies and the growth in electric cars (Foster, 2021). Rather than conspiracy theory shrouded in mystery, the World Economic Forum is open about future shifts and the fact that the pandemic affords an opportunity to speed up the timeline: At the very least, the pandemic will accelerate systemic changes that were already apparent prior to the crisis: the partial retreat from globalisation, the growing decoupling between the US and China, the acceleration of automation, concerns about heightened surveillance, the growing

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appeal of well-​being policies, rising nationalism and the subsequent fear of immigration, the growing power of tech, the necessity for firms to have an even stronger online presence, among many others. (Schwab and Malleret, 2020: 18)

Schwab and Malleret argue that there is no going back to normal. The Marmot Review into COVID-​19 (2020) also argues that going back to normal is not an option; ‘normal’, as we set out in Chapter 1, was riddled with inequality, deprivation, division and a range of other problematic social issues including historical antagonisms around racism, gender inequality and class conflict. Despite the clamour for the comfort and familiarity of the ‘old normal’, it appears that changes, both small and large, could be on the horizon. It is up to us as social scientists to monitor this, to anticipate it and to identify where and how it will affect lives around the world. We are not saying that everything in life is reducible to the economy and are not in any way economically deterministic; but we are saying that significant changes at a macro level will impact on the way we live in the future. All the important questions of culture and social relations that dominate much of social science are affected by political-​economic shifts. It is hardly controversial to say that the industrial revolution transformed all aspects of society in the UK, US and Europe. We suggest that the pandemic and its consequences may have similar profound consequences for the way we live, the way we work and for our social relations in the future. An economically literate social science can accurately critique emerging policy positions and government responses around the world, horizon-​scan and assess the impact of fundamental changes to political economy and the impact those changes may have on our lives, providing sound policy recommendations (and subsequent political pressure) to alleviate inequalities, social harm and suffering. We offer one here, by way of example: the case for a state-​backed job guarantee programme. The pandemic has ravaged economies around the world, increased unemployment, heightened calls for greater support for unemployed, low-​ paid and insecure workers. Furlough and other similar schemes sent millions of people

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home on a percentage of their pay, which increased the clamour for a universal basic income (UBI). In countries where government support was lacking or informal labour markets predominated, as evident in the data we presented in Chapter 4, workers sent home during lockdown struggled to survive. The pandemic has moved a government-​backed job guarantee programme from the margins towards the centre of policy discussions. The state has already proven it can find the money when spending is required. The COVID-​19 recession has claimed millions of jobs and shrunk the private sector. The job guarantee programme is a policy where the government has jobs on standby for anyone who wants to work. If the private sector continues to contract, as it has during the pandemic, and people are thrown out of work, the job guarantee programme allows workers to transition smoothly into a state-​sponsored job (Tcherneva, 2020). The job guarantee programme would flex in response to the private sector; when the private sector grows, the job guarantee shrinks, and vice-​ versa. It does not ‘take’ jobs from the private sector; it provides work when the private sector cannot. The macro-​economic benefits are evident:  it provides countercyclical economic stabilisation, ensures continued spending power by consumers, acts as a permanent safety net, and has the potential to make the world a little better. The micro-​level benefits for individuals and families are also obvious. In the US, the proposed ‘Green New Deal’ included a job guarantee programme and a recent YouGov survey found that 72% of respondents backed a job guarantee scheme (Stone, 2020). The pandemic creates conditions that require both understanding and solutions; economic literacy provides the macro-​economic support for a policy initiative with potential to transform lives, communities and economies. It may have also accelerated trends in the use of digital technology and AI in labour markets and employment, which could transform the way we work and the opportunities available for those seeking work today and in the future. In some respects, COVID-​19 is not unusual or exceptional; pandemics, even global pandemics, have occurred throughout history (Honigsbaum, 2020). There will be future pandemics, especially of zoonotic diseases, if human activities continue

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to encroach into natural ecosystems (Schwab and Malleret, 2020). The global response to this pandemic has raised key questions for social science in terms of the relationship between the individual, ideology and society and the role of the state, as well as essential questions about social cohesion and social control. The pandemic has reinforced existing inequalities and created new fault lines. It is incumbent upon the social sciences to study this carefully and to recognise the harms central to both the pandemic and our collective response. We encourage our disciplines to innovate methodologically and theoretically, to not rely on ideas that no longer fit. As academics working within marketised institutions, questions of time, income and impact will continue to govern research agendas and opportunities. However, we must find ways to make sense of the crisis and think critically about where we are, where we are going and what it all means. This is the least we can do.

Notes

Chapter 2

Countries included England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. 1

Chapter 3

See also Pitas and Ehmer (2020) who canvass for the use of social capital to strengthen community bonds, and the relationship between individuals and governments to reduce the spread of the virus and reduce deaths 1

Chapter 4

At the time of writing, Phase 3 had just been closed as we embarked on a new phase. 1

125

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