The Pandemic Challenge: Reflections on the Social Justice Dynamic

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Connie L. McNeely,Laurie A. Schintler
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.375

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.375

© 2020 Policy Studies Organization

Editorial

The Pandemic Challenge: Reflections on the Social

Justice Dynamic

Connie L. McNeely and Laurie A. Schintler

The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus, or SARS‐CoV‐2, and the disease

caused by it, COVID‐19, has disrupted life around the world. Indeed, as a pan-

demic, COVID‐19 has led to rampant human suffering and deaths, posing threats

not only to public health and health security but more generally to societal stability

and wellbeing across levels of analysis, whether local, national, or global. The

pandemic has impacted virtually all sectors of society and is changing the world,

even against the backdrop of other conflicts and competition, within and across

countries and populations. However, COVID‐19 has disproportionately impacted

certain individuals and groups—identified particularly by factors, such as race,

class, gender, disability, age, displacement and homelessness, and migration status,

among others—reflecting longstanding disparities and inequalities not only in

health and health care but in society more generally. In the same vein, COVID‐19

has further highlighted imbalances in power and resource distributions relative to

technology and knowledge divides, supply chain disruptions, and demographic

and rural‐urban disparities in health‐care access and capacities and overall re-

sources. Together, these circumstances constitute questions of social justice as a

fundamental determinant of health and societal wellbeing.

The concept of social justice is typically understood relative to notions of human

rights, with particular emphasis on bettering the lives and life chances of peoples who

have been marginalized or treated as the “other”in society relative to various iden-

tifying factors, as mentioned above. The uneven impacts of COVID‐19 on such pop-

ulations have occurred for several reasons, including already existing social, environ-

mental, and health inequities. Limited health‐care capacities and resources in many

parts of the world have affected responses to the virus. For example, across countries

and communities, health‐care systems have faced problems of surge capacity for

hospitalization, treatment, and other essential services during the pandemic. Existing

health problems and underlying conditions also add to the likelihood of comorbidities,

which, in turn, mean more dire reactions to the virus. Furthermore, consistent ex -

posure to environmental health hazards, such as contaminated water and industrial air

and land pollutants and toxins, is linked to more severe COVID‐19 outcomes.