The Making of a Pandemic: Social, Political, and Psychological Perspectives on Covid-19 - Paperback

by John Ehrenreich (Author)

The Making of a Pandemic provides a systematic account of how societal and psychological forces shaped the Covid-19 pandemic. The first part focuses on how biological and societal factors interact to create a pandemic. The second part explores how characteristics of the American economy, the American approach to public health, and domestic and international inequality combined to prolong the pandemic, hamper mitigation efforts, and arouse opposition to cooperation with public health measures. The third part examines the psychological processes that led to resistance to efforts to mitigate the pandemic and linked the resistance to right-wing ideologies. The book concludes by looking at the limits of the technical and medical reforms others have proposed to protect us from repetitions of the Covid-19 disaster and by calling for a "deep confrontation" with the societal and psychological factors that created and shaped the pandemic.

Back Jacket

The Making of a Pandemic provides a systematic account of how societal and psychological forces shaped the Covid-19 pandemic. The first part focuses on how biological and societal factors interact to create a pandemic. The second part explores how characteristics of the American economy, the American approach to public health, and domestic and international inequality combined to prolong the pandemic, hamper mitigation efforts, and arouse opposition to cooperation with public health measures. The third part examines the psychological processes that led to resistance to efforts to mitigate the pandemic and linked the resistance to right-wing ideologies. The book concludes by looking at the limits of the technical and medical reforms others have proposed to protect us from repetitions of the Covid-19 disaster and by calling for a "deep confrontation" with the societal and psychological factors that created and shaped the pandemic.

• Comprehensive framework for understanding how sociological, political, and psychological factors interacted with biomedical factors to produce the Covid-19 disaster
• Essential reader for understanding how to prevent future pandemics
• Explores the sources of the widespread resistance to cooperating with mitigation efforts

Author Biography

John Ehrenreich has doctorates in biology and psychology. He is Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Old Westbury, where he taught for many years. He has written widely on issues at the intersection of biology, psychology, sociology, and social policy. His previous books include The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics (with Barbara Ehrenreich and the staff of Health-PAC), The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine (edited), The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States, and Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self Interest Have Imperiled the American Dream.