The Social Epidemiology of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has become and remains a major acute global public health threat. COVID-19 is a severe and complex respiratory disease caused by a highly contagious coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed everything from daily routines to global supply chains and has had devastating impacts on populations around the world. At the time of this writing, over 1 million deaths due to COVID-19 have been recorded in the United States alone, along with almost 100 million cases of COVID-19 in the country. However, the pandemic has differentially impacted structurally marginalized populations in scope and magnitude. For example, the mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.3 times that of their White American counterparts, and incarcerated people have 5.5 times the case rate and 3 times the mortality rate of the general population. Other social dimensions such as income, gender, sexuality, employment sector, and immigration status have also played a significant role in COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality. The COVID-19 vaccine roll-out is also socially patterned in the United States and abroad, where there is an even more limited supply of the vaccine. This book describes and explains the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of social epidemiology, investigating the social and structural factors that determine how COVID-19 differentially impacts various communities. The book focuses on the United States, but the chapters touch on the global COVID-19 story as well.