The Covid-19 Reader

The Science and What It Says About the Social

William Cockerham, Geoffrey Cockerham, William C. Cockerham, Geoffrey B. Cockerham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000332605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This reader offers some of the most important writing to date from the science of COVID-19 and what science says about its spread and social implications. The readings have been carefully selected, introduced, and interpreted for an introductory or graduate student readership by a distinguished medical sociology and political science team. While some of the early science was inaccurate, lacking sufficient data, or otherwise incomplete, the author team has selected the most important and reliable early work for teachers and students in courses on medical sociology, public health, nursing, infectious diseases, epidemiology, anthropology of medicine, sociology of health and illness, social aspects of medicine, comparative health systems, health policy and management, health behaviors, and community health. Global in scope, the book tells the story of what happened and how COVID-19 was dealt with. Much of this material is in clinical journals, normally not considered in the social sciences, which are nonetheless informative and authoritative for student and faculty readers. Their selection and interpretation for students makes this concise reader an essential teaching source about COVID-19. An accompanying online resource on the book's Routledge web page will update and evolve by providing links to new readings as the science develops.

Part I
Introduction to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The purpose of this book is to provide background readings on the 2019–21 COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 unleashed itself on the world in the fall of 2019. It originated in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread across the globe as the most widely contagious pandemic yet to come since the Spanish flu of 1918. By the fall of 2020, over 42 million people were confirmed as infected, more than 1.1 million died, and trade and travel were severely disrupted on a global basis. The number of cases, however, is likely much more than reported as some people had either mild or no symptoms and did not seek medical care or testing yet still may have been contagious (Havers et al. 2020). Final tallies on the disease’s deadly and varied effects are not available as the pandemic is ongoing as this book goes to press. Nevertheless, as the virus passes through human populations on its way to resolution, enough information is available to examine the basic parameters of the pandemic from a social science perspective.

The book is organized into six parts beginning with this introduction as Part I, followed by Part II examining the origin of COVID-19 in China. Next is Part III on Europe, which was the pandemic’s next explosive site. The book concludes with Part IV on the United States, the country most affected by the virus, and Canada, Part V on Africa and Latin America, and Part VI on the route to a resolution.

COVID-19 belongs to the coronavirus family of viruses. The term “coronavirus” comes from the Latin word “corona,” meaning “crown” or “halo” for the crown-like spikes of glycoprotein on the virus’s surface (Hempel 2018:63). The spikes bind the virus to receptors on host cells, from which it attacks the cell. Coronaviruses were once considered to be inconsequential pathogens associated mostly with the common cold (Paules, Marston, and Fauci 2020). They usually caused only mild upper respiratory ailments. But three coronaviruses became particularly dangerous: SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. That these three coronaviruses are “a pathogen from a viral family formerly thought to be benign underscores the perpetual challenge of emerging infectious diseases and the importance of sustained preparedness” (Paules et al. 2020:708).

In the late 1960s it was thought infectious diseases were possibly declining as a significant health hazard (Armelagos, Brown, and Turner 2005; Old-stone 2010). Smallpox, measles, yellow fever, and polio were under control. It appeared that some infectious diseases were becoming extinct, and others were controllable through antibiotics. But this is not at all the situation today, as new diseases and some old ones keep appearing (Armelagos et al. 2005; Armelagos and Harper 2016; Barrett 2021; Oldstone 2010). Some viruses have been able to resist antibiotics, certain disease-transmitting insects (i.e., mosquitoes in the case of malaria and Zika) remain active, and humans have encountered new infectious diseases through expansion, climate change, and ecological disturbances. The globalization of trade and travel have made the worldwide transmission of new diseases easier and faster (Cockerham and Cockerham 2010).

There had been early warnings about the possibility of a future pandemic of major proportions sweeping the world (Garret 1994; Oster-holm 2005). Evidence pointing to the probability of such an occurrence included the continuing sequence of little known or previously unknown viral diseases infecting humans in various geographic areas. Typically vaccines providing immunity when these outbreaks first occurred were not readily available, increasing concerns. The parade of newly emerging diseases included HIV/AIDS (1983–2008), H5N1 avian influenza (1996), West Nile (1999), the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS (2002–03), Middle East respiratory syndrome or MERS (2012), H7N9 avian influenza (2013), Ebola (2014), and Zika (2016). These viruses infected millions of people, causing many deaths, and different viruses appeared year after year. Although they usually came from out-of-the-way places in the world and were not recognized as significant health hazards until they spread into major metropolitan areas, they carried with them the message that newly emerging diseases were repetitive threats to future global health.

The first reading in Part I is a chapter by epidemiologist Michael Osterholm (2005) on a future pandemic. Osterholm produced this paper in 2005 after the SARS contagion, which he viewed at that time as the closest the world has come in the present era to a devastating global pandemic. He notes how quickly an infectious agent can spread around the world through international travel and the possibility of a new pandemic—with SARS as the model—causing worldwide social and economic disruption. He called attention to the need for stockpiling medical supplies, food, and other consumer commodities, nationalizing resources for developing a vaccine and distributing it, and the necessity for governments to take action to prevent what eventually was to occur in 2019–21 with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, we know now that little was actually accomplished beforehand, but the article forecasts what would happen and what should have been done to prepare for it—but was not.

SARS as a Precursor

SARS is of particular interest as an example of what was yet to come not only because it was the first viral pandemic of the 21st century, but also is a coronavirus like MERS and COVID-19 (Cavanagh 2010; Hempel 2018; Oldstone 2010). SARS was officially designated SARS-CoV, while MERS was labeled MERS-CoV. MERS was passed from bats to camels and then to humans, and there were few cases outside the Middle East. COVID-19 is a far different story. It ravaged the world. COVID-19 was originally SARS-CoV-2 or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but differed from SARS in that it caused fewer upper respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms (Xie and Chen 2020). But COVID-19 is particularly fatal for people who have already existing medical conditions.

Like COVID-19 some 18 years in the future, SARS originated in horseshoe bats who were found to be natural hosts for the virus (Poon and Peiris 2010). The bats produced antibodies that prevented them from becoming sick but nevertheless allowed the virus to live in their bodies. How bats are able to accommodate coronaviruses and still survive is an important question yet to be answered. Nevertheless, bats become the natural reservoir within which these viruses live and spread to other species. In this instance, SARS was transmitted from bats to masked palm civets, a cat-like animal that is an exotic food in Chinese culture. Civets are often smuggled into China from Southeast Asia, where they are more plentiful. Some were infected by eating fruit particles with bat saliva, then trapped alive, and transported to Chinese “wet” markets (named for the large quantities of water used to wash the floors) that are open-air markets where live wild animals are sold and processed for food. Sanitary conditions in such markets are poor. The markets are typically crowded with both people and animals who would not usually have close contact with one another, with the animals eating, urinating, and defecating in cramped outdoor cages and processed as food on nearby tables or buckets. Viruses and bacteria thrive in such environments.

Subsequent RNA (ribonucleic acid) genetic mapping of SARS in humans was determined to be almost identical to that of SARS in infected civets in the wet market in Guangdong Province in southern China, where the pandemic began (Oldstone 2010:228). This evidence confirmed that it was civets who passed the virus on to humans. About half of the early SARS patients were food handlers from the market, and others were family members and health care workers treating the sick. Typical symptoms were fever, fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath, and for some, respiratory failure.

SARS spread out of this market into nearby neighborhoods and rural areas. The first hospitalized case was a farmer diagnosed as having a novel form of pneumonia in November 2002. The virus continued to spread and was carried to a Hong Kong hotel in January 2003 by an infected physician attending a wedding who had been treating SARS patients in Guangdong Province. He became sick and died, infecting other hotel residents, including a Chinese-American businessman, who traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam, spreading it there. Another hotel guest, a 78-year-old woman from Toronto, Canada, returned home where she died. Some 400 people became sick in Toronto, of whom 44 died. It had taken about 24 hours for the SARS virus to spread to five countries; within two weeks, the virus reached 18 countries (Hempel 2018; Shah 2016). Altogether, some 8,098 people were known to have been infected in 32 countries with 774 deaths (Hempel 2018).

The first report that such a virus existed came from an Italian physician, Carlo Urbani, working for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam. He investigated what appeared to be a new disease in patients at the French Hospital of Hanoi and notified WHO in February 2003, of its existence. WHO, in response, issued a worldwide alert. Urbani later died from SARS but is credited with saving thousands of lives by calling attention to the disease. The Chinese government had kept quiet about SARS up until this time and apologized later for its delay in not reporting the outbreak until mid-March of 2003. Local Chinese officials were removed from office, civets were hunted down and killed, selling wild animal meat in wet markets was banned, and a computerized automatic reporting system for infectious diseases was established. There are no reports of SARS since 2004. Nevertheless in 2012, the United States declared SARS to still be a serious potential threat to public health. As it turned out, SARS serves as a model for COVID-19 because both are (1) a coronavirus, (2) originated among bats, (3) likely featured animal-to-human transmission, (4) emerged in a wet animal market in China, (5) cause similar symptoms in humans, and (6) spreads quickly.

Despite being banned, wild animal meat remained for sale in Chinese wet markets. A loophole in the regulations allowed such meat to be sold if the animal was bred in captivity rather than in the wild. In 2011, American science journalist Sonia Shah (2016) traveled to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, to find a wet market. A security guard told her no such markets existed but directed her to speak with a passerby. The person gave her directions to the market that was around the corner and it turned out to consist of various covered stalls on a walkway with pungent smells where many different kinds of animals were caged in close proximity and on sale for human consumption, including bats, civets, snakes, frogs, ferrets, and others. A lack of hygiene was obvious from the smells and scattered wastes. The wet markets in China awaited their recurring role in a future pandemic.

If the coronaviruses remained in the wild, namely in the bat caves where they subsisted, the likelihood of transmission to humans would be slim. But they did not. Rather, the “social” enters in at this point as a significant causal factor for the coronavirus pandemics originating in China. This is because of the demand for yewei (“wild beast”) cuisine in traditional Chinese culture. Eating wild animals is considered a luxury because of their rarity and cost, which China’s growing affluence has energized. Often these foods are prized because it is believed they can pass the animal’s natural energy on to the person eating it as a restor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Part I Introduction to the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Part II The Origin in China
• Part III Europe
• Part IV The United States and Canada
• Part V Latin America and Africa
• Part VI Resolution
• Author Index
• Subject Index