COVID as a political economy event: pandemic and syndemic1

Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson

Chapter 5 in Handbook on the Social Determinants of Health, 2025, pp 50-64 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, argued against the pandemic medical model preferred by infectious disease specialists that framed the COVID emergency “in centuries old terms of plague” and focused on controlling its lines of transmission. Rather, he argued that the crisis was better understood as a “syndemic”, the interaction of an infectious disease (SARS-CoV-2) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) clustered “within social groups according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded in our societies”. This chapter takes a theoretical, historical and empirical view contrasting political economy (syndemic) and biomedical (pandemic) approaches to the unequal impacts of COVID on the population.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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