Disease and Disparities: Structural Violence in the Time of Our Covidized Lives

Abstract

The paper argues that when a country’s social structures— political, economic, and cultural—are arranged such that the arrangement results in a dichotomy between the class of the privileged and the class of the less privileged, any act of addressing a pandemic such as the COVID-19 will always end up in another pandemic: the pandemic of government neglect and ineptitude. There is only one way out in ensuring that this double pandemic can be addressed: a return to the foundations of a good life for all—a democracy that secures that the good of collective life is for all.

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Keywords

COVID-19, democratic deficit disease, disparities, flawed democracy, pandemic, social strucures, structural violence