Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan;51(1):50-54.
doi: 10.1177/0020731420946594. Epub 2020 Aug 3.

We Must Take Advantage of This Pandemic to Make a Radical Social Change: The Coronavirus as a Global Health, Inequality, and Eco-Social Problem

Joan Benach  1   2   3
Affiliations

We Must Take Advantage of This Pandemic to Make a Radical Social Change: The Coronavirus as a Global Health, Inequality, and Eco-Social Problem

Joan Benach. Int J Health Serv. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

COVID-19 not only constitutes a serious public health problem and a global major threat to the poorest and most vulnerable social groups and neighborhoods of the world, creating a potential pandemic of inequality, but also poses an enormous challenge from the perspective of public health, ethics, economy, environment, and politics. However, many of the deep and complex systemic interrelationships created and developed by this pandemic are largely hidden, unknown, or neglected, both by the hegemonic media and by a highly specialized and fragmented academic world. However, when all the available knowledge is critically integrated, the origins and effects underlying this pandemic are likely to be found in the development of neoliberal capitalism and its inherent logic of ceaseless accumulation, economic growth, large inequalities, and ecological devastation. This commentary reflects on these issues, drawing out some of the most important lessons to be learned and challenges to be faced in the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, advocating for a radical social change to deal with these challenges.

Keywords: COVID-19; capitalism; eco-social crisis; health inequalities; policy change; public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Rachel Carson’s Speech “Of Man and the Stream of Time” at Scripps College, Claremont, California, June 12, 1962. In: Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment New York, NY: Library of America; 2018:425. https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://www.loa.org/images/pd.... Accessed July 20, 2020.
    1. Levins R. Is capitalism a disease? The crisis in U.S. public health. Mon Rev. 2000; 52(4):8–33. - PubMed
    1. Dawood FS, Iuliano AD, Reed C, et al. Estimated global mortality associated with the first 12 months of 2009 pandemic influenza a H1N1 virus circulation: a modelling study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2012; 12(9):687–695. - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization. More than 140,000 die from measles as cases surge worldwide. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-12-2019-more-than-140-000-die-fr.... Published December 5, 2019. Accessed April 15, 2020.
    1. Troeger C; the GBD 2016 Diarrhoeal Disease Collaborators. Estimates of the global, regional, and national morbidity, mortality, and aetiologies of diarrhoea in 195 countries: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018; 18:1211–1228. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types