ABSTRACT
The tenuous differentiation between health and society has perhaps never been so fraught. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world, and in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Since the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 (they had already labeled it a “public health emergency of international concern” as early as January 30, 2020), there are now few, if any, people on the planet who have not in some way been impacted either directly by the virus itself or by the direct and indirect impacts of the associated pandemic. It is, with little argument, the pandemic that will mark a generation.
A central question since the pandemic began has been how to survive it. That question has applied not just to staying alive, but also to staying healthy, both physically and mentally. Survival is certainly key, but surviving, and what that means, is also critical. The scholarship included in this volume will take a closer look at what it means to survive by addressing such issues as the importance of ethnicity in vaccine uptake, the gendered and racialized impacts of the pandemic, the impact on those with disabilities, questions of food security, and what it means to grieve.
