While everyone has been impacted directly or indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it, not everyone has been impacted in the same way and certainly not to the same degree. Media coverage in early 2020 emphasized the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic, and some even predicted that the virus could be a global “equalizer.” Ensuing debates over how the pandemic should be handled have often hinged on oppositions between protecting health and healthcare systems versus saving livelihoods and the economy, a dichotomy that we argue is false. Drawing on 482 interviews conducted in Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland and the UK over two points in a 6-month period as part of the ‘Solidarity in times of Pandemics Research Consortium’ (SolPan), we illustrate the ways that oppositions posed between saving lives or saving livelihoods fail to capture the entangled, long-standing nature of structural inequalities that have been revealed through the pandemic. Health- and wealth-related inequalities intersect to produce the “second pandemic,” a term used by a research participant to explain the other forms of devastation that run in parallel with virus. Our findings thus complicate such dichotomies through a qualitative understanding of the pandemic as a lived experience. The pandemic emerges as a critical juncture which, in exacerbating these existing structural inequalities, also poses an opportunity to work to better resolve them.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, research has explored various aspects of face mask use. While most of the research explores their effectiveness to prevent the spread of the virus, a growing body of literature has found that using face masks also has social meaning. But what social meaning does it have, and how does this meaning express itself in people's practice? Based on 413 qualitative interviews with residents in five European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland), we found that the meanings of face masks have changed drastically during the first months of the pandemic. While in spring 2020 people wearing them had to fear stigmatization, in autumn of 2020 not wearing masks was more likely to be stigmatized. Throughout the first year of the pandemic, we found that mask wearing had multiple and partly seemingly contradictory meanings for people. They were perceived as obstacles for non-verbal communication, but also a way to affirm friendships and maintain social contacts. They also signaled specific moral or political stances on the side of face mask wearers and non-wearers alike, expressed their belonging to certain communities, or articulated concern. In sum, our findings show how face masks serve as scripts for people to navigate their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude that public and political discussions concerning face masks should include not only evidence on the epidemiological and infectiological effects of face masks, but also on their social meanings and their social effects.
Public perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines are critical in reaching protective levels of herd immunity. Vaccine skepticism has always been relatively high in Germany, and surveys suggest that over the course of the pandemic, enthusiasm for the COVID-19 vaccine has dropped. Looking at the period just prior to the approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in Germany in the latter half of 2020, this paper aims to assess the reasons for and against COVID-19 vaccine uptake among residents of Germany, and to provide in-depth qualitative data to better understand and address concerns surrounding the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine. Our findings indicate that there is widespread trust in German institutions and health experts to provide a safe vaccine for those who need it most. However, interviewees also point to the need for more information and the centrality of support from trusted medical authorities in making individual vaccination decisions. We also present the complexity of individual positions on vaccination, and suggest that vaccine hesitancy in relation to COVID-19 needs to be understood as a nuanced, and socially malleable, territory. This indicates that the goal of a vaccination campaign is not only achieving ‘herd immunity,’ but also a social endorsement of the collaborative effort that is required for a vaccine to be successful.
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