Pandemics Initially Spread Among People of Higher (not Lower) Social Status: Evidence from COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu

Berkessel, Jana; Ebert, Tobias; Gebauer, Jochen E.; Jónsson, Thórdur; Oishi, Shigehiro

doi:10.31234/osf.io/vdqpa

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 48 publications

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“…Finally, different social classes, historically linked to racial and ethnocultural power dynamics as discussed in upcoming sections, are related to the likelihood of death by COVID-19 due to comorbidities (e.g., heart and liver diseases) (Marmot and Allen, 2020 ), and presented different chronological patterns of transmission of the virus. In countries like Germany, England, the US (Berkessel et al, 2021 , preprint) and Brazil (Magenta, 2020 ), although richer regions and social classes were affected primarily at the beginning of the pandemic, the virus spread more quickly among poorer populations in later phases and presented higher fatality rates. These findings might be connected to access to healthcare and viability of social distancing, topics to which we will return.…”

Section: Within-society Intergroup Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19

2021

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Over the course of the year 2020, the global scientific community dedicated considerable effort to understanding COVID-19. In this review, we discuss some of the findings accumulated between the onset of the pandemic and the end of 2020, and argue that although COVID-19 is clearly a biological disease tied to a specific virus, the culture–mind relation at the heart of cultural psychology is nonetheless essential to understanding the pandemic. Striking differences have been observed in terms of relative mortality, transmission rates, behavioral responses, official policies, compliance with authorities, and even the extent to which beliefs about COVID-19 have been politicized across different societies and groups. Moreover, many minority groups have very different experiences of the pandemic relative to dominant groups, notably through existing health inequities as well as discrimination and marginalization, which we believe calls for a better integration of political and socioeconomic factors into cultural psychology and into the narrative of health and illness in psychological science more broadly. Finally, individual differences in, for example, intolerance of uncertainty, optimism, conspiratorial thinking, or collectivist orientation are influenced by cultural context, with implications for behaviors that are relevant to the spread and impact of COVID-19, such as mask-wearing and social distancing. The interplay between cultural context and the experience and expression of mental disorders continues to be documented by cultural-clinical psychology; the current work extends this thinking to infectious disease, with special attention to diseases spread by social contact and fought at least in part through social interventions. We will discuss cultural influences on the transmission, course, and outcome of COVID-19 at three levels: (1) cross-society differences; (2) within-society communities and intergroup relations; and (3) individual differences shaped by cultural context. We conclude by considering potential theoretical implications of this perspective on infectious disease for cultural psychology and related disciplines, as well as practical implications of this perspective on science communication and public health interventions.

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Section: Within-society Intergroup Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19

2021

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A mean field game model for COVID-19 with human capital accumulation

2023

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In this manuscript, we study a model of human capital accumulation during the spread of disease following an agent-based approach, where agents behave maximising their intertemporal utility. We assume that the agent interaction is of mean field type, yielding a mean field game description of the problem. We discuss how the analysis of a model including both the mechanism of change of species from one epidemiological state to the other and an optimisation problem for each agent leads to an aggregate behaviour that is not easy to describe, and that sometimes exhibits structural issues. Therefore we eventually propose and study numerically a SEIRD model in which the rate of infection depends on the distribution of the population, given exogenously as the solution to the mean field game system arising as the macroscopic description of the discrete multi-agent economic model for the accumulation of human capital. Such a model arises in fact as a simplified but tractable version of the initial one.

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Der Zusammenhang zwischen sozialen Ungleichheiten und Covid-19 Fallzahlen auf Stadtteilebene – Eine Fallstudie für 46 Stadtteile der Stadt Duisburg

Straßburger

Mewes

2022

ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography

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Zusammenfassung Während der laufenden SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie hat die Forschung gezeigt, dass sozio-ökonomische Ungleichheiten eine entscheidende Rolle beim Verständnis der Ausbreitung des Virus spielen. Menschen mit einem niedrigeren sozio-ökonomischen Status haben eine höhere Wahrscheinlichkeit, sich mit COVID-19 zu infizieren und an dem Virus zu sterben. Da sozio-ökonomische Ungleichheiten eine starke räumliche Dimension haben, z. B. aufgrund zunehmender Ungleichheiten innerhalb von Städten, könnte dieses Wissen zur Erklärung und zur Vorhersage der geographischen Ausbreitung des Virus beitragen. Empirische Belege auf feiner geographischer Ebene innerhalb von Städten sind jedoch äußerst rar. Wir adressieren diese Forschungslücke und untersuchen die Beziehung zwischen SARS-CoV-2-Fällen pro 100.000 Einwohner und dem sozio-ökonomischen Status auf der Grundlage detaillierter Daten auf Stadtbezirksebene in Duisburg, Deutschland, welche vom Gesundheitsamt der Stadt Duisburg zur Verfügung gestellt wurden, sowie Daten des KECK-Atlasses. Unsere Regressionsergebnisse deuten stark auf einen negativen Zusammenhang zwischen sozio-ökonomischem Status und Morbiditätsraten für die zweite Welle der aktuellen Pandemie in Duisburg hin. Unsere Ergebnisse verbessern das Verständnis der geographischen Ausbreitung von SARS-CoV-2 in Städten und liefern politischen Entscheidungsträgern detaillierte Informationen darüber, wie geographisch sensible Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Pandemie konzipiert werden können, um sozio-ökonomisch benachteiligte Menschen in unserer Gesellschaft besser zu schützen.

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Pandemics Initially Spread Among People of Higher (not Lower) Social Status: Evidence from COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu

Cited by 3 publications

References 48 publications

The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19

The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19

A mean field game model for COVID-19 with human capital accumulation

Der Zusammenhang zwischen sozialen Ungleichheiten und Covid-19 Fallzahlen auf Stadtteilebene – Eine Fallstudie für 46 Stadtteile der Stadt Duisburg

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