The COVID Decade: Understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19

Abstract

The British Academy was asked by the Government Office for Science to produce an independent review on the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19. This report outlines the evidence across a range of areas, building upon a series of expert reviews, engagement, synthesis and analysis across the research community in the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (SHAPE). It is accompanied by a separate report, Shaping the COVID decade, which considers how policymakers might respond. History shows that pandemics and other crises can be catalysts to rebuild society in new ways, but that this requires vision and interconnectivity between policymakers at local, regional and national levels. With the advent of vaccines and the imminent ending of lockdowns, we might think that the impact of COVID-19 is coming to an end. This would be wrong. We are in a COVID decade: the social, economic and cultural effects of the pandemic will cast a long shadow into the future – perhaps longer than a decade – and the sooner we begin to understand, the better placed we will be to address them. There are of course many impacts which flowed from lockdowns, including not being able to see family and friends, travel or take part in leisure activities. These should ease quickly as lockdown comes to an end. But there are a set of deeper impacts on health and wellbeing, communities and cohesion, and skills, employment and the economy which will have profound effects upon the UK for many years to come. In sum, the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities and differences and created new ones, as well as exposing critical societal needs and strengths. These can emerge differently across places, and along different time courses, for individuals, communities, regions, nations and the UK as a whole. We organised the evidence into three areas of societal effect. As we gathered evidence in these three areas, we continually assessed it according to five cross-cutting themes – governance, inequalities, cohesion, trust and sustainability – which the reader will find reflected across the chapters. Throughout the process of collating and assessing the evidence, the dimensions of place (physical and social context, locality), scale (individual, community, regional, national) and time (past, present, future; short, medium and longer term) played a significant role in assessing the nature of the societal impacts and how they might play out, altering their long-term effects.

Negotiating trust during times of uncertainty: haemophilia and AIDS

“…So we give them hormones that then they won't have hemophilia, Such things never happened in an academic centre, but it happened outside.' 80 British Academy (2021) made in their patient's best interest by haemophilia physicians were insufficient to sustain trust. These have important implications for the training of doctors about dealing with epistemic uncertainty and on managing trust in their clinical encounters.…”

SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and beyond: The impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on Turkish youth and their attitude toward future prospects

“…The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has changed and shaped the world, impacting people's lives in an unprecedented way [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The current pandemic, which started as a health crisis in 2019, quickly turned into a deep economic and social crisis [9,10].…”

“…Although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has affected everyone differently, its impact on young people has been systematic, profound, and disproportionate compared to many social groups [11]. SARS-CoV-2's alarming effects on youth have been accompanied by increased unemployment, financial pressure, education and training inequality, social isolation, and mental health problems [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. All of these are interconnected and can aggravate each other [16,17].…”

The 2019 Philippine UHC Act, Pandemic Management and Implementation Implications in a Post-COVID-19 World: A Content Analysis

“…The content analysis approach is one widely used in political science to detect the policy positions of parties [ 3 ] and is often used in health policy systematic reviews [ 4 , 5 ]. The commonly known pillars of health systems analysis espoused by WHO, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic lessons’ frame, such as those identified by the British Academy in a multi-disciplinary evidence review [ 6 ], can be viewed as a priori considerations that serve as references for the legislation analysis. A scrutiny of a legislative product or law allows a forward-looking view on the reform intentions and/or the neglected and leverage areas critical in the law’s implementation.…”

“…To assess the UHC Act from the lens of the experience under the pandemic, studies have identified interconnected areas that can be built on and are likely to endure for the long term: the strength of engaging with local communities; protection of health workers and other essential workers; effective national coordination; and transparent and consistent information or messaging [ 6 , 25 ]. Having resources and platforms to secure supplies and tools were necessary but not sufficient in the response.…”