research proposal written on the impact of covid 19 on humanity and the world

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences

Affiliations.

• 1 AXES, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy.
• 2 Chair of Systems Design D-MTEC, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
• PMID: 35139089
• PMCID: PMC8827464
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263001

The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences and find indications that the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific production using the PubMed database (3.6 Million research papers). We find that COVID-19-related MeSH terms have experienced a 6.5 fold increase in output on average, while publications on unrelated MeSH terms dropped by 10 to 12%. The publication weighted impact has an even more pronounced negative effect (-16% to -19%). Moreover, COVID-19 has displaced clinical trial publications (-24%) and diverted grants from research areas not closely related to COVID-19. Note that since COVID-19 publications may have been fast-tracked, the sudden surge in COVID-19 publications might be driven by editorial policy.

• Bibliometrics
• Biological Science Disciplines
• Biomedical Research*
• COVID-19* / epidemiology
• Medical Subject Headings

Grants and funding

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Collection  23 July 2020

COVID-19: humanities and social sciences perspectives

The novel coronavirus SARS2-CoV-2 has precipitated the present outbreak of COVID-19, a highly infectious respiratory disease, for which there is presently no effective treatment. The resulting pandemic is having profound and likely long-lasting effects on communities, economies and individuals’ lived experiences. Here, we highlight research published across this journal that reflects in some way on this crisis from humanities and social sciences perspectives.

This collection will continue to be updated as relevant perspectives are published.

All papers submitted to Collections are subject to the journal’s standard  editorial criteria  and  policies . This includes the journal’s policy on  competing interests .

Viral decisions: unmasking the impact of COVID-19 info and behavioral quirks on investment choices

• Wasim ul Rehman
• Omur Saltik
• Suleyman Degirmen

COVID-19 vaccination, preventive behaviours and pro-social motivation: panel data analysis from Japan

• Eiji Yamamura
• Yoshiro Tsutsui
• Fumio Ohtake

The determinants of mental well-being of healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Nuria Ceular-Villamandos
• Virginia Navajas-Romero
• Maria Jesus Vazquez-Garcia

Pro-religion attitude predicts lower vaccination coverage at country level

• Zhe-Fei Mao

Health literacy, religiosity, and political identification as predictors of vaccination conspiracy beliefs: a test of the deficit and contextual models

• Željko Pavić
• Emma Kovačević
• Adrijana Šuljok

Cultural worldviews and support for governmental management of COVID-19

• Palizhati Muhetaer

Job satisfaction and self-efficacy of in-service early childhood teachers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era

• Yan-Fang Zhou
• Atsushi Nanakida

Evidence of the time-varying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on online search activities relating to shopping products in South Korea

• Kwangmin Jung
• Jonghun Kam

Multifractal scaling analyses of the spatial diffusion pattern of COVID-19 pandemic in Chinese mainland

• Yuqing Long
• Yanguang Chen

Nourishing social solidarity in exchanging gifts: a study on social exchange in Shanghai communities during COVID-19 lockdown

• Youjia Zhou

After the pandemic: the global seafood trade market forecasts in 2030

• Chunzhu Wei
• Wenguang Zhang

Car enthusiasm during the second and fourth waves of COVID-19 pandemic

• Michał Suchanek
• Agnieszka Szmelter-Jarosz

The effect of official intervention on reducing the use of potentially discriminatory language during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

• Yiwei Jiang
• Hsin-Che Wu

Public opinion in Japanese newspaper readers’ posts under the prolonged COVID-19 infection spread 2019–2021: contents analysis using Latent Dirichlet Allocation

• Hideaki Kasuga
• Tetsuhito Fukushima

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected wheelchair users? Time-series analysis of the number of railway passengers in Tokyo

• Yukari Niwa
• Kentaro Honma

Quiet quitting during COVID-19: the role of psychological empowerment

• Mingxiao Lu
• Abdullah Al Mamun
• Mohammad Masukujjaman

Pressure, state and response: configurational analysis of organizational resilience in tourism businesses following the COVID-19 pandemic crisis

Framing of female medical personnel during the covid-19 pandemic: a case study of the chinese official media.

• Cunling Gao
• Shanshan Han

Cognitive and emotional factors related to COVID-19 among high-risk ethnically diverse adults at the onset of the New York City outbreak: A cross-sectional survey

• Rita Kukafka
• Mari Millery
• Alejandra N. Aguirre

Well-being of artisanal fishing communities and children’s engagement in fisheries amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: a case in Aklan, Philippines

• Ronald J. Maliao
• Pepito R. Fernandez Jr
• Rodelio F. Subade

Sentiment and emotion in financial journalism: a corpus-based, cross-linguistic analysis of the effects of COVID

• Chelo Vargas-Sierra
• M. Ángeles Orts

Subjective experience, self-efficacy, and motivation of professional football referees during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Fabio Richlan
• J. Lukas Thürmer
• Michael Christian Leitner

The relationship between home-based physical activity and general well-being among Chinese university students during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediation effect of self-esteem

• Yongzhen Teng

Integrating socio-cultural value system into health services in response to Covid-19 patients’ self-isolation in Indonesia

• Yety Rochwulaningsih
• Singgih Tri Sulistiyono
• Fajar Gemilang Purna Yudha

Assessing the significance of first place and online third places in supporting Malaysian seniors’ well-being during the pandemic

• Teck Hong Tan
• Izian Idris

Revival of positive nostalgic music during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK: evidence from Spotify streaming data

• Timothy Yu-Cheong Yeung

The impact of the first wave of COVID-19 on students’ attainment, analysed by IRT modelling method

• Rita Takács
• Szabolcs Takács
• Zoltán Horváth

Parents’ digital skills and their development in the context of the Corona pandemic

• Badr A. Alharbi
• Usama M. Ibrahem
• Sameh F. Saleh

Effects of media on preventive behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Takahisa Suzuki
• Hitoshi Yamamoto
• Ryohei Umetani

Characteristics, likelihood and challenges of road traffic injuries in China before COVID-19 and in the postpandemic era

• Xiuquan Shi

The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the connectedness of the BRICS’s term structure

• Francisco Jareño
• Ana Escribano
• Zaghum Umar

Moving forward: embracing challenges as opportunities to improve medical education in the post-COVID era

Pandemics affect every aspect of life, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is no exception. The impact of COVID-19 might be even greater in medical education, which involves close contact with patients. This comment reviews current trends in medical education in response to COVID-19, especially in the pre-clerkship curriculum, and discusses opportunities and challenges in medical education in the post-pandemic era. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of online teaching and learning and is expected to boost innovation in medical education. First, blended learning, which is a mix of online and offline learning intended to incorporate the best of both worlds, is expected to become more widespread. Second, more novel approaches to learning that involve student-led initiatives likely become popular mediated by various technologies. Third, there will be more use of online learning resources and assessments. As online learning is expected to play a prominent role in the post-COVID-19 era, such transitions offer both opportunities and challenges. These challenges include faculty development on online teaching skills, creation and sharing of online resources, and effective design and implementation of online assessments. This comment calls for institutional support and collaborations for faculty development and for the development and sharing of learning resources, more models and guidelines for effective technology integration, and use of the virtual learning environment to promote student-centered learning to embrace the challenges as opportunities to improve medical education in the post-COVID era.

• Kyong-Jee Kim

The gendered dimensions of the anti-mask and anti-lockdown movement on social media

• Ahmed Al-Rawi
• Maliha Siddiqi
• Julia Smith

Cyber violence caused by the disclosure of route information during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Yueting Zhou
• Xuefan Dong

Social vulnerability amplifies the disparate impact of mobility on COVID-19 transmissibility across the United States

• Zhihui Huang

Factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccine confidence in rural underserved populations

• Renee Robinson
• Elaine Nguyen
• Mary A. Nies

The system-wide effects of dispatch, response and operational performance on emergency medical services during Covid-19

• Ivan L. Pitt

Shining a light on an additional clinical burden: work-related digital communication survey study – COVID-19 impact on NHS staff wellbeing

• Ameet Bakhai
• Leah McCauley
• Derralynn Hughes

Biopolitics of othering during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Dušan Ristić
• Dušan Marinković

Counterfactual analysis of the impact of the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic on the reporting and registration of missing people in India

• Kandaswamy Paramasivan
• Brinda Subramani
• Nandan Sudarsanam

Empirical evidence of the impact of mobility on property crimes during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic

• Rahul Subburaj

Impact of social determinants on COVID-19 infections: a comprehensive study from Saudi Arabia governorates

• Abdallah S. A. Yaseen

Containing COVID-19 and the social costs on human rights in African countries

• Lenore Manderson
• Diego Chavarro
• Henry Zakumumpa

Psychosocial indicators of individual behavior during COVID 19: Delphi approach

• Wijdan Abbas
• Shahla Eltayeb

Italians locked down: people’s responses to early COVID-19 pandemic public health measures

• Virginia Romano
• Mirko Ancillotti
• Roberta Biasiotto

Individuals’ willingness to provide geospatial global positioning system (GPS) data from their smartphone during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Yulin Hswen
• Ulrich Nguemdjo
• Bruno Ventelou

Loneliness, student engagement, and academic achievement during emergency remote teaching during COVID-19: the role of the God locus of control

• Hilmi Mizani
• Ani Cahyadi
• Santi Retno Sari

The importance of citizenship for deserving COVID-19 treatment

• Marc Helbling
• Rahsaan Maxwell
• Richard Traunmüller

Seeds and the city: a review of municipal home food gardening programs in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

• Janet Music
• Lisa Mullins
• Kydra Mayhew

The usefulness of a checklist approach-based confirmation scheme in identifying unreliable COVID-19-related health information: a case study in Japan

• Nanae Tanemura
• Tsuyoshi Chiba

Reasoning COVID-19: the use of spatial metaphor in times of a crisis

• Dominik Kremer
• Tilo Felgenhauer

ESG performance and stock prices: evidence from the COVID-19 outbreak in China

• Liuhua Feng
• Hafiz M. Sohail

The effect of herd immunity thresholds on willingness to vaccinate

• Per A. Andersson
• Gustav Tinghög
• Daniel Västfjäll

COVID-19: a gray swan’s impact on the adoption of novel medical technologies

• Denise R. Dunlap
• Roberto S. Santos
• David D. McManus

Aggressive behaviour of anti-vaxxers and their toxic replies in English and Japanese

• Kunihiro Miyazaki
• Takayuki Uchiba
• Kazutoshi Sasahara

Psychometric properties of the 21-item Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) among Malaysians during COVID-19: a methodological study

• Arulmani Thiyagarajan
• Tyler G. James
• Roy Rillera Marzo

Intercultural discussion of conceptual universals in discourse: joint online methodology to bring about social change through novel conceptualizations of Covid-19

• Zsuzsanna Schnell
• Francesca Ervas

Social ties, fears and bias during the COVID-19 pandemic: Fragile and flexible mindsets

• Junya Fujino

Perspectives of scholars on the origin, spread and consequences of COVID-19 are diverse but not polarized

• Prakash Kumar Paudel
• Rabin Bastola
• Subodh Adhikari

Impact of school closure due to COVID-19 on phonemic awareness of first-grade primary school children

• Kerem Coskun

Effects of social influence on crowdfunding performance: implications of the covid-19 pandemic

• Sirine Zribi

Generosity during COVID-19: investigating socioeconomic shocks and game framing

• Lorenzo Lotti
• Shanali Pethiyagoda

Who and which regions are at high risk of returning to poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic?

• Mengxiao Liu
• Shengjie Lai

Major League Baseball during the COVID-19 pandemic: does a lack of spectators affect home advantage?

• Yung-Chin Chiu
• Chen-Kang Chang

Bibliometric analysis of trends in COVID-19 and tourism

• Alba Viana-Lora
• Marta Gemma Nel-lo-Andreu

Explore, engage, empower: methodological insights into a transformative mixed methods study tackling the COVID-19 lockdown

• Livia Fritz
• Ulli Vilsmaier
• Claudia R. Binder

The role of community leaders and other information intermediaries during the COVID-19 pandemic: insights from the multicultural sector in Australia

• Holly Seale
• Ben Harris-Roxas
• Lisa Woodland

Using big data to understand the online ecology of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy

• Shasha Teng
• Kok Wei Khong

Online public opinion during the first epidemic wave of COVID-19 in China based on Weibo data

• Wen-zhong Shi
• Fanxin Zeng
• Zhicheng Shi

Vaccination and three non-pharmaceutical interventions determine the dynamics of COVID-19 in the US

• Mamadou Diagne

Disparities and intersectionality in social support networks: addressing social inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Pandemic in the digital age: analyzing WhatsApp communication behavior before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown

• Anika Seufert
• Fabian Poignée
• Michael Seufert

Producing knowledge in a pandemic: Accounts from UK-based postdoctoral biomedical scientists of undertaking research during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Jamie Beverstock
• Martyn Pickersgill

Optimising self-organised volunteer efforts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

• Anping Zhang

Individualism and the fight against COVID-19

• Oliver Zhen Li
• Zilong Zhang

Economic losses from COVID-19 cases in the Philippines: a dynamic model of health and economic policy trade-offs

• Elvira P. de Lara-Tuprio
• Maria Regina Justina E. Estuar
• Gerome M. Vedeja

Perceptions of behaviour efficacy, not perceptions of threat, are drivers of COVID-19 protective behaviour in Germany

• Lilian Kojan
• Laura Burbach
• André Calero Valdez

Protecting communities during the COVID-19 global health crisis: health data research and the international use of contact tracing technologies

• Toija Cinque

Exploring the determinants of global vaccination campaigns to combat COVID-19

Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

• Nele Brusselaers
• David Steadson
• Gunnar Steineck

Exploring the experiences, psychological well-being and needs of frontline healthcare workers of government hospitals in India: a qualitative study

• John Romate
• Eslavath Rajkumar

What causes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy? Ignorance and the lack of bliss in the United Kingdom

• Josh Bullock
• Justin E. Lane
• F. LeRon Shults

Vaccine hesitancy and monetary incentives

• Ganesh Iyer
• Vivek Nandur
• David Soberman

How South Korean Internet users experienced the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: discourse on Instagram

• Seoyoung Kim
• Hyun-Woo Lim
• Shin-Young Chung

Emergence of protests during the COVID-19 pandemic: quantitative models to explore the contributions of societal conditions

• Koen van der Zwet
• Ana I. Barros
• Peter M. A. Sloot

Examining the role of the occupational safety and health professional in supporting the control of the risks of multiple psychosocial stressors generated during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Andrew Sharman
• David Thomas

Effect of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food security: A scientometric analysis

• Collins C. Okolie
• Abiodun A. Ogundeji

The radically unequal distribution of Covid-19 vaccinations: a predictable yet avoidable symptom of the fundamental causes of inequality

The Covid-19 pandemic—and its social and economic fallout—has thrust social and health-related inequalities into the spotlight. The pandemic, and our response to it, has induced new inequalities both within and between nations. However, now that highly efficacious vaccines are available, one might reasonably presume that we have in our hands the tools to address pandemic-associated inequalities. Nevertheless, two prominent social science theories, fundamental cause theory and diffusion of innovation theory suggest otherwise. Together, these theories predict that better resourced individuals and countries will jockey to harness the greatest vaccine benefit for themselves, leaving large populations of disadvantaged people unprotected. While many other life-saving prevention measures have been distributed unequally in ways these theories would predict, the COVID-19 vaccines represent a different kind of case. As the disease is so highly infectious and because mutations lead to new variants so rapidly, any inequality-generating process that leaves disadvantaged individuals and countries behind acts to put everyone—rich and poor—at risk. It is time that we ensure the equitable distribution of this life-saving benefit. As the fundamental cause and diffusion of innovation theories help illuminate processes that regularly produce inequities, we turn to them to reason about the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. Specifically, employ them to suggest countermoves that may be necessary to avoid an irrational and inequitable vaccine rollout that ends up unfavorably affecting all people.

• Håvard Thorsen Rydland
• Joseph Friedman
• Terje Andreas Eikemo

People underestimate the probability of contracting the coronavirus from friends

• Tobias Schlager
• Ashley V. Whillans

Mobilization of expert knowledge and advice for the management of the Covid-19 emergency in Italy in 2020

• Silvia Camporesi
• Federica Angeli
• Giorgia Dal Fabbro

Reading skills intervention during the Covid-19 pandemic

• Ana Filipa Silva
• Cátia Marques

Keep that mask on: will Germans become more like East Asians?

• Xenia Matschke
• Marc Oliver Rieger

The CoRisk -Index: a data-mining approach to identify industry-specific risk perceptions related to Covid-19

• Fabian Stephany
• Leonie Neuhäuser
• Fabian Braesemann

Scientific illustrations of SARS-CoV-2 in the media: An imagedemic on screens

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused an overload of scientific information in the media, sometimes including misinformation or the dissemination of false content. This so-called infodemic , at a low intensity level, is also manifested in the spread of scientific and medical illustrations of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since the beginning of the pandemic, images of other long-known viruses, sometimes imaginary reconstructions, or viruses that cause diseases in other, non-human species have been attributed to SARS-CoV-2. In a certain way, one can thus speak of a case of an imagedemic based on an alteration of the rigour and truth of informative illustrations in the media. Images that illustrate informative data have an influence on the emotional perception of viewers and the formation of attitudes and behaviours in the face of the current or future pandemics. So, image disinformation should be avoided, making it desirable that journalists confirm the validity of scientific images with the same rigour that they apply to any other type of image, instead of working with fake, made-up images from photo stock services. At a time when scientific illustration has great didactic power, high-quality information must be illustrated using images that are as accurate and real as possible, as for any other news topic. It is fundamental that informative illustrations about COVID-19 used in the media are scientifically rigorous.

• Celia Andreu-Sánchez
• Miguel Ángel Martín-Pascual

Covid-19 vaccines production and societal immunization under the serendipity-mindsponge-3D knowledge management theory and conceptual framework

• Quan-Hoang Vuong
• Minh-Hoang Nguyen

Choosing the right COVID-19 indicator: crude mortality, case fatality, and infection fatality rates influence policy preferences, behaviour, and understanding

• Chiara Natalie Focacci
• Pak Hung Lam

Assessment practices in Saudi higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Samar Yakoob Almossa
• Sahar Matar Alzahrani

Opposition in Japan to the Olympics during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Takumi Kato

Newspapers’ coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Eswatini: from distanciated re/presentations to socio-health panics

• Henri-Count Evans

Government disclosure in influencing people’s behaviors during a public health emergency

Facing the pandemic with trust in science

• Justin Sulik
• Ophelia Deroy
• Bahar Tunçgenç

Losses, hopes, and expectations for sustainable futures after COVID

• Stephan Lewandowsky
• Ullrich K. H. Ecker

Core belief disruption amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Japanese adults

• Izumi Matsudaira
• Yuji Takano
• Yasuyuki Taki

Collaboration in the time of COVID: a scientometric analysis of multidisciplinary SARS-CoV-2 research

• Eoghan Cunningham
• Barry Smyth
• Derek Greene

The impact of COVID-19 on digital data practices in museums and art galleries in the UK and the US

• Lukas Noehrer
• Abigail Gilmore

The plight of migrants during COVID-19 and the impact of circular migration in India: a systematic review

• Joshy Jesline
• Allen Joshua George

Perceptions of risk for COVID-19 among individuals with chronic diseases and stakeholders in Central Appalachia

• Manik Ahuja
• Hadii M. Mamudu
• Timir K. Paul

News media coverage of COVID-19 public health and policy information

• Katharine J. Mach
• Raúl Salas Reyes
• Nicole Klenk

Bored by bothering? A cost-value approach to pandemic boredom

• Corinna S. Martarelli
• Wanja Wolff
• Maik Bieleke

Transmediatisation of the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil: The emergence of (bio-/geo-)political repertoires of (re-)interpretation

• Jaime de Souza Júnior

The interplay between partisanship, forecasted COVID-19 deaths, and support for preventive policies

• Lucia Freira
• Marco Sartorio
• Joaquin Navajas

Large-scale quantitative evidence of media impact on public opinion toward China

• Junming Huang
• Gavin G. Cook

Viral tunes: changes in musical behaviours and interest in coronamusic predict socio-emotional coping during COVID-19 lockdown

• Lauren K. Fink
• Lindsay A. Warrenburg
• Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann

How epidemic psychology works on Twitter: evolution of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

• Luca Maria Aiello
• Daniele Quercia
• Sagar Joglekar

Effectiveness of the flipped classroom model on students’ self-reported motivation and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

• José María Campillo-Ferrer
• Pedro Miralles-Martínez

Predicting effectiveness of countermeasures during the COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa using agent-based simulation

• Moritz Kersting
• Andreas Bossert
• Jan Chr. Schlüter

Institutional and cultural determinants of speed of government responses during COVID-19 pandemic

• Diqiang Chen
• Diefeng Peng

Changes in political trust in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: integrated public opinion evidence and implications

• Fanny Lalot
• Dominic Abrams

The COVID-19 wicked problem in public health ethics: conflicting evidence, or incommensurable values?

Pandemics and protectionism: evidence from the “Spanish” flu

• Nina Boberg-Fazlic
• Markus Lampe

COVID-19 and the academy: opinions and experiences of university-based scientists in the U.S.

• Timothy P. Johnson
• Mary K. Feeney
• Eric W. Welch

Anxiety, gender, and social media consumption predict COVID-19 emotional distress

• Joseph Heffner
• Marc-Lluís Vives
• Oriel FeldmanHall

Rise and fall of the global conversation and shifting sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Xiangliang Zhang

Not-so-straightforward links between believing in COVID-19-related conspiracy theories and engaging in disease-preventive behaviours

• Hoi-Wing Chan
• Connie Pui-Yee Chiu
• Ying-yi Hong

Changes in mobility and socioeconomic conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak

• Marco Dueñas
• Mercedes Campi
• Luis E. Olmos

Hollywood survival strategies in the post-COVID 19 era

• Michael Johnson Jr

More than just a mental stressor: psychological value of social distancing in COVID-19 mitigation through increased risk perception—a preliminary study in China

• Yuanchao Gong
• Linxiu Zhang

Prediction of COVID-19 Social Distancing Adherence (SoDA) on the United States county-level

• Myles Ingram
• Ashley Zahabian

How shades of truth and age affect responses to COVID-19 (Mis)information: randomized survey experiment among WhatsApp users in UK and Brazil

• Santosh Vijaykumar
• Daniel Morris

What can we learn from Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on human behaviour? The case of France’s lockdown

• Cyril Atkinson-Clement
• Eléonore Pigalle

Why has the COVID-19 pandemic increased support for Universal Basic Income?

• Daniel Nettle
• Elliott Johnson
• Rebecca Saxe

A critical juncture in universal healthcare: insights from South Korea’s COVID-19 experience for the United Kingdom to consider

• Kyungmoo Heo
• Keonyeong Jeong
• Yongseok Seo

The history teacher education process in Portugal: a mixed method study about professionalism development

• Glória Solé
• Marília Gago

Understanding the buffering effect of social media use on anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

• Yousri Marzouki
• Fatimah Salem Aldossari
• Giuseppe A. Veltri

People’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during its early stages and factors affecting those responses

• Junyi Zhang

Toward effective government communication strategies in the era of COVID-19

• Bernadette Hyland-Wood
• John Gardner

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need for an equity-focused global health agenda

• A. H. Kelly
• M. Avendano

The COVID-19 effect on the Paris agreement

• John M. Reilly
• Y.-H. Henry Chen
• Henry D. Jacoby

Responding to the pandemic as a family unit: social impacts of COVID-19 on rural migrants in China and their coping strategies

• Shuangshuang Tang

Science communication as a preventative tool in the COVID19 pandemic

• Gagan Matta

Human–dog relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic: booming dog adoption during social isolation

• Liat Morgan
• Alexandra Protopopova

COVID-19 impact and survival strategy in business tourism market: the example of the UAE MICE industry

• Asad A. Aburumman

Satisfaction of scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

• Isabel J. Raabe
• Alexander Ehlert
• Heiko Rauhut

Trouble in the trough: how uncertainties were downplayed in the UK’s science advice on Covid-19

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has forced science advisory institutions and processes into an unusually prominent role, and placed their decisions under intense public, political and media scrutiny. In the UK, much of the focus has been on whether the government was too late in implementing its lockdown policy, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths. Some experts have argued that this was the result of poor data being fed into epidemiological models in the early days of the pandemic, resulting in inaccurate estimates of the virus’s doubling rate. In this article, I argue that a fuller explanation is provided by an analysis of how the multiple uncertainties arising from poor quality data, a predictable characteristic of an emergency situation, were represented in the advice to decision makers. Epidemiological modelling showed a wide range of credible doubling rates, while the science advice based upon modelling presented a much narrower range of doubling rates. I explain this puzzle by showing how some science advisors were both knowledge producers (through epidemiological models) and knowledge users (through the development of advice), roles associated with different perceptions of scientific uncertainty. This conflation of experts’ roles gave rise to contradictions in the representation of uncertainty over the doubling rate. Role conflation presents a challenge to science advice, and highlights the need for a diversity of expertise, a structured process for selecting experts, and greater clarity regarding the methods by which expert consensus is achieved. The analysis indicates an urgent research agenda that can help strengthen the UK science advice system after Covid-19.

• Warren Pearce

Social markers of a pandemic: modeling the association between cultural norms and COVID-19 spread data

• Máté Kapitány-Fövény
• Mihály Sulyok

Validity and usefulness of COVID-19 models

Assessment of monthly economic losses in Wuhan under the lockdown against COVID-19

• Shibing You
• Hengli Wang
• Yongzeng Lai

Too bored to bother? Boredom as a potential threat to the efficacy of pandemic containment measures

Sentiments and emotions evoked by news headlines of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

• Faheem Aslam
• Tahir Mumtaz Awan
• Mahwish Parveen

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Learning from a Pandemic. The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Around the World

• Open Access
• First Online: 15 September 2021

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• Fernando M. Reimers 2  

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This introductory chapter sets the stage for the book, explaining the goals, methods, and significance of the comparative study. The chapter situates the theoretical significance of the study with respect to research on education and inequality, and argues that the rare, rapid, and massive change in the social context of schools caused by the pandemic provides a singular opportunity to study the relative autonomy of educational institutions from larger social structures implicated in the reproduction of inequality. The chapter provides a conceptual educational model to examine the impact of COVID-19 on educational opportunity. The chapter describes the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it resulted into school closures and in the rapid deployment of strategies of remote education. It examines available evidence on the duration of school closures, the implementation of remote education strategies, and known results in student access, engagement, learning, and well-being.

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COVID-19 causes unprecedented educational disruption: Is there a road towards a new normal?

1.1 introduction.

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked education systems in most countries around the world, constraining educational opportunities for many students at all levels and in most countries, especially for poor students, those otherwise marginalized, and for students with disabilities. This impact resulted from the direct health toll of the pandemic and from indirect ripple effects such as diminished family income, food insecurity, increased domestic violence, and other community and societal effects. The disruptions caused by the pandemic affected more than 1.7 billion learners, including 99% of students in low and lower-middle income countries (OECD, 2020c; United Nations, 2020 , p. 2).

While just around 2% of the world population (168 million people as of May 27, 2021) had been infected a year after the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China, and only 2% of those infected (3.5 million) had lost their lives to the virus (World Health Organization, 2021a ), considerably more people were impacted by the policy responses put in place to contain the spread of the virus. Beyond the infections and fatalities reported as directly caused by COVID-19, analysis of the excess mortality since the pandemic outbreak, suggests that an additional 3 million people may have lost their lives to date because of the virus (WHO, 2021b ).

As the General Director of the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 (WHO, 2020a ), countries began to adopt a range of policy responses to contain the spread of the virus. The adoption of containment practices accelerated as the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 (WHO, 2020b ).

Chief among those policy responses were the social distancing measures which reduced the ability of many people to work, closed businesses, and reduced the ability to congregate and meet for a variety of purposes, including teaching and learning. The interruption of in-person instruction in schools and universities limited opportunities for students to learn, causing disengagement from schools and, in some cases, school dropouts. While most schools put in place alternative ways to continue schooling during the period when in-person instruction was not feasible, those arrangements varied in their effectiveness, and reached students in different social circumstances with varied degrees of success.

In addition to the learning loss and disengagement with learning caused by the interruption of in-person instruction and by the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education, other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity, and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constraints on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, and from teachers having to teach from home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space and, for those fortunate to have it, access to connectivity and digital devices. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the evolution and conclusion of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive.

Beyond these individual and community effects of the pandemic on students, and on teachers and school staff, the pandemic also impacted education systems and schools. Burdened with multiple new demands for which they were unprepared, and in many cases inadequately resourced, the capacity of education leaders and administrators, who were also experiencing the previously described stressors faced by students and teachers, was stretched considerably. Inevitably, the institutional bandwidth to attend to the routine operations and support of schools was diminished and, as a result, the ability to manage and sustain education programs was hampered. Routine administrative efforts to support school operations as well as initiatives to improve them were affected, often setting these efforts back.

Published efforts to take stock of the educational impact of the pandemic to date, as it continues to unfold, have largely consisted of collecting and analyzing a limited number of indicators such as enrollment, school closures, or reports from various groups about the alternative arrangements put in place to sustain educational opportunity, including whether, when, and how schools were open for in-person instruction and what alternative arrangements were made to sustain education remotely. Often these data have been collected in samples of convenience, non-representative, further limiting the ability to obtain true estimates of the education impact of the pandemic on the student population. A recent review of research on learning loss during the pandemic identified only eight studies, all focusing on OECD countries which experienced relatively short periods of school closures (Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, the United States, Australia, and Germany). These studies confirm learning loss in most cases and, in some, increases in educational inequality, but they also document heterogeneous effects of closures on learning for various school subjects and education levels (Donelly & Patrinos, 2021 ).

There have also been predictions of the likely impact of the pandemic, consisting mostly of forecasts and simulations based on extrapolations of what is known about the interruption of instruction in other contexts and periods. For example, based on an analysis of the educational impact of the Ebola outbreaks, Hallgarten identified the following likely drivers of school dropouts during COVID-19: (1) the reduction in the availability of education services, (2) the reduction in access to education services, (3) the reduction in the utilization of schools, and (4) lack of quality education. Undergirding these drivers of dropout are these factors: (a) school closures, (b) lack of at-home educational materials, (c) fear of school return and emotional stress caused by the pandemic, (d) new financial hardships leading to difficulties paying fees, or to children taking up employment, (e) lack of reliable information on the evolution of the pandemic and on school reopenings, and (f) lack of teacher training during crisis. (Hallgarten, 2020 , p. 3).

Another type of estimate of the likely educational cost of the pandemic includes forecasts of the future economic costs for individuals and for society. A simulation of the impact of a full year of learning loss estimated it as a 7.7% decline in discounted GDP (Hanushek & Woessman, 2020 ). The World Bank estimated the cost of the education disruption as a $10 trillion dollars in lost earnings over time for the current generation of students (World Bank, 2020 ).

Many of the reports to date of the educational responses to the pandemic and their results are in fact reports of intended policy responses, often reflecting the views of the highest education authorities in a country, a view somewhat removed from the day-to-day realities of teachers and students and that provides information about policy intent rather than on the implementation and actual effect of those policies. For instance, the Inter-American Development Bank conducted a survey of the strategies for education continuity adopted by 25 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first phase of the crisis, concluding that most had relied on the provision of digital content on web-based portals, along with the use of TV, radio, and printed materials, and that very few had integrated learning management systems, and only one country had kept schools open (Alvarez et al., 2020 ).

These reports, valuable as they are, are limited in what they contribute to understanding the ways in which education systems, teachers, and students were impacted by the pandemic and about how they responded, chiefly because it is challenging to document the impact of an unexpected education emergency in real time, and because it will take time to be able to ascertain the full short- and medium-term impact of this global education shock.

1.2 Goals and Significance of this Study

This book is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the pandemic in a selected number of countries, reflecting varied levels of financial and institutional education resources, a variety of governance structures, varied levels of education performance, varied regions of the world, and countries of diverse levels of economic development, income per capita, and social and economic inequality. Our goal is to contribute an evidence-based understanding of the short-term educational impact of the pandemic on students, teachers, and systems in those countries, and to discuss the likely immediate effects of such an impact. Drawing on thirteen national case studies, a chapter presenting a comparative perspective in five OECD countries and another offering a global comparative perspective, we examine how the pandemic impacted education systems and educational opportunity for students. Such systematic stock-taking of how the pandemic impacted education is important for several reasons. The first is that an understanding of the full global educational impact of the pandemic necessitates an understanding of the ways in which varied education systems responded (such as the nature and duration of school closures, alternative means of education delivery deployed, and the goals of those strategies of education continuity during the pandemic) and of the short-term results of those responses (in terms of school attendance, engagement, learning and well-being for different groups of students). In order to understand the possible student losses in knowledge and skills, or in educational attainment that the current cohort of students will experience relative to previous or future cohorts, and to understand the consequences of such losses, we must first understand the processes through which the pandemic influenced their opportunities to learn. Such systematization and stock-taking are also essential to plan for remediation and recovery, in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and beyond. While the selection of countries was not intended to represent the entire world, the knowledge gained from the analysis of the educational impact of the pandemic on these diverse cases, as well as making visible what is not yet known, will likely have heuristic value to educators designing mitigation and remediation strategies in a wide variety of settings and may provide a useful framework to design further research on this topic.

In addition, the pandemic is likely to exacerbate preexisting challenges and to create new ones, increasing unemployment for instance or contributing to social fragmentation, which require education responses. Furthermore, there were numerous education challenges predating the pandemic that need attention. Addressing these new education imperatives, as well as tackling preexisting ones, requires ‘building back better’; not just restoring education systems to their pre-pandemic levels of functioning, but rather realigning them to these new challenges. Examining the short-term education response to the pandemic provides insight into whether the directionality of such change is aligned to ‘building back better’ and with the kind of priorities that should guide those efforts during the remainder of the pandemic and in the pandemic aftermath.

Lastly, the pandemic provides a rare opportunity to help us understand how education institutions relate to other institutions and to their external environment under conditions of rapid change. Much of what we know about the relationship of schools to their external environment is based on research carried out in much more stable contexts, where it is difficult to discern what is a cause and what is an effect. For instance, there is robust evidence that schools often reflect and contribute to reproducing social stratification, providing children from different social origins differential opportunities to learn, and resulting in children of poor parents receiving less and lower quality schooling than children of more affluent parents. It is also the case that educational attainment is a robust predictor of income. Increases in income inequality correlate with increases in education inequality, although government education policies have been shown to mitigate such a relationship (Mayer, 2010 ).

The idea that education policy can mitigate the structural relationship between education and income inequality suggests that the education system has certain autonomy from the larger social structure. But disentangling to what extent school policy and schools can just reproduce social structures or whether they can transform social relations is difficult because changes in education inequality and social inequality happen concurrently and slowly, which makes it difficult to establish what is cause and what is effect. However, a pandemic is a rare rapid shock to that external environment, the equivalent of a solar eclipse, and thus a singular opportunity to observe how schools and education systems respond when their external environment changes, quite literally, overnight. Such a shock will predictably have disproportionate impacts on the poor, via income and health effects, presenting a unique opportunity to examine whether education policies are enacted to mitigate the resulting disproportionate losses on educational opportunity from such income and health shocks for the poor and to what extent they are effective.

1.3 A Stylized Global Summary of the Facts

A full understanding of the educational impact of the pandemic on systems, educators, and students will require an analysis of such impact in three time frames: the immediate impact, taking place while the pandemic is ongoing; the immediate aftermath, as the epidemic comes under control, largely as a result of the population having achieved herd immunity after the majority has been inoculated; and the medium term aftermath, once education systems, societies, and economies return to some stability. Countries will differ in the timeline at which they transition through these three stages, as a function of the progression of the pandemic and success controlling it, as a result of public health measures and availability, distribution, and uptake of vaccines, and as a result of the possible emergence of new more virulent strands of the virus which could slow down the efforts to contain the spread. There are challenges involved in scaling up the production and distribution of vaccines, which result in considerable inequalities in vaccination rates among countries of different income levels. It is estimated that 11 billion doses of vaccines are required to achieve global herd immunity (over 70% of the population vaccinated). By May 24, 2021, a total of 1,545,967,545 vaccine doses had been administered (WHO, 2021a ), but 75% of those vaccines have been distributed in only 10 high income countries (WHO, 2021c ).

Of the 9.5 billion doses expected to be available by the end of 2021, 6 billion doses have already been purchased by high and upper middle-income countries, whereas low- and lower-income countries—where 80% of the world population lives—have only secured 2.6 billion, including the pledges to COVAX, an international development initiative to vaccinate 20% of the world population (Irwin, 2021 ). At this rate, it is estimated that it will take at least until the end of 2022 to vaccinate the lowest income population in the world (Irwin, 2021 ).

The educational impact of the pandemic in each of these timeframes will likely differ, as will the challenges that educators and administrators face in each case, with the result that the necessary policy responses will be different in each case. The immediate horizon—what could be described as the period of emergency—can in turn be further analyzed in various stages since, given the relatively long duration of the pandemic, spanning over a year, schools and systems were able to evolve their responses in tandem with the evolution of the epidemic and continued to educate to varying degrees as a result of various educational strategies of education continuity adopted during the pandemic. During the initial phase of this immediate impact, the responses were reactive, with very limited information on their success, and with considerable constraints in resources available to respond effectively. This initial phase of the emergency was then followed by more deliberate efforts to continue to educate, in some cases reopening schools—completely or in part—and by more coordinated and comprehensive actions to provide learning opportunities remotely. The majority of the analysis presented in this book focuses on this immediate horizon, spanning the twelve months between January of 2020, when the pandemic was beginning to extend beyond China, as the global outbreak was recognized on March 11, through December of 2020.

The pandemic’s impact in the immediate aftermath and beyond will not be a focus of this book, largely because most countries in the world have not yet reached a post-pandemic stage, although the concluding chapter draws out implications from the short-term impact and responses for that aftermath.

Education policy responses need to differentially address each of these three timeframes: short-term mitigation of the impact during the emergency; immediate remediation and recovery in the immediate aftermath; and medium-term recovery and improvement after the initial aftermath of the pandemic.

As the epidemic spread from Wuhan, China—where it first broke out in December of 2019—throughout the world, local and national governments suspended the operation of schools as a way to contain the rapid spread of the virus. Limiting gatherings in schools, where close proximity would rapidly spread respiratory infections, had been done in previous pandemics as a way to prevent excess demand for critical emergency services in hospitals. Some evidence studying past epidemics suggested in fact that closing schools contributed to slow down the spread of infections. A study of non-pharmaceutical interventions adopted during the 1918–19 pandemic in the United States shows that mortality was lower in cities that closed down schools and banned public gatherings (Markel et al., 2007 ). A review of 79 epidemiological studies, examining the effect of school closures on the spread of influenza and pandemics, found that school closures contributed to contain the spread (Jackson et al., 2013 ).

In January 26, China was the first country to implement a national lockdown of schools and universities, extending the Spring Festival. As UNESCO released the first global report on the educational impact of the pandemic on March 3, 2020, twenty-two countries had closed schools and universities as part of the measures to contain the spread of the virus, impacting 290 million students (UNESCO, 2020 ). Following the World Health Organization announcement, on March 11, 2020, that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, the number of countries closing schools increased rapidly. In the following days 79 countries had closed down schools (UNESCO, 2020 ).

Following the initial complete closure of schools in most countries around the world there was a partial reopening of schools, in some cases combined with localized closings. By the end of January 2021, UNESCO estimated that globally, schools had completely closed an average of 14 weeks, with the duration of school closures extending to 22 weeks if localized closings were included (UNESCO, 2021 ). There is great variation across regions in the duration of school closures, ranging from 20 weeks of complete national closings in Latin America and the Caribbean to just one month in Oceania, and 10 weeks in Europe. There is similar variation with respect to localized closures, from 29 weeks in Latin America and the Caribbean to 7 weeks in Oceania, as seen in Fig.  1.1 . By January 2021, schools were fully open in 101 countries.

Source UNESCO ( 2021 )

Duration of complete and partial school closures by region by January 25, 2021.

As it became clear that it would take considerable time until a vaccine to prevent infections would become available, governments began to consider options to continue to educate in the interim. These options ranged from total or partial reopening of schools to creating alternative means of delivery, via online instruction, distributing learning packages, deploying radio and television, and using mobile phones for one- or two-way communication with students. In most cases, deploying these alternative means of education was a process of learning by doing, sometimes improvisation, with a rapid exchange of ideas across contexts about what was working well and about much that was not working as intended. As previous experience implementing these measures in a similar context of school lockdown was limited, there was not much systematized knowledge about what ‘worked’ to transfer any approach with some confidence of what results it would produce in the context created by the pandemic. As these alternatives were put in place, educators and governments learned more about what needs they addressed, and about which ones they did not.

For instance, it soon became apparent that the creation of alternative ways to deliver instruction was only a part of the challenge. Since in many jurisdictions schools deliver a range of services—from food to counseling services—in addition to instruction, it became necessary to find alternative ways to deliver those services as well, not just to meet recognized needs prior to the pandemic but because the emergency was increasing poverty, food insecurity, and mental health challenges, making such support services even more essential.

As governments realized that the alternative arrangements to deliver education had diminished the capacity to achieve the instructional goals of a regular academic year, it became necessary to reprioritize the focus of instruction.

In a study conducted at the end of April and beginning of May 2020, based on a survey administered to a haphazard sample of teachers and education administrators in 59 countries, we found that while schools had been closed in all cases, plans for education continuity had been implemented in all countries we had surveyed. Those plans involved using existing online resources, online instruction delivered by students’ regular teachers, instructional packages with printed resources, and educational television programmes. The survey revealed severe disparities in access to connectivity, devices, and the skills to use them among children from different socio-economic backgrounds. On balance, however, the strategies for educational continuity were rated favourably by teachers and administrators, who believed they had provided effective opportunities for student learning. These strategies prioritized academic learning and provided support for teachers, whereas they gave less priority to the emotional and social development of students.

These strategies deployed varied mechanisms to support teachers, primarily by providing them access to resources, peer networks within the school and across schools, and timely guidance from leadership. A variety of resources were used to support teacher professional development, mostly relying on online learning platforms, tools that enabled teachers to communicate with other teachers, and virtual classrooms (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020 ).

Some countries relied more heavily on some of these approaches, while others used a combination, as reported by UNESCO and seen in Fig.  1.2 .

Source Giannini ( 2020 )

Government-initiated distance learning solutions and intended reach.

Share of students with Internet at home in countries relying exclusively on online learning platforms.

A significant number of children did not have access to the online solutions provided because of lack of connectivity, as shown in a May 2020 report by UNESCO. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a full 80% of children lacked internet at home; this figure was 49% in Asia Pacific; 34% in the Arab States and 39% in Latin America, but it was only 20% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and 14% in Western Europe and North America (Giannini, 2020 ).

Similar results were obtained by a subsequent cross-national study administered to senior education planning officials in ministries of education, conducted by UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank. These organizations administered two surveys between May and June 2020, and between July and October 2020, to government officials in 118 and 149 countries, respectively. The study documented extended periods of school closures. The study further documented differences among countries in whether student learning was monitored, with much greater levels of monitoring in high income countries than in lower income countries.

The study also confirmed that most governments created alternative education delivery systems during the period when schools were closed, through a variety of modalities including online platforms, television, radio, and paper-based instructional packages. Governments also adopted targeted measures to support access to these platforms for disadvantaged students, provided devices or subsidized connectivity, and supported teachers and caregivers. The report shows disparities between countries at different income levels, with most high-income countries providing such support and a third of lower income countries not providing any specific support for connectivity to low-income families (UNESCO-UNICEF-the World Bank, 2020 ).

The UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank surveys reveal considerable differences in the education responses by level of income of the country. For instance, whereas by the end of September of 2020 schools in high-income countries had been closed 27 days, on average, that figure increased to 40 days in middle-income countries, to 68 days in lower middle-income countries, and to 60 days in low-income countries (Ibid, 15).

For most countries there were no plans to systematically assess levels of students’ knowledge and skills as schools reopened, and national systematic assessments were suspended in most countries. There was considerable variation across countries, and within countries, in terms of when schools reopened and how they did so. Whereas some countries offered both in-person and remote learning options—and gave students a choice of which approach to use—others did not offer choices. There were also variations in the amount of in-person instruction students had access to once schools reopened. Some schools and countries introduced measures to remediate learning loss as schools reopened, but not all did.

1.4 The Backdrop to the Pandemic: Enormous and Growing Inequality and Social Exclusion

The pandemic impacted education systems as they faced two serious interrelated preexisting challenges: educational inequality and insufficient relevance. A considerable growth in economic inequality, especially among individuals within the same nations, has resulted in challenges of social inclusion and legitimacy of the social contract, particularly in democratic societies. Over the last thirty years, income inequality has increased in countries such as China, India, and most developed countries. Over the last 25 years there are also considerable inequalities between nations, even though those have diminished over the last 25 years. The average income of a person in North America is 16 times greater than the income of the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa. 71% of the world’s population live in countries where inequality has grown (UN, 2021 ). The Great Recession of 2008–2009 worsened this inequality (Smeedling, 2012 ).

One of the correlates of income inequality is educational inequality. Studies show that educational expansion (increasing average years of schooling attainment and reducing inequality of schooling) relates to a reduction in income inequality (Coadi & Dizioly, 2017 ). But education systems, more often than not, reflect social inequalities, as they offer the children of the poor, often segregated in schools of low quality, deficient opportunities to learn skills that help them improve their circumstances, whereas they provide children from more affluent circumstances opportunities to gain knowledge and skills that give them access to participate economically and civically. In doing so, schools serve as a structural mechanism that reproduces inequality, and indeed legitimize it as they obscure the structural forces that sort individuals into lives of vastly different well-being with an ideology of meritocracy that in effect blames the poor for the circumstances that their lack of skills lead to, when they have not been given effective opportunities to develop such skills.

There is abundant evidence of the vastly different learning outcomes achieved by students from different social origins, and of the differences in the educational environments they have access to. In the most recent assessment of student knowledge and skills conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the socioeconomic status of students is significantly correlated to student achievement in literacy, math, and science in all 76 countries participating in the study (OECD, 2019 ). On average, among OECD countries, 12% of the variance in reading performance is explained by the socioeconomic background of the student. The strength of this relationship varies across countries, in some of them it is lower than the average as is the case in Macao (1.7%), Azerbaijan (4.3%), Kazakhstan (4.3%), Kosovo (4.9%), Hong Kong (5.1%), or Montenegro (5.8%). In other countries, the strength of the relationship between socioeconomic background and reading performance is much greater than the average such as in Belarus (19.8%), Romania (18.1%), Philippines (18%), or Luxembourg (17.8%). A significant reading gap exists between the students in the bottom 25% and those in the top 25% of the socioeconomic distribution, averaging 89 points, which is a fifth of the average reading score of 487, and almost a full standard deviation of the global distribution of reading scores in PISA. In spite of these strong associations between social background and reading achievement, there are students who defy the odds; the percentage of students whose social background is at the bottom 25%—the poorest students—whose reading performance is in the top 25%—academically resilient students—averages 11% across all OECD countries. This percentage is much greater in the countries where the relationship between social background and achievement is lower. In Macao, for instance, 20% of the students in the top 25% of achievement are among the poorest 25%. In contrast, in countries with a strong relationship between socioeconomic background and reading achievement, the percentage of academically resilient students among the poor is much lower, in Belarus and Romania it is 9%. These differences in reading skills by socioeconomic background are even more pronounced when looking at the highest levels of reading proficiency, those at which students can understand long texts that involve abstract and counterintuitive concepts as well as distinguish between facts and opinions based on implicit clues about the source of the information. Only 2.9% of the poorest students, compared with 17.4% among the wealthier quarter, can read at those levels of proficiency on average for the OECD (OECD, 2019b , p. 58). Table 1.1 summarizes socioeconomic disparities in reading achievement. The relationship of socioeconomic background to students’ knowledge and skills is stronger for math and science. On average, across the OECD, 13.8% of math skills and 12.8% of science skills are predicted by socioeconomic background.

The large number of children who fail to gain knowledge and skills in schools has been characterized, by World Bank staff and others, as ‘a global learning crisis’ or ‘learning poverty’, though the evidence on the strong correlation of learning poverty to family poverty suggests that this should more aptly be characterized as ‘the learning crisis for the children of the poor’ (World Bank, 2018 ). These low levels of learning have direct implications for the ability of students to navigate the alternative education arrangements put in place to educate during the pandemic; clearly students who can read at high levels are more able to study independently through texts and other resources than struggling readers.

The second interrelated challenge is that of ensuring that what ALL children learn in school is relevant to the challenges of the present and, most importantly, of the future. While the challenge of the relevance of learning is not new in education, the rapid developments in societies, resulting from technologies and politics, create a new urgency to address it. For students with the capacity to set personal learning goals, or with more self-management skills, or with greater skills in the use of technology, or with greater flexibility and resiliency, or with prior experience with distance learning, it was easier to continue to learn through the remote arrangements established to educate during the pandemic than it was for students with less developed skills in those domains. While the emphasis on the development of such breadth of skills, also called twenty-first century skills, has been growing around the world, as reflected in a number of recent curriculum reforms, there are large gaps between the ambitious aspirations reflected in modern curricula and standards, and the implementation of those reforms and instructional practice (Reimers, 2020b ; Reimers, 2021 ).

The challenges of low efficacy and relevance have received attention from governments and from international development agencies, including the United Nations and the OECD. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, for instance, propose a vision for education that aligns with achieving an inclusive and sustainable vision for the planet, even though, by most accounts, the resources deployed to finance the achievement of the education goal fall short with respect to those ambitions. In 2019 UNESCO’s director general tasked an international commission with the preparation of a report on the Futures of Education, focusing in particular on the question of how to align education institutions with the challenges facing humanity and the planet.

1.5 The Pandemic and Health

The main direct effect of the Coronavirus disease is in infecting people, compromising their health and in some cases causing their death. By May 27 of 2021, 168,040,871 people worldwide had become infected, of whom 3,494,758 had died reportedly from COVID-19 (World Health Organization, 2021a ) and an additional 3 million had likely died from COVID-19 as they were excess deaths relative to the total number of deaths the previous year (World Health Organization, 2021b ). As expected, more people are infected in countries with larger populations, but the rate of infection by total population and the rate of deaths by total population suggest variations in the efficacy of health policies used to contain the spread as shown in Fig.  1.4 , which includes the top 20 countries with the highest relative number of COVID-19 fatalities. These differences reflect differences in the efficacy of health policies to contain the pandemic, as well as differences in the response of the population to guidance from public health authorities. Countries in which political leaders did not follow science-based advice to contain the spread, and in which a considerable share of the population did not behave in ways that contributed to mitigate the spread of the virus, not wearing face masks or socially distancing for instance, such as in Brazil and the United States, fared much poorer than those who did implement effective public health containment measures such as China, South Korea, or Singapore, with such low numbers of deaths per 100,000 people that they are not even on this chart of the top 20.

Source Johns Hopkins University. Coronavirus Resource Center ( 2021 )

Number of reported COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population in the 20 countries with the highest rates as of May 27, 2021.

1.6 The Pandemic, Poverty, and Inequality

The social distancing measures limited the ability of business to operate, reducing household income and demand. This produced an economic recession in many countries. For example, in the United States, 43% of small businesses closed temporarily (Bartik et al., 2020).

A household survey in seventeen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic differentially impacted households at different income levels. The study shows significant and unequal job losses with stronger effects among the lowest income households. The study revealed that 45% of respondents reported that a member of their household had lost a job and that, for those owning a small family business, 58% had a household member who had closed their business. These effects are considerably more pronounced among the households with lower incomes, with nearly 71 percent reporting that a household member lost their job and 61 percent reporting that a household member closed their business compared to only 14 percent who report that a household member lost their job and 54 percent reporting that a household member closed their business among those households with higher incomes (Bottan et al., 2020 ).

It is estimated that the global recession augmented global extreme poverty by 88 million people in 2020, and an additional 35 million in 2021 (World Bank, 2020 ). A survey conducted by UNICEF in Mexico documented a 6.7% increase in hunger and a 30% loss in household income between May and July of 2020 (UNICEF México, 2020 ).

Because schools in some countries offer a delivery channel for meals as part of poverty reduction programming, several countries created alternative arrangements during the pandemic to deliver those or replaced them with cash transfer programs. Sao Paulo, Brazil, for instance, created a cash transfer program “ Merenda en Casa ’’ to replace the daily meal school programs (Dellagnelo & Reimers, 2020 ; Sao Paulo Government, 2020 ).

In the summer of 2020, Save the Children conducted a survey of children and families in 46 countries to examine the impact of the crisis, focusing on participants in their programs, other populations of interest, and the general public. The report of the findings for program participants—which include predominantly vulnerable children and families—documents violence at home, reported in one third of the households. Most children (83%) and parents (89%) reported an increase in negative feelings due to the pandemic and 46% of the parents reported psychological distress in their children. For children who were not in touch with their friends, 57% were less happy, 54% were more worried, and 58% felt less safe. For children who could interact with their friends less than 5% reported similar feelings. Children with disabilities showed an increase in bed-wetting (7%) and unusual crying and screaming (17%) since the outbreak of the pandemic, an increase three times greater than for children without disabilities. Children also reported an increase in household chores assigned to them, 63% for girls and 43% for boys, and 20% of the girls said their chores were too many to be able to devote time to their studies, compared to 10% of boys (Ritz et al., 2020 ).

1.7 Readiness for Remote Teaching During a Pandemic

Countries varied in the extent to which they had, prior to the pandemic, supported teachers and students in developing the capacities to teach and to learn online, and they varied also in the availability of resources which could be rapidly deployed as part of the remote strategy of educational continuity. Table 1.2 shows the extent to which teachers were prepared to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their teaching based on a survey administered by the OECD in 2018. The percentage of teachers who report that the use of ICT was part of their teacher preparation ranges from 37 to 97%. There is similar variation in the percentage of teachers who feel adequately prepared to use ICT, or who have received recent professional development in ICT, or who feel a high need for professional development in ICT. There is also quite a range in the percentage of teachers who regularly allow students to use ICT as part of their schoolwork.

This variation, along with variation in availability of technology and connectivity among students, creates very different levels of readiness to teach remotely online as part of the strategy of educational continuity during the interruption of in-person instruction.

1.8 What are the Short-term Educational Impacts of the Pandemic?

The study of the ways in which the pandemic can be expected to influence the opportunity to learn can be based on what is known about the determinants of access to school and learning, drawing on research predating the pandemic.

Opportunity to learn can be usefully disaggregated into opportunity to access and regularly attend school, and opportunity to learn while attending and engaging in school. John Carroll proposed a model for school learning which underscored the primacy of learning time. In his model, learning is a function of time spent learning relative to time needed to learn. This relationship between aptitude (time needed to learn) and learning is mediated by opportunity to learn (amount of time available for learning), ability to understand instruction, quality of instruction, and perseverance (Carroll, 1963 ).

In a nutshell, the pandemic limited student opportunity for interactions with peers and teachers and for individualized attention—decreasing student engagement, participation, and learning—while augmenting the amount of at-home work which, combined with greater responsibilities and disruptions, diminished learning time while increasing stress and anxiety, and for some students, aggravated mental health challenges. The pandemic also increased teacher workload and stress while creating communication and organizational challenges among school staff and between them and parents.

Clearly the pandemic constrained both the home conditions and the school conditions that support access to school, regular attendance, and time spent learning. The alternative strategies deployed to sustain the continuity of schooling in all likelihood only partially restored opportunity to learn and quality of instruction. Given the lower access that disadvantaged students had to technology and connectivity, and the greater likelihood that their families were economically impacted by the pandemic, it should be expected that their opportunities to learn were disproportionately diminished, relative to their peers with more access and resources and less stressful living conditions.

As a result of these constraints on opportunity to learn, the most vulnerable students were more likely to disengage from school. Such disengagement is, in effect, a form of school dropout, at least temporarily. As students fall behind because of their lack of engagement, this further diminishes their motivation, leading to more disengagement. It is possible that such a form of temporary dropout may lead to permanent dropout as learners take on other roles, and as learning recovery and catch up become more difficult as they fall further behind in terms of curricular expectations. The children who drop out will add to the already large number of children out of school, 258 million in 2018 (UNESCO, 2018 ). UNESCO has estimated that 24 million children are at risk of not returning to school (UNESCO, 2020a ) which would bring the total number of out of school children to the same level as in the year 2000, in effect wiping out two decades of progress in educational access (UNESCO, 2020c , 2). These estimates are based on the following likely processes: (a) educational and socioemotional disengagement, (b) increased economic pressure, and (c) health issues and safety concerns (UNESCO, 2020a ).

In addition to the direct impact of the health and economic shocks on student engagement, the lack of engagement of students was a function of the inadequacy of government efforts to sustain education through alternative means and the circumstances of students. In Mexico, for instance, the Federal Ministry of Education in Mexico closed schools on March 23, 2020; these closures remained in effect for at least a year. When the academic year began on August 24, 2020, the government deployed a national strategy for education continuity consisting of remote learning through television, complemented by access to digital platforms such as Google and local radio educational programming, with programs of teacher professional development on basic ICT skills to engage students remotely (World Bank, 2020c ; SEP, Boletín 101, 2020 ). A television strategy was adopted for education continuity during the pandemic since only 56.4% of households have internet access, while 92.5% have a television (INEGI, 2019) and Mexico has a long-standing program of TV secondary school (Ripani & Zucchetti, 2020 ). Since March 2020, educational television content was delivered through Aprende en Casa I, II, and III (Learning at Home). Some Mexican states complemented the national strategy with additional measures, such as radio programs and textbook distribution, which were planned locally (World Bank, 2020c ). Indigenous communities were also reached in 15 indigenous languages through partnerships with local radio networks (Ripani & Zucchetti, 2020 ). The State of Quintana Roo, for example, which has a large Mayan population, produced and distributed educational workbooks for students on various subjects written both in Spanish and Mayan languages (SEQ, 2020 ). The State Secretary of Education also created a YouTube channel with video lessons and a public television channel, within Quintana Roo’s Social Communication system, that was solely dedicated to the distribution of educational content (Gonzáles, 2020 ; Hinckley et al., 2021 ).

While the choice of a TV-based strategy for education continuity was predicated on the almost universal accessibility to television, and on a long tradition of the Ministry of Education producing educational TV ( Telesecundaria ), a survey conducted in June 2020 by an agency of the Mexican government showed that 57.3% of the students lacked access to a computer, television, radio, or cell phone during the emergency and 52.8% of the strategies required materials that students did not have in their homes (MEJOREDU, 2020a ). In the same survey, 51.4% of students reported that the activities online, on the TV, and on radio programs were boring (MEJOREDU, 2020a ). Students reported challenges to learning stemming from limited support or lack of explanations from their teachers, lack of clarity in the activities they were supposed to carry out, limited feedback on the work completed, lack of knowledge about their successes or mistakes in the activities, insufficient understanding of what they were doing, less learning and understanding, and perception of not having the necessary knowledge to pass onto the next grade. More than half of the students (60% at the primary level and 44% at the secondary level) indicated that during the period of remote learning they had simply reviewed previously taught content (MEJOREDU, 2020a ).

The same study canvassed teachers for their views on factors which prevented student engagement, 84.6% of the teachers mentioned lack of internet access, 76.3% mentioned lack of electronic devices to access activities, and 73.3% mentioned limited economic resources (MEJOREDU, 2020a , p. 10). Students, in turn, reported the following as factors which excluded them: difficulty in following the activities (“it’s difficult,” “I don’t understand,” “I don’t have time”) followed by stress or frustration, the need to attend to housework, obligation to take care of other people, and lack of motivation expressed as laziness, tiredness, boredom, loss of interest, or discouragement. Half of the students reported that the tasks involved in learning remotely caused stress and 40% reported sadness and low levels of motivation (MEJOREDU, 2020a , p. 10).

Mexico’s approach to education continuity is illustrative of the approach followed by many other countries. Costa Rica, for example, also closed down schools upon the declaration of a national emergency in March 2020, transitioning to a virtual school program, delivered through an online program, and a distance learning program that varied throughout different cantons in the country (Diaz Rojas, 2020 ). These were supplemented by an educational television program of two hours a day during weekdays for students in the upper elementary grades, a daily one-hour radio program augments these efforts. Five months after the initiation of the virtual strategy, 35% of the students had not logged into the free online accounts provided to them by the Ministry (Direccion de Prensa y Relaciones Publicas, 2020 ).

Bangladesh also closed schools on March 16th, 2020, and gradually extended what was to be a two week lock down for at least a year, relying on a distance learning strategy of education continuity relying on internet, TV, radio, and mobile phones, which had serious challenges reaching students in a country where only 13% of the population used the internet in 2019 and only 5.6% of households have access to a computer (World Bank, 2019 ). Access to TV was greater, reaching 56% of the households, but very few had access to radio (0.6% of the population). While access to mobile phones was greater it was not universal, with 92% of families in the lowest wealth quintile with access to mobile phones, but only 19% of the total population with access to a smartphone (Bell et al., 2021 ; World Bank, 2019 ).

Some countries found the prospects of developing alternative forms of education continuity so daunting that they suspended the school year entirely. In Kenya, for instance, by July of 2020 the Ministry of Education had decided to close all public schools in the country until January 2021 and then restart the academic school year. The decision was revised in October of 2020, with a partial reopening of schools for the grades in which students take exams (grade 4, class 8, and form 4) in order to prepare students for the official school-leaving examinations and for critical transitions (Voothaluru et al., 2021 ).

In South Africa, COVID-19 was met by wide-scale school closures, with no practical way to shift to remote learning given lack of student access to the internet (Statistics South Africa, 2019 ; UNICEF, 2020 ). In September 2020, schools reopened after several months of being closed, only to close again in January 2021, during the second wave of the pandemic (UNICEF, 2020 ).

Even well-resourced countries shifted to remote instruction for at least a short period. In the United Arab Emirates, for instance, the Ministry of Education shifted education to remote learning from March to June 2020. Upon resuming in-person instruction at the start of the new academic year, however, families had the discretion to choose whether to participate fully in-person, fully online, or in blended learning modalities. In spite of the strong commitment to inclusion of people with disabilities in the UAE, providing adequate accommodations for them was challenging (Mohajeri et al., 2021 ).

Among the many challenges faced by schools and education systems, as they relied on these alternative forms of educational continuity, was the assessment of students’ knowledge. Many national assessments were cancelled. Absence of information on student knowledge and skills prevented determining the extent of learning loss and the implementation of remedial programs to address it. Other challenges stemmed from teachers’ limited skills in teaching remotely, as shown earlier.

While the lack of reliable assessments of learning loss to date prevent estimating the full impact of the pandemic for most countries in the world, the limited studies available document deep impacts, particularly for disadvantaged students. A recent study conducted in Belgium, where schools were closed for approximately nine weeks, shows significant learning losses in language and math (a decrease in school averages of mathematics scores of 0.19 standard deviations and of Dutch scores of 0.29 standard deviations as compared to the previous cohort) and an increase in inequality in learning outcomes by 17% for math and 20% for Dutch, in part a result of increases in inequality between schools (an increase in between school inequality of 7% for math and 18% for Dutch). Losses are greater for schools with a higher percentage of disadvantaged students (Maldonado, De Witte, 2020 ). A review of this and seven additional empirical studies of learning loss, of which one focused on higher education, finds learning loss also in the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, and Germany, although the amount of learning loss is lower than in the study in Belgium. A study in Switzerland finds learning loss to be insignificant and a study in Spain finds learning gains during the pandemic (Donnelly & Patrinos, 2021 , 149). These seven out of eight studies that identified learning loss were conducted in countries where education systems were relatively well-resourced and covered relatively short periods of school closures: 9 weeks in Belgium, 8 weeks in the Netherlands, 8 weeks in Switzerland, 8–10 weeks in Australia, and 8.5 weeks in Germany (Ibid). The studies also show that while there is consistent learning loss for primary school students, this is not the case for secondary and higher education students.

In addition to the losses in educational opportunity just described, there may be some silver linings resulting from this global education calamity. The first is that the interruption of schooling made visible how important teachers and schools are to support learning, and how many other activities depend on the ability of schools to carry out their role effectively. As teachers had to depend on parents to support students in learning more than is habitual under regular circumstances, this may have created valuable opportunities for mutual recognition between teachers and parents. As each of these groups is now more cognizant of what the other does, perhaps they have learned to collaborate more effectively. Increased parental involvement in the education of their children may have also strengthened important bonds and further developed parenting skills. For some children, it is possible that the freedom from the routines and constraints of schools, and from some of the social pressures resulting from interaction with peers, may have provided opportunities to learn independently and for greater focus, depth, and reflection.

The emergency also made visible the importance of attending to the emotional well-being of students and showed that integrating this as part of the work of schools is not only intrinsically valuable, but also part and parcel of a good education. In attempting to provide emotional support to students, teachers also had to re-prioritize the curriculum, engaging in a valuable exercise of rethinking what is truly important for students to learn. Facing the challenge of reprioritizing the curriculum, some countries embarked on a process of revision for the long haul.

For instance, the South African Directorate of Basic Education has taken a multi-pronged approach to address this complex set of issues. Two such approaches include (1) A short-term―3 year―education recovery plan in response to COVID-19, to address learning loss, and (2) A medium to long-term curriculum modernization plan (2024 onward), aimed at addressing the issue of curriculum relevance and preparing learners for the fast-changing world. The Directorate of Basic Education is working with the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) to establish a Competency-Infused Curriculum Task Team (CICTT) mandated to conceptualize and provide a set of policy and implementation recommendations for a modernized curriculum (Eadie et al., 2021 ).

Creating alternative forms of education delivery during the emergency provided an opportunity for innovation and creativity, an opportunity that many teachers took up, demonstrating outstanding professionalism. The organizational conditions which unleashed such creativity and professionalism need to be better understood, as they may represent a valuable dividend generated by this pandemic, which could be usefully carried forward into the future.

1.9 Methods

To contribute to this book, in July of 2020 I invited colleagues from fifteen educational institutions, the majority of whom are university-based researchers in a variety of countries reflecting various regions of the world and varied education systems in terms of the salient challenges facing those systems and the levels of education spending across them. We agreed to conduct case studies that would analyze available empirical evidence to address the questions below. The case studies were conducted between August of 2020 and January of 2021. We then met at a virtual conference in February of 2021 to discuss the draft chapters, and then finalized them by April of 2021 based on feedback received from other contributors to the project.

When did the COVID-19 pandemic reach national attention in the country? Is there a specific date when the government declared a national COVID-19 emergency? What educational policies followed that declaration? Was attendance to school suspended? Where in the school year did this happen –was it the beginning of the school year, the middle or the end?

What policy responses were adopted at various stages during the pandemic to sustain educational opportunity? Were there alternative means of education delivery created? Was the curriculum reprioritized? Were platforms for online learning created? Educational radio? Television? Were there special efforts to support the education of marginalized students?

What is known about the impact of the pandemic on educational opportunities in the country, for different groups of students? Is there evidence on the degree to which children remained enrolled in school, engaged in their studies, learning?

Are there any educational positive effects of the pandemic? Any silver linings? Lessons learned that would be of benefit to education in the future.

What is known about the effects of the alternative means of delivery put in place, if any?

Given current knowledge, what are the likely educational implications of the pandemic?

What are the areas in which more research is needed?

What are areas that merit policy attention during the remaining period of the pandemic, and beyond?

In addition to a chapter with a global focus, and a chapter comparatively examining five OECD countries, the book includes chapters focusing on Brazil, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, and the United States. A concluding chapter discusses some of the threads running through the cases and the implications of the findings.

What follows is a rich and complex story. While most children of the world experienced some form of educational interruption, the extent and depth varied among countries and among groups of children. Understanding the details of how education systems were more able to preserve educational opportunity for some children and in some countries is crucial to discern what was lost, what lies ahead, and what we can expect from schools as institutions that can build a future that is better than the present or the past.

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Reimers, F.M. (2022). Learning from a Pandemic. The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Around the World. In: Reimers, F.M. (eds) Primary and Secondary Education During Covid-19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81500-4_1

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Getting through covid-19: the pandemic’s impact on the psychology of sustainability, quality of life, and the global economy – a systematic review.

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Corrigendum: Getting Through COVID-19: The Pandemic's Impact on the Psychology of Sustainability, Quality of Life, and the Global Economy – A Systematic Review

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• 1 King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
• 2 Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt
• 3 Umm Al-Qura University, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

The COVID-19 pandemic may affect the world severely in terms of quality of life, political, environmental, and economic sustainable development, and the global economy. Its impact is attested to by the number of research studies on it. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the psychology of sustainability (quality of life), on sustainable development, and on the global economy. A computerized literature search was performed, and journal articles from authentic sources were extracted, including MEDLINE (PubMed), Google Scholar, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Emerald Insight. The references in selected articles were screened to identify any relevant studies. The following inclusion criteria were followed: research articles based on the COVID-19 pandemic, and articles, research papers, journals, and news articles published 2010 to 2020. The exclusion criteria were as follow: psychology research, articles, and journals published before 2010 and research articles having no link with the current pandemic’s impact on the psychology of sustainability, quality of life, and the global economy. Of the initial 350 articles identified, only 61 studies were found to be relevant and meet the inclusion criteria. Based on these articles, the review highlights that compared to developed countries, the developing nations and poor nations such as African countries with compromised health structures have been greatly affected. There are close associations between health, economic, environmental, and political issues globally. The pandemic can be managed if we follow new policies that implement economic and public health changes worldwide. A planned, coordinated approach between the public-private sector is required, designed according to each country’s health system and economy. We can come out of this crisis if we work together and support both developed and developing nations.

Introduction

There is a high rate of uncertainty related to COVID-19, whose pandemic impacts economic performance, sustainability criteria, and development processes. Haider et al. (2020) mention the effect of coronavirus on health and economic crises. Analysis of its growth in countries, clearly shows that its development leads to crises. Declining GDP rates damage health, education, and industrial progress globally. According to Herbert (2020) , COVID-19 affects socio-economic circumstances because of declining global GDP, declining capital flows, fewer investment opportunities, and decreased trading. Not limited to economic loss, this pandemic impacts social parameters like the changes in sustainable psychological development. Globally, the rate of poverty is increasing. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Update for June estimated considerable fluctuation in the final ratios ( IMF, 2020 ).

More than 20 million people currently live in extreme poverty; however, Mukhtar (2020) reports that an increase of about 420 million is projected to be living in extreme poverty. Findings gathered by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) reflect that COVID-19 has resulted in a severe decline in human development for the first time since 1990 ( Zandifar and Badrfam, 2020 ). Their examination reveals that the current global picture lacks socio-economic development. These issues and challenges directly affect an individual’s psychology and assure them of a loss of psychological sustainability and the addition of financial crises. Specifically, with many risks affecting the public, cases of mental crises are increasing ( Kang et al., 2019 ). As a result of people being restricted to their homes and being asked to maintain self-isolation, there is a high chance of someone being severely affected psychologically, which is further impacted by the lack of accurate guidelines or treatment.

When no resources are provided to manage people’s well-being, the situation, including pandemic prevention measures, is reframed and affects psychological health. Concerning the impact on sustainable psychology, Bai et al. (2020) discuss the importance of improved mental health because it affects individual growth and counters restricted personal activities. The authorities’ actions and management criteria for regulating the pandemic are beyond people’s control but adversely impact their exercising, eating habits, gardening, dancing, meditation, learning, and other activities. As a result, people perceive the negative impact on their minds, and the sustainability of their psychological health is damaged ( Yao et al., 2020 ). In the view of Li et al. (2020) , COVID-19 impacts the quality of life and mental health as it prejudices human living standards. The joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS ( UNAIDS, 2020 ) notes that this pandemic increases the numbers of people suffering from stress and anxiety, conditions that are related to depression. Thus, it is essential to conduct a study to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 from the perspective of quality of life and economic, psychological, and environmental perspectives.

Several research studies have highlighted the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is worth noting that the 2013 SARS outbreak experienced in Hong Kong damaged mental health ( Fernandes, 2020 ), but, specific to COVID-19, there are diverse effects on mental health following the imposition of preventive measures. Social distancing, self-isolation, limited meetings, and lack of interaction directly decelerate the economy and mental health. Many countries face declining projected global trade and export volumes. In the view of Allcott et al. (2020) , psychological sustainability involves the merger of political perspectives, human development, and economic aspects, and COVID-19 has had an impact on all three. Fetzer et al. (2020) discuss the pandemic’s impact on the global economy as self-isolation results in loss of business revenue. Restrictions on consumers being able to purchase ultimately result in an economic downturn. Apart from this, stresses are being constantly imposed on people worldwide that negatively affect their minds and decrease economic activity ( Iacus et al., 2020 ). COVID-19’s considerable impact has emotionally traumatized individuals; the handling of the situation has reduced their level of comfort, socially, economically, and environmentally, according to Cartwright et al. (2020) . The amalgamation of these factors triggers a high level of stress in people’s minds, which, meanwhile, affects economic development, as it ruins efforts for developmental projects ( Pirouz et al., 2020 ).

We have faced several epidemics in the past. Asian nations were impacted by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS outbreak), and West Africa was under the attack by the Ebola virus. They also influenced the socio-economic equilibrium, affected public health, and caused numerous deaths similar to what we are facing with COVID-19 ( Marin, 2018 ; Lawanson and Evans, 2019 ). The pandemic has affected all types of businesses. There are shortages of medical equipment such as masks and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), etc. It has made us realize how fragile our systems are and that no country can face this crisis on its own. A targeted and collaborative approach is required.

The main aim of this current research is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sustainability of the quality of life, i.e., how people are tending toward stress, anxiety, depression, and other health/mental issues. Not limited to this alone, the study discusses the pandemic’s impact on sustainable development psychologically and economically. Given that changes in psychological sustainability link with people’s living style, and how they deal with their life situations, there is a need to conduct a study in this direction. Currently, there are reports and research articles that separately discuss the impact of COVID-19’s rapid spread on the health system, mental health, sustainability, and the global economy ( Allcott et al., 2020 ; Banerjee, 2020 ; Pirouz et al., 2020 ). Research related to the pandemic’s simultaneous effects on the psychological, economic, and environmental paradigms is required. That is why this study explores information about and human experiences that influence their quality of life psychologically, economically, and environmentally.

Due to the pandemic, trade has also been largely affected. The impact of this chaos will have a long-term effect on globalization. All private and public sectors are under its influence ( Donald, 2020 ). Previously, all large companies had goals focused only on financial gain. However, now the level of interconnected trade has lost its meaning. There has been an unequal distribution of the benefits associated with globalization ( Roome, 2011 ). The more powerful governments and those who own major conglomerations should realize that unless we work together, the overall quality of life will be compromised globally. Working culture and environment and the worker’s s policies should be looked into to obtain a flexible, innovative, and empathetic workplace for everyone to deal with this crisis.

Therefore, the aim of this research report is to:

• Analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sustainability of quality of life

• Determine the effect of the COVID-19 on the economic, social, and political factors relating to the sustainable development environment

• Evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy

• Examine the organizational changes and solutions for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and

• Highlight the effect of support of the world trade environmental infrastructure in tackling the condition of COVID-19.

Methodology

Study design.

All the guidelines and principles were followed while preparing the methodology for this research. A thorough literature search was conducted, and after proper evaluation and analysis, relevant literature was identified and included for the present review.

To accomplish the desired objectives, all the studies related to the topic published from Jan 2010 to June 2020 were selected. It was assumed that including some publications of the previous decade would be helpful in reflecting upon the practices and strategies that were implemented in situations previously like the global economic recession A computerized literature search was performed and journal articles from authentic sources were extracted, including MEDLINE (PubMed), Google Scholar, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Emerald Insight. The References in the selected articles were screened to identify any relevant studies. The literature search was performed by including the following keywords: “Coronavirus” OR “pandemic” OR “SARS-CoV-2” OR “COVID-19” OR “sustainability” OR “quality of life” OR “Global economy” OR “psychology and Organizational changes and COVID-19.”

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The inclusion criteria were: research articles based on the COVID-19 pandemic and articles, research papers, journals, and news articles published from 2010 to 2020; articles on sustainability management related to virus pandemic. The exclusion criteria were: psychology research, articles, and journals published before 2010; research articles having no link with the current pandemic’s impact on the psychology of sustainability, quality of life, and the global economy and additionally, articles that were in languages other than English. The process of retrieving and screening the studies according to these criteria in this systematic review is shown in Figure 1 . After an initial search, a total of 265 articles were identified in MEDLINE (PubMed), and 85 through other databases. After removing the duplicate records, 272 titles and abstracts were screened. Finally, only 61 studies were found to be relevant and meet the inclusion criteria.

Figure 1. Flow diagram illustrating the literature search and selection criteria (according to PRISMA, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis; Moher et al., 2009 ).

Literature Review

Psychology of sustainability.

According to Chandler (2020) , the psychology of sustainability and the criteria for relative development are associated with socio-economic progress, leading to improved living standards. The study by Srivastava et al. (2020) proposed that the management of sustainability relates to ecology, equity, and economy. Meanwhile, Cartwright et al. (2020) observed that COVID-19 affects the quality of life as overall economic, ecological, and equity conditions have changed. According to Bastola et al. (2020) , psychological and sustainability factors contribute to well-being and allow psychological development. Recycling, dismantling, and demolishing factors are affected by sustainability. The psychology of sustainability also relates to deconstruction, recoverability, and oxygenation ( Iacus et al., 2020 ). Using the micro-dimension of awareness creates an opportunity to increase awareness that ultimately enables involvement in self-centered development criteria.

Impact of Coronavirus Disease on the Psychology of Sustainability and Quality of Life

Political, environmental, and economic aspects collectively determine sustainable development psychologically ( Bowen et al., 2017 ). These aspects also determine how humans should spend their current lives so that the same quality of life can be transferred to and enjoyed by future generations. According to Garfin et al. (2020) , minimal changes in human life slowly alter the future, but future generations will not perceive their lives as the outcome of change; they will think that people before them have led their lives in similar ways. World Wars and pandemics have impacted our present lives. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted the political, environmental, and economic aspects of human life on which psychological development and sustainability are dependent. This ultimately affects the quality of life by disturbing people’s living standards. The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 has agitated social problems and threatened the economies of the world ( Nicola et al., 2020 ). According to Arden and Chilcot (2020) , growth and development in different countries have stopped. The financial stability of both developed and undeveloped countries has been shattered as the pandemic has targeted many lives. Human beings are highly dependent on socialization. Because social distancing and lockdown are necessary precautions for avoiding COVID-19, the resultant increased stress and depression directly lessens the quality of life ( Balasubramanian, 2020 ). Most people around the globe are losing their jobs, i.e., their income. Profit margins and revenue generated by various organizations have dropped. To save the economy and their citizens’ psychological health from the pandemic, many countries have developed strategies, but years of struggle will be required to regain economic stability.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated crises have traumatized people’s psychological well-being, especially employees who have lost their jobs. The well-being of employees working from home is compromised as the gap between their professional and personal lives has reduced ( Pratt and Frost, 2020 ). The situation has stressed employees and has led to an uncomfortable and aggressive relationship with the organization, which has directly, or indirectly ruined their psychological sustainability on a macro level. According to Mahase (2020) , the world before and after this pandemic will never be the same as people have isolated themselves, millions of lives have already gone, and the global economy has slowed exponentially. COVID-19 has imposed the harsh realities of unemployment, illness, and bereavement on people, and long-lasting hardships and struggles are required to mitigate the situation’s negative impact. Coronavirus has substantially impacted people’s psychology and has created an extensive psychological experiment on human beings, which will eventually change the overall lifestyle of current and future generations.

Knowing that the condition of the current pandemic has diverse effects on psychological sustainability, disturbs the quality of life, and restricts people to having to deal with preventive measures. However, according to Di Fabio (2017) , the management of the psychology of sustainability helps to foster well-being and enhance working conditions within society. There are changes in behavior in which most people are suffering from stress, anxiety, and fatigue ( Wang et al., 2020 ). The full lockdown restriction of staying in the home negatively impacts on human living standards. Professional examination reveals that increasing cases related to post-traumatic stress, nutritional deficiencies, and psychological issues have been reported. Oher psychological impacts of COVID-19 include a growing fear of leaving home.

Impact of Coronavirus Disease on Sustainable Development

Impact of coronavirus disease on economic conditions.

The interdependency of overall prosperity and integrity of health emphasizes human dependence on the state of the economy. Econometric analysis of the world’s economic growth rate shows that the current pandemic has led to widespread health crises and economic damage. According to Haider et al. (2020) , the economic situation depends on the GDP rate helping to affect economic recovery measures. Global economic crises due to COVID-19 reveal economic decline. Moreover, the report by Allcott et al. (2020) highlights the declining economy related to fluctuations in GDP rates. In the current scenario, the GDP rate has shrunk by approximately 4.2%, the first time for a pandemic ( Fetzer et al., 2020 ). Another report estimated that a difference of 7% is projected in the coming period if the same conditions continue ( IMF Blog, 2020 ). Additionally, there will be a considerable number of further crises if the IMF faces losses. The overall rates of advanced economies like those of Europe and America have declined the same as emerging economies ( Kang et al., 2019 ).

COVID-19 impacts global trade and investment. In Fernandes’ view (2020), changing global trading volumes can be observed, and all industries are eventually affected by the pandemic. The World Trade Organization (WTO) supports this view ( WTO.org, 2020 ). Its graphs represent the changes in the average value of trade, which includes a contribution by the IMF to change the economic outlook, which, in turn, relates to growing global poverty and declining living standards ( Bastola et al., 2020 ). GDP growth projections make it apparent that living standards are heading to extreme poverty at an increased rate. Subsequently, this negatively affects the economy, as it leads to economic crises.

Chandler (2020) reports that COVID-19 has impacted labor by 68% in just 2 weeks, which signifies the loss of many jobs and directly increases stress levels. The highest unemployment rates are in Asia, Europe, and America. In Asia and the Pacific regions, unemployment rates have headed toward a decrease of 4.5%. In America, Europe, and Central Asia, it is 10.5%. Apart from this, fluctuations in trading sectors have led to a decline in manufacturing, textile, cosmetics, and many more industries. According to Iacus et al. (2020) , COVID-19 has enormously impacted the income ratios in developed and developing countries. A shift in fiscal policy packages has been assessed across 162 countries. It was distributed as Austria (∼17.80% of GDP), France (∼15.30% of GDP), Qatar (∼13.00% of GDP), United States (∼10.50% of GDP), and Australia (∼9.70% of GDP). Monetary stimulus packages across these 162 countries were distributed as Bahrain (26% of GDP), China (14.14% of GDP), Germany (12.49% of GDP), and the United Kingdom 9.09% of GDP; Sarkodie and Owusu, 2020 ).

Impact of Coronavirus Disease on Environmental Issues

Along with the impact of COVID-19 on economic conditions, there is an environmental impact, which Cartwright et al. (2020) discuss. The COVID-19 situation impacts global emissions, especially in relation to the release of emissions into the atmosphere. The lessening of CO 2 emissions relates to the effect of COVID-19 on human development, which in the view of Bastola et al. (2020) , led to the 2020 financial crisis. The restrictions on human development and declining rates of change evolved along with the loss of environmental degradation. It was observed that in Asian and European countries, the extent of the ambient particulate matter has declined significantly ( Gautam and Trivedi, 2020 ; Kasha, 2020 ). Urban and industrial areas have less carbon monoxide and aerosol in the present situation ( Gautam and Trivedi, 2020 ; Holthaus, 2020 ). These environmental gains mirror the losses in the fields of health, education, income, and trade ( Bai et al., 2020 ).

Impact of Coronavirus Disease on Political Issues

The coronavirus’s impact can be observed politically when lockdown and self-isolation result in reduced export and import rates. In the current situation, it is difficult to carry out activities designed to run the economic wheel ( Haider et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, there has been a considerable shift in the policies and strategies related to economic policies. On the industrial level, there has been a decline in line with industrial restriction. Even though support is being provided for business opportunities to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still restrictions on mobilizing current development. According to Bastola et al. (2020) , political parties have provided funds and highlighted financial support to ensure people’s survival during COVID-19. Moreover, the impact of lockdown, isolation, and rescheduling, as well as the spread and fear of the virus, have resulted in new political perceptions.

Impact of Coronavirus Disease on the Global Economy

According to Moti and Ter Goon (2020) , global economic integration is required to deal with the implications of the coronavirus pandemic. A balanced partnership between the public-private sector, which takes into account the contextual economy and health system, and is specific to each country’s situation, will help national as well as international health and economic recovery. The world’s total GDP depends on the economies of separate countries; China’s economy is the largest contributing economy, and the United States’s, the second largest. Due to COVID-19, most factories are moving toward closure and stopping the production of goods. This lack of production of goods and services has a great impact on the consumers, and no significant purchasing practices have been recorded since the spread of COVID-19. In the same context, declining sales are forcing the international market to face the situation. Brands like Apple, Toyota, Jaguar, Land Rover, and many more are facing the loss of investors and consumers ( Ahmad et al., 2020 ). According to Qiu et al. (2020) , Hyundai has shut down its business services and supply operations due to a lack of consumer purchases. Starbucks has shut outlets as consumers cannot purchase. A reduction in the import rate of oil by China resulted in a decline in international oil prices. Multiple uncertainties have been observed in the consumption of smartphones as both demand and supplies are worsening. The car production company, S&P, has faced declining purchases ( Ahmad et al., 2020 ). The aftermath of COVID-19 will thus impact the global economy. According to an IMF report ( IMF, 2020 ), the issues related to the current pandemic will restrict the global economy. Overall sustainable development criteria are expected to collapse. The distribution of economic policy globally in response to COVID-19 was conducted across 166 countries. It demonstrated that the United States is at the top, followed by Sweden. There are few countries with no economic policy such as Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Yemen, Liberia, and Denmark ( Sarkodie and Owusu, 2020 ).

Organizational Survival Envisioned by Human Resources During the Pandemic

During the outbreak of the coronavirus, management styles need to be changed to tackle operations and reduce the chances of a crisis, according to Ågerfalk et al. (2020) . This includes consideration of online management, as online networks can help organizations survive. In Donald’s view (2020), there are two major types of organizational arrangements: traditional and a new post-pandemic system. The traditional structure (pre-pandemic model) has existed during the past five or six decades. However, its demerits were clearly evident during this pandemic. It lacks clarity when defining roles and responsibilities. There is a disparity in outcome attainment, and system working-conditions are less efficient. Although power allocation is part of the matrix structure, in a crisis, it can lead to instability and loss of control ( Roome, 2011 ), resulting in an inadequate organizational structure. The new-age model (post-pandemic) focuses on the innovation, knowledge, and better required skillsets ( Guan and Huang, 2014 ). Organizations that are quickly adaptive build creativity and possess a sharing attitude will be in a better situation to manage its employees post-pandemic. The old models based on power and control need to shift to a more open, flexible, and modernized culture.

In the current situation, typical hierarchical organizations will not result in better outcomes as the approach to allocate power and authority to a specific group will restrict working conditions. Human resources (HR) has envisioned a new model, using distributed leadership, innovation, and continuous training to adapt to the changing times ( Hu, 2014 ) to obtain effective results. According to McConnell’s (2020) study, organizations with networked, hierarchical, distributed leadership styles, cross-training practices, and flexible guidelines using survival techniques to tackle COVID-19 conditions.

Support of World Trade Environmental Infrastructure to Tackle COVID-19

The impact of COVID-19 is not limited to sustainable development, as there are challenges associated with global trade management. According to the United Nations Environment Program ( United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 2020 ), trade is essential for saving livelihoods and increasing economic cooperation. Whether it is related to COVID-19 or typical situations, trade infrastructure boosts the confidence level of operations and allows improvement of the transparency of environmental trade infrastructure ( Deshmukh and Haleem, 2020 ). Other than this, multiple actions and procedures need to be followed for the management of the COVID-19 situation ( Hishan et al., 2020 ). With support from world trade’s environment infrastructure, there is an opportunity to supply food and health products. This may help organizations to avoid unnecessary export and import practices. Development in world trade’s environmental infrastructure helps ensure public interest and government support to effectively analyze the development choices. Gilbert et al. (2020) confirm the importance of world trade environmental infrastructure to boost the confidence level and increase the transparency of economies. Deshmukh and Haleem (2020) consider that the transparency of shared strong data or collections of information contributes to supporting the managed infrastructure required for COVID-19.

When West Africa suffered from a massive outbreak of the Ebola virus, it led to a high death rate and affected the country at numerous levels ( Smith et al., 2019 ). Socio-economic disparity, slow growth rates, shortage of food, and loss of businesses and jobs resulted. We are facing a similar situation presently, which demands that the health, economic, and environmental policies should be modified so we can recover from this crisis and collaborate in the future efficiently ( Smith et al., 2019 ).

Research Findings

The analysis helped to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the psychology of sustainability, quality of life, and the global economy. In the initial search, we found 350 articles, including 78 duplicate articles. After title and abstract screening, we were left with 272 articles. Of these, 112 were assessed for eligibility, and only 61 met the inclusion criteria. After extraction, the relevant articles were categorized into the following subheadings to provide a clear description: the author and year of the published article; the assessment of the key findings due to COVID-19; the present implications caused by the pandemic, and future perspective that will help in the recovery from this crisis situation. See Table 1 . The focus of this work is to review the research work published specifically in response to COVID-19. It is interesting to observe that the majority of the studies were from 2019 to 2020. This is justified as the pandemic occurred in very recent times. Hence the research mainly highlighted its current impact globally and the lessons learned from current scenarios. Among these, the majority are review articles, and only a few of them were randomized and controlled clinical trials, which assessed the economic, environmental, health, and sustainability impacts.

Table 1. Impact of COVID-19 and future perspective to improve health, economy, sustainability, and quality of life.

COVID-19 caused greater chaos than previous pandemics. It is represented in all the studies: the global spread, its implications, and how it has ruined all sectors, small and large. Even though the assessment of various factors has been done in the studies, clear, conclusive steps to be followed are not included in many of them. The research has shown that developing countries are in a far worse situation in managing their health systems and economy than developed countries. Additionally, people of the rural areas, the elderly, women, and children are undergoing major stresses and life changes due to the pandemic. Even though air pollution has decreased tremendously in all countries, post-pandemic there will be piles of medical waste, which will impact the entire environment. These research projects show that the management and leadership systems based on power and control are not a sustainable option in the future. Long use of a lack of creativity, technological usage, and strict policies cannot be continued now.

Table 1 clearly shows that the pandemic has disrupted the balance among all the nations. Though the impact is mainly seen in the health sector and the economy, on a deeper level, everything is affected. There is the struggle of SMEs, social distancing norms, working from home, the new era of online teaching, the suffering of daily-wage workers, a crisis situation for the restaurants, hotels, and aviation department, changes in fiscal and monetary policies, the psychological impact on health professionals and health workers, and the extra workload on the sanitation department. In terms of analyzing the research findings of the included studies, it is very clear that the impact of the pandemic has been assessed by one or more of the factors (health, economy, environment, sustainability, or management). However, it is clear that a conclusive result based on the psychology of sustainability, overall well-being, and global economic implications is lacking. Thus, this has contributed to the goal of the present study: how can we learn from these challenges faced by humans globally?

Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy highlights that various elements affect economic conditions. The study by Pirouz et al. (2020) observes that the current pandemic hurts GDP as it directly weakens a region’s overall economy. This is supported by the view that the loss of consumer consumption affects the economy of regional economies, too ( Fetzer et al., 2020 ). In other words, multiple socio-economic factors lessen the economic rate and decelerate the global economy.

The collected data also discusses the impact of COVID-19 on psychological sustainability. The information gathered revealed that humans experience an increasing rate of uncertainty when stress, anxiety, and depression are continually increasing ( UNAIDS, 2020 ). According to Zandifar and Badrfam (2020) , there are various ways by which COVID-19 can affect sustainable development psychologically. Evaluation of elements related to sustainability reveals that associations of social, environmental, and economic factors lead to psychological sustainability practices. The collected data reveals the impact of COVID-19 on the psychology of sustainability. The current situation has a consistent impact on people’s mind-sets. As a result, there is a need to adapt services to tackle mental health issues to allow people to survive with an improved quality of life ( Li et al., 2020 ). With the declining economy, the contribution of COVID-19 can be observed in the global emission system. Labor can expect to decline in the future, and there is a high chance of an individual facing job loss. This overall situation leads to stress and restricts people in developing the economy sustainably ( Chandler, 2020 ). These employment issues are also linked with psychological factors as they are the leading cause of stress and depression, and ultimately hurt the quality of life ( Banerjee, 2020 ).

The collected data shows that HR departments are now changing working criteria and focusing on alternative working solutions for organizations. Allcott et al. (2020) observe that COVID-19 forces HR to shift management from close-ended to open-ended leadership styles. A dispersed workforce and its interdependency on loose criteria are considered necessary for organizational survival in the pandemic. Apart from this, HR prefers to adopt flexible guidelines and cross-training practices to provide practices and services to manage the pandemic’s result. These sorts of instructions and guidelines help HR ensure the survival of an organization and save corporations from the calamities experienced by COVID-19 ( Fernandes, 2020 ).

Similarly, most organizations are reacting in a managed manner to increase their productive outcomes. It has been clear that a declining projection rate is observed globally, and no improvement for the projected rates is expected ( Pratt and Frost, 2020 ). According to a report published by WHO ( WTO.org, 2020 ), a loss of capital flows and a decline in annual charges is decelerating economic conditions. Furthermore, there are also considerable COVID-19 effects in the form of losses faced by global trade and investment practices. Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the economy reveals that the world’s economy is expected to face further decreases in volumes and global trade projections because the current situation is worsening day by day.

Along with this, there is an impact of COVID-19 politically, which results in reduced exports and imports. Politically, a high level of funds is required to support a country’s regulation ( Bowen et al., 2017 ). The spread of the virus endangers the overall sustainability of development. The situation during COVID-19 has been managed by the support of trade’s environmental infrastructure as various macro-level elements help to ensure sustainable development. With the help of improved access to advanced technologies, it is anticipated that production processes can make development more efficient ( Haider et al., 2020 ). There is a shortage in the supply of drugs and medicine for mental health issues. This, according to pharmacists, is a significant issue. It hinders the development of health services and makes it difficult for practitioners to improve their patients’ quality of life ( UNAIDS, 2020 ). There is an opportunity for support of world trade environmental infrastructure as this allows corporations to work with advanced infrastructures and increased interest levels. Moreover, world trade support systems may enhance the efficient supply of food and medicines. With this, there is a clear avoidance of import and export practices without advanced infrastructures ( Herbert, 2020 ). With infrastructure support, there is a high chance of transparency in the management of economies when these companies support the developed infrastructure ( Arden and Chilcot, 2020 ). World trade environmental infrastructure support includes a focus on planting trees and promoting sustainable practices to provide useful opportunities to increase healthy regional recovery.

The impact of COVID-19 on psychological sustainability can be examined by observing the changes in people’s behavior. Di Fabio (2017) shared the thoughts of people quitting the workplace because of the pandemic, as this also affected educational institutions. Along with this, a lack of healthcare-related facilities contributed to the negative psychological impact on sustainability. Balkhi et al. (2020) found that various psychological factors affect people’s behavior, ultimately changing global lifestyles. More than 80% of people worldwide show more concern about safety as they prefer to reduce physical contact with others ( Wang et al., 2020 ). Around 23% of people face extremely anxious conditions due to mental well-being ( UNAIDS, 2020 ). Other than this, the peoples’ behavioral changes include increasing exhaustion and fatigue that directly restrict them from working toward development.

There is a link between the psychology of sustainability, sustainable development, and economic crises because all these depend on the quality of life and related improvement ( Rothan and Byrareddy, 2020 ). Zenker and Kock (2020) mention that the COVID-19 pandemic changes people’s lifestyles globally by affecting their social, economic, and environmental contexts. Multiple reasons drag the psychology of sustainability toward losses in profit margins and revenue generated. Kang et al. (2019) highlighted the crisis rate of COVID-19 by reflecting on job crises, consumption rates by consumers, and increasing unemployment rates. One COVID-19 impact on individual well-being is that compromised work policies make it difficult for employees to survive peacefully. In the same context, multiple changes are observed in the situation experienced globally as the condition of self-isolation makes people less interested in harming the economy. Some of the destructive realities associated with coronavirus disease include illness, unemployment, bereavement, long-lasting hardship, and struggle in handling the situation ( Fetzer et al., 2020 ). Other than this, there are diverse effects of COVID-19 economically, socially, and environmentally. Rothan and Byrareddy (2020) used a survey to explore the psychological impact of the ongoing pandemic and found that people suffer from a lack of confidence and from the infection itself. There is less concern about the maintenance of health, as most people do not have access to infection control measures. Along with this, there is no realization of the situation’s gravity. People can only understand it in terms of their situations.

Multiple uncertainties result from the outbreak of COVID-19, as this affects the individual and humanity at large. COVID-19 has an impact on the psychology of sustainability, the nature of thought, and the attitudes expressed. Within this context, continual stresses are imposed on people from restrictions that negatively affect their minds. Along with this, COVID-19 stresses employees and others and creates an uncomfortable relationship with a peaceful life, directly and indirectly affecting psychological sustainability.

People’s psychologies have changed, as they are dependent on the global situation, currently negatively affected by COVID-19. The result is that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises have traumatized people’s psychological well-being by disturbing their social, economic, and environmental peace. The lack of work policies leads to stress, as criteria for managing the situation are, as yet, undeveloped. The data involving regional GDP rates, economic efficiencies, sales rates, and trade rates reveal an economic impact of COVID-19. All these aspects are directly and indirectly associated with the pandemic. A fall of 7.2% in GDP has been observed in economies.

However, we can learn from past crises to survive the present global economic loss. In the Greek financial breakdown, 700,000 jobs were lost between 2008 and 2014 ( KEPE, 2015 ). More than 35% of medium-sized businesses were largely impacted as compared to small businesses. Entrepreneurs managed to come out of the crisis by providing us some key findings that can help us to better deal with COVID-19. They ensured that their products met all their consumers’ needs, lowered their prices ( Bourletidis and Triantafyllopoulos, 2014 ), utilized advanced tools and technologies to provide something meaningful ( Giannacourou et al., 2015 ). Additionally, entrepreneurial or managerial personality traits played a significant role in defining company successes ( Elenurm et al., 2014 ; Espíritu-Olmos and Sastre-Castillo, 2015 ).

The various findings reveal that fluctuations regarding trading system volumes when this relates to losses or improvements in industries worldwide. They also reveal an increased proportion of living standards worldwide is heading toward extreme poverty. Crises are facing energy production as there are lower CO 2 emissions, which mirrors the fact that human development and progress are declining. Changes in management styles are required to deal with how society operates and reduce the chance of further crises. However, the adoption of a networked, hierarchical, distributed leadership style, cross-training practices, and flexible guidelines will benefit corporations in tackling the COVID-19 crises. Finally, the impact of COVID-19 can be tackled by the support of the world trade environmental infrastructure, which is known to boost the confidence levels of corporations in operations and improve the transparency of global trade.

Implications and Future Perspectives

Humans have witnessed several previous crises in different regions and countries, and humanity emerged from them. We should think about creating a global change to prevent further suffering caused by the COVID crisis. It is highly probable that a recurrence of the present crisis will strike the global population more severely. It is therefore desirable that:

1. Government be proactive and implement planned precautions now before the situation worsens.

2. Management, institutions, and organizations develop their skill sets demonstrate sustainability, resilience, and innovation as COVID-19 has compromised traditional business management and systems.

3. Globally, nations plan and sanction policies for the collective good instead of their own self-interests.

4. All educational institutions provide necessary guidance and professional help to deepen understanding of crisis management. This will help individuals to become aware, protect themselves, and avoid any risks or harm caused by their negligence.

5. All the important health organizations, health professionals, scientists, and researchers be provided a targeted fund that provides sufficient training and understanding regarding the pandemic’s impact on public health, so the next crisis is dealt with more effectively.

6. Humanity take a collective approach to avoid unnecessary harm to the environment. The earth can be saved if each one of us becomes more responsible, provides support, and care for one another.

We can learn a lot from this pandemic and become more capable of dealing with any future crisis.

This pandemic has taught us that the entire world is connected. If we do not work together and cooperate, humanity will suffer drastically. We need to implement a few changes so that we not only emerge from this crisis but are also able to continue with our lives in a healthy and sustainable way. Firstly, it is important that marketing processes are modified. Instead of blindly following brands and getting attracted to the logos, etc., companies should try to meet their customers’ requirements. There should be a shift in business approaches from financial targets to what is best for customers. Unnecessary use of plastic products should be strictly prohibited. Secondly, any health-related issue should be handled at a global level. If we limit ourselves to our own specific race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, and background, humanity will not be able to sustain this pandemic. A broader view and understanding of public health need to be the key drivers for all political parties. Thirdly, globally oriented with specific goals, WHO should be the decision-maker for our health and well-being. Guaranteed budgets should be allocated, and policies prioritizing health in different regions and cultures should be planned. Fourthly, people from all cultures and interests, such as health professionals, scientists, environmentalists, researchers, politicians, sociologists, and ethicists should cooperate and work to improve the current situation. Additionally, all the policies related to the functioning of society, taxation, fiscal policy, environmental issues, economy, and health should be changed so humans can survive on planet Earth harmoniously.

Author Contributions

All authors have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

The authors would like to thank The Deanship of Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this work by Grant Code: 18-HUM-1-03-0002.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our appreciation and gratitude to the editor and the two reviewers for their insightful comments.

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Keywords : coronavirus disease, COVID-19, the psychology of sustainability, economic growth, sustainable development, quality of life, world economy

Citation: El Keshky MES, Basyouni SS and Al Sabban AM (2020) Getting Through COVID-19: The Pandemic’s Impact on the Psychology of Sustainability, Quality of Life, and the Global Economy – A Systematic Review. Front. Psychol. 11:585897. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.585897

Received: 21 July 2020; Accepted: 26 October 2020; Published: 12 November 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 El Keshky, Basyouni and Al Sabban. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Mogeda El Sayed El Keshky, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Credit: (photo: Getty Images)

A Proposal to End the COVID-19 Pandemic

Many countries have stepped up in the global fight against the pandemic, as have institutions such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, Gavi (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), the African Union, and others.

Yet, more than a year into the COVID-19 crisis, new cases worldwide are higher than ever. Urgent action is needed to arrest the rising human toll and economic strain.

Ending the pandemic is a solvable problem but requires further coordinated global action.

As the IMF has warned, economic recoveries are diverging dangerously. The disparities will widen further between wealthy countries that have widespread access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, and poorer countries still struggling to inoculate frontline healthcare workers. As of the end of April 2021, less than two percent of Africa’s population had been vaccinated. By contrast, over 40 percent of the population in the United States and over 20 percent in Europe had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

It is well understood that there can be no lasting end to the economic crisis without an end to the health crisis. Pandemic policy is thus economic policy. It is critical for global macroeconomic and financial stability, which makes it of fundamental importance to the IMF and other economic institutions. Ending the pandemic is a solvable problem but requires further coordinated global action.

The latest research by IMF staff analyzes multiple dimensions of the fight against the pandemic and proposes realistic targets to bring the pandemic substantially under control everywhere—and the means to achieve them. Building on the work of other agencies, the proposal aims to:

• vaccinate at least 40 percent of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022,
• track and insure against downside risks, and
• ensure widespread testing and tracing, maintain adequate stocks of therapeutics, and enforce public health measures in places where vaccine coverage is low.

Importantly, the strategy requires not just commitments but upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations, and " at-risk" investment for the world to insure against downside scenarios.

The proposal’s total cost of around $50 billion would include grants, national government resources, and concessional financing.

There is a strong case for grant financing of at least $35 billion . The good news is G20 governments have already identified as important to address the $22 billion grant funding gap noted by the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator . This leaves an estimated $13 billion in additional grant contributions needed.

The remainder of the overall financing plan—around $15 billion —could come from national governments, potentially supported by COVID-19 financing facilities created by multilateral development banks.

Saving lives and livelihoods should need no justification, but a faster end to the pandemic could also inject the equivalent of $9 trillion into the global economy by 2025 due to a faster resumption of economic activity. Advanced economies, likely to spend the most in this effort, would see the highest return on public investment in modern history—capturing 40 percent of the cumulative $9 trillion in global GDP gains and roughly $1 trillion in additional tax revenues.

Recommendations for action

The key proposed steps include:

Achieving the vaccination targets

1. Provide additional upfront grants to COVAX of at least $4 billion . This financing will help finalize orders and activate unused vaccine capacity.

2. Ensure free cross-border flows of raw materials and finished vaccines: Such restrictions are jeopardizing access to vaccines for billions of people in the developing world.

We project the measures identified in steps 1–3 may be sufficient to achieve the 40 percent vaccination target by the end of 2021 and the 60 percent target by the first half of 2022, if no downside risks materialize.

Insuring against downside risks

4. Make at-risk investments to diversify and increase vaccine production capacity by 1 billion doses in early 2022 to handle downside risks in 91 low- and middle-income countries, including from new variants that may require booster shots. [$8 billion]

5. Scale up genomic surveillance and systemic supply chain surveillance with concrete contingency plans in place to handle possible mutations or shocks to the supply chain. These plans should be prepared with the participation of multilateral agencies, vaccine developers and manufacturers, and key national governments. [$3 billion]

Managing the interim period when vaccine supply is limited

6. Ensure widespread testing, sufficient therapeutics, public health measures, and prepare for vaccine deployment . [$30 billion]

7. Urgently evaluate and implement (where approved) dose stretching strategies to expand effective supply. [$2 billion]

Additional needed measures account for $3 billion. Steps 4–7 are needed to insure against downside risks, and to mitigate the health consequences of the pandemic in the interim period.

The proposal complements the work of the G20 High Level Independent Panel, the G7 Pandemic Preparedness Partnership group, and the Report of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which primarily focus on addressing future pandemics. This proposal focuses on what is needed to bring the current pandemic under control. To make it effective, countries need to work together.

The world does not have to live through the pain of another record surge of COVID-19 cases. With strong global action now and with very little in terms of financing relative to the outsized benefits, we can durably exit this health crisis.

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A proposal for long-term COVID-19 control

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Universal vaccination, prophylactic drugs, rigorous mitigation, and international cooperation, william a. haseltine william a. haseltine chair and ceo - access health international, trustee - the brookings institution @wmhaseltine.

August 20, 2021

Introduction

Four successive waves of COVID-19 have buffeted the United States for the past year and a half. With each wave, we have bet on different measures to push us through: First, public health measures, then drugs and treatments, and now, with our fifth wave, we hold out hope for vaccine-led recovery. But from the outset, we have underestimated this virus and its ability to maneuver the public health battleground; it is escaping the best defenses we are able to muster and finding new avenues of attack.

In this paper, I propose a multimodal strategy for long-term COVID control, one that sets up multiple barriers of protection so that we are able to not only contain SARS-CoV-2 and eliminate COVID-19 as a major life-threatening disease, but also return to a new social and economic life. The strategy uses the best of what we have on hand today—a rapidly growing arsenal of vaccines and antiviral drugs and public health measures— with an eye towards future improvements and developments.

The most immediate priority should be supporting additional research on the molecular biology of SARS-CoV-2, of which we still know surprisingly little. This is particularly important since there is great likelihood that COVID-19 will become endemic . Unlike the viruses that cause smallpox or polio, SARS-CoV-2 has demonstrated an impressive ability to adapt and thrive in both humans and animals, including our much-loved pet, cats and dogs. Even if we can eliminate the disease from our own communities, it is unlikely we can do the same across the globe and for all our animal populations at the same time.

The best we can hope for is containment of COVID-19 at levels we can tolerate both personally and economically. We have to use all the tools we have at our disposal— being aware of the inequities and disparities from country to country and within countries—that have made this and other diseases so hard to address.

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Covid-19 research and innovation - powering the world’s pandemic response – now and in the future, february 2022, attachments.

R&D achievements summary

At the request of its 194 Member States in May 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a broad network of experts to develop an R&D Blueprint for Action to Prevent Epidemics. A global strategy and preparedness plan was developed to allow for the rapid activation of research before and during epidemics.

Its aim is to fast-track the availability of effective tests, vaccines, medicines and social science that can be used to save lives and avert large- scale crisis, enhancing traditional epidemiology and public health responses with knowledge and skills from a number of areas.

WHO has defined as a priority to harness the power of science, research innovation, data and digital technologies as critical enablers of the other priorities – for health promotion and disease prevention, for early diagnosis and case management, and for the prevention, early detection, and rapid response to epidemics and pandemics.

The UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery provides a framework for leveraging the power of science in support of a better socio-economic recovery and a more equitable, resilient and sustainable future.

Furthermore, the World Health Assembly agreed on December 2021 to launch negotiations for an agreement to fight pandemics. The 194 Member States of the World Health Organization reached a consensus to kickstart the process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

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Humanities in the Time of Covid: The Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus

On March 12, 2020, the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we began conceiving and collecting material for the crowd-sourced “Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus.” Our aim was to provide tools for thinking and teaching about contagion, global health, and community in a time of closing borders, social distancing, and fear. We our drew inspiration from other crowd-sourced public syllabi like Marcia Chatelain’s #fergusonsyllabus and Chad Williams’s #charlestonsyllabus, which used social media to generate an immediate response to and resources for understanding a sudden crisis. While we were sure more general resources, especially in the social and natural sciences, would be rapidly forthcoming, as the simultaneously produced “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project” (Brown, Jenks, Nelson, and Tilghman) and Alondra Nelson’s #coronavirussyllabus suggested, we wanted to curate a set of literary, cinematic, historical, art philosophical, religious, and cultural resources—that is, humanities resources—for understanding the current health crisis and its history.

Our early sense that the humanities would be invaluable for thinking about the current health crisis has been borne out: the humanities have proved vital not only for humanities students and educators but also for healthcare workers and medical educators on the frontlines of the pandemic. The Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA ) dedicated its entire May 5, 2020 issue to narrative medicine (a subfield of the health humanities that uses narrative training to improve healthcare)—an unprecedented move (“Theme: A Piece”). The issue’s editor, Abraham Verghese, calls writing a neglected “vital sign.” He explains: “we really are very good at recording the traditional vital signs, and we are superb at recording all the quantitative aspects of the conditions and the tragedies we see in the hospital. We are fairly silent about the other parts” (“Narrative Medicine”). As a doctor with graduate training in the humanities, Verghese should know. Suzanne Koven, a primary care physician and writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital, tweeted: “A whole issue of @JAMA_current devoted to narratives…Who knew interest in storytelling and #medhum would surge during a pandemic? (We knew).”

Likewise, in medical schools, an extraordinary thing happened: in the first months of the crisis, some medical schools dramatically increased their offerings in the humanities. There is a pragmatic reason for this, of course—professors who teach narrative medicine, history of medicine, and health ethics are less likely to treat patients regularly. But, also, narrative, history, and ethics provide extraordinary resources for helping aspiring doctors and health professionals make sense of life and work in a time of crisis. Sarah Wingerter, Assistant Professor and Director of Narrative Medicine in the Pediatrics department at the Boston University (BU) School of Medicine, wrote one of us (Altschuler), reporting that BU requested that she teach more during this time. “Wouldn’t it be interesting,” Wingerter reflected, “if COVID-19 gives narrative medicine/reflective writing a boost into mainstream medical education?” Indeed it would.

Humanities perspectives are uniquely helpful during the COVID-19 crisis. As Catherine Belling writes, explaining the value of the humanities for health more generally, “the products of science and of the creative arts, and of the technologies that emerge from and facilitate the practices of both, all require the disciplines of the humanities in order to make sense, to be ethically enacted, to be rewarded or discouraged—to be understood as massively complex products of human knowledge of, response to, and action in the natural world” (23). The risks of sidelining the humanities are great. Borrowing Belling’s terms, cordoning off disciplines like philosophy and literature “forecloses” the “possibility of questioning the epistemology, ethics, and language” of the pandemic, not to mention, we would add, the narratives, visual culture, and history that fundamentally shape cultural, social, and scientific understandings of the COVID-19 crisis (20). As Kirsten Ostherr opined in May 2020, the humanities can do “essential” translational work in a crisis like COVID-19 because “health cannot be attained and illness cannot be vanquished through biomedical or technical interventions alone. This pandemic has made the human fragility of our response infrastructure abundantly clear, and we need to understand how our decisions about whose life matters will shape the future to come.”

As we write now in September 2020, Intensive Care Units fill to capacity, and healthcare workers are asked to choose between protecting staff and patients because of inadequate supplies of Personal Protective Equipment. We need health ethics training both to ensure equitable care and to help healthcare practitioners forced to make brutal decisions. As xenophobic and racist narratives about COVID-19 circulate, we need to highlight their formulaic plots that “affect survival rates and contagion routes,” “promote or mitigate the stigmatizing of individuals, groups, populations, locales (regional and global), behaviors, and lifestyles,” and “influence how both scientists and the lay public understand the nature and consequences of infection, how they imagine the threat, and why they react so fearfully to some disease outbreaks and not others at least as dangerous and pressing” (Wald 3). As we deal with a pandemic frequently referred to as “unprecedented,” we must underscore the many historical precedents from which we can and must draw to understand our current moment responsibly. These kinds of training are extremely useful beyond the pandemic as well because they prepare people to identify endemic problems in healthcare like race, sex, gender, class, and ability biases that structure the health outcomes for entire populations.

We undertook this project because we believe the humanities offer an invaluable set of perspectives and skills for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is our hope that The Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus offers generative primary sources and critical materials to assist its users in this work. The goal of the syllabus is two-fold: (1) to provide resources for educators looking to retool syllabi in light of the current crisis, and (2) to provide a robust, interdisciplinary, humanities-focused resource for people looking to make sense of our current crisis. What follows is truly a collaborative effort, and we wish to thank the dozens and dozens of people who contributed to making this syllabus what it is.

The history of pandemics teaches us that the lives into which we will emerge once the pandemic has subsided will be radically different from the ones we left in February 2020. A crisis of the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic challenges our existing ways of thinking, including how we inhabit the world, how we connect with others, what we eat, and where and how we work. The magnitude of imagining new worlds and of thinking analytically and creatively about matters that were not on our radar just a few short months before is something at which the humanities excel. The collectively authored syllabus below aims to bring those resources to the fore and to make them easily accessible in a time of emergency and beyond. The crowd-sourced nature of the project also invites users to connect diverse ways of understanding and imagining global events and their histories. A humanities approach is one in which such connections—drawn across time, geography, media, and competing paradigms—enable new perspectives and new possible futures to become visible, especially in a time of crisis.

Works Cited

• Belling Catherine. “Arts, Sciences, Humanities: Triangulating the Two Cultures .” Journal of Literature and Science 10 . 2 (2017): 19–25. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown Nina, Jenks Angela, Nelson Katie, Tilghman Laura. “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-IRVbz1nsBQJHcaCVh8QLRBiwj3cFT_bXSwmTNs_Hf0/edit#heading=h.fbubynqned6z
• Chatelain Marcia. #FergusonSyllabus. https://sociologistsforjustice.org/ferguson-syllabus/
• “Narrative Medicine and JAMA’ s ‘A Piece of My Mind’ Anniversary Theme Issue.” (5 May 2020) Interview by Preeti Malani with Abraham Verghese. JAMA Network . https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/18487035
• Nelson Alondra. #CoronavirusSyllabus. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTkJmhWQ8NcxhmjeLp6ybT1_YOPhFLx9hZ43j1S7DjE/edit
• Ostherr Kirsten. “Humanities as Essential Services.” Inside Higher Education (21 May 2020). https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/05/21/how-humanities-can-be-part-front-line-response-pandemic-opinion
• “Theme: A Piece of My Mind.” JAMA 323 . 17 (5 May 2020): 1633–733. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wald Priscilla. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative . Duke University Press, 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Williams Chad. #charlestonsyllabus https://www.aaihs.org/resources/charlestonsyllabus/
• Verghese Abraham. “Writing Medicine.” JAMA 323 . 17 (2020): 1649–50. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

Literature/Primary Sources

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History/Primary Sources/Databases

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Literature/Secondary Sources

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Cultural Studies/Theory

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Short Takes/Teachable Interviews, Articles, Podcasts, and Websites

On the coronavirus/covid-19, the broader history of pandemics, history of science/medicine, etc..

• Conversation with Erika Lee. “When Xenophobia Spreads Like A Virus.” NPR. CodeSwitch podcast. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/02/811363404/when-xenophobia-spreads-like-a-virus
• Fumian Marco. “To Serve the People or the Party: Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary and Chinese Writers at the Time of Coronavirus.” Ohio State University’s MCLC Resource Center Publication . April 2020. https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/marco-fumian/
• Goodwin Megan, Morgenstein Fuerst Ilyse. “Religion in the Time of Corona.” Keeping It 101: The Podcast, A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion . https://keepingit101.com/covid19
• Ivakhiv Adrian. “Pandemic Politics: On Disaster Capitalism, Socialism, and Environmentalism.” 30 March, 2020. Immanence: Ecoculture, Geophilosophy, Mediapolitics . https://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2020/03/30/pandemic-politics-on-disaster-capitalism-socialism-and-environmentalism-2/
• Lepore Jill. “What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About.” The New Yorker . 23 March, 2020.
• Molina Natalia. Interview with historian. “Why pandemics activate xenophobia.” Vox . 4 March, 2020. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/4/21157825/coronavirus-pandemic-xenophobia-racism
• Myhre Kyle “Guante” Tran. “Thanos was the Villain: On COVID-19 and Eco-Fascism.” guante.info . 19 March, 2020. https://guante.info/2020/03/19/thanos/
• Olivarius Kathryn.” The Dangerous History of Immunoprivilege” The New York Times . (12 April, 2020). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/opinion/coronavirus-immunity-passports.html
• Ostherr Kirsten. “Movies Have Perpetuated Racist Ideas about Illness for More than a Century.” Washington Post . March 17, 2020.
• Pamuk Orhan. “What the Great Pandemic Novels Teach Us” The New York Times . 23 April, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-orhan-pamuk.html
• Pareene Alex. “The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic.” 12 March, 2020. https://newrepublic.com/article/156901/dismantled-state-takes-pandemic
• Robbins Jim. “The Ecology of Disease” The New York Times . 14 July, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html
• Roy Arundhati. “The Pandemic is a Portal.” Financial Times . April 3, 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
• Schallace Brandi, Carusi Annamaria, “Coronavirus - Bodies, Environments and the Spread of Disease.” BMJ Talks Medicine Podcast. 26 March, 2020. https://soundcloud.com/bmjpodcasts/bodies-environments-and-the-spread-of-disease
• Scheurer Erika. “A Lesson in Self-isolation from Emily Dickinson.” Minnesota Star Tribune . April 2, 2020.
• Shah Sonia. “Think Exotic Animals Are to Blame for the Coronavirus? Think Again.” The Nation . February 18, 2020. https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/coronavirus-habitat-loss/ .
• Sinha Anoushka. “King Lear Under COVID-19 Lockdown.” JAMA. Published online April 10, 2020. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764654 [ PubMed ]
• Snowden Frank. Interview with historian Frank Snowden on NPR. “Infections Diseases Show Societies Who They Really Are.” 6 March, 2020. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/infectious-disease-hold-societies-really-are-on-the-media
• Snowden Frank. Interview with Frank Snowden, “How Pandemics Change History.” 3 March, 2020. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history
• van Dooren Thom. “Pangolins and Pandemics: The Real Source of this Crisis is Human, not Animal.” New Matilda . 22 March, 2020. https://newmatilda.com/2020/03/22/pangolins-and-pandemics-the-real-source-of-this-crisis-is-human-not-animal/
• Vidal John. “‘Tip of the Iceberg’: Is Our Destruction of Nature Responsible for Covid-19?” The Guardian . 18 March, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe
• Webel Mari. “Putting Coronavirus in Context a History of Disease and Epidemics.” National Humanities Center. March 5, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Rs8_mretakk&feature=youtu.be
• Yi A. “A Message Held to the Flame.” Translated by Dylan Levi King. Paper Republic: Chinese Literature Matters. 23 April 2020. https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/a-message-held- to-the-flame/

Other epidemics, other eras

• Downs Jim. “Dying for Freedom.” The New York Times . 5 January 2013. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/dying-for-freedom/
• Anna Faherty for the Wellcome Collection, “The Outsiders: Six people, six illnesses, six different places and times. United by one story about how our response to infectious diseases—like syphilis, bubonic plague and cholera—is shaped by social forces.” January-July 2017. https://wellcomecollection.org/series/WtCORCEAANQ76Sh9
• Frank Gillian, Gutterman Lauren. “A Church with AIDS.” sexinghistory.com https://www.sexinghistory.com/episode-7
• Harris Jim. “Rash Decisions: Anti-vaccination Movements in Historical Perspective.” In “Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” November 2019. http://origins.osu.edu/article/anti-vaxxer-vaccination-measles-smallpox-jenner-wakefield-immunization
• Harris Jim. “Top Ten Historical Flu Facts.” In “Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” 15 March 2017. http://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/top-ten-origins-flu
• Harvard University Open Collections Program, Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics website at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion .
• “HIV/AIDS—Past, Present, and Future” In “Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” December 2018. http://origins.osu.edu/history-talk-hiv-aids-history-africa-lgbt
• Lee Haiyan. “Chinese Paw-litics, Anyone?” China Policy Institute Blog. 7 July, 2016. https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2016/07/07/chinese-paw-litics-anyone/
• “Love And HIV.” Snap Judgment podcast. NPR. (April 4, 2014) https://www.npr.org/2014/04/04/299164539/love-and-hiv
• Mockaitis Tom. “What we can learn from past pandemics.” The Hill . 11 March, 2020. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/487111-what-we-can-learn-from-past-pandemics? fbclid=IwAR0vwBy8ch11FCyTH0SQCDyzknhzPG1vA187HWxXlYt1Gm7 A_GP3KS0J41U#.XmmC3dXSpKA.facebook
• Sealey Anne. “Influenza Pandemics Now, Then, and Again” “Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” May 2010. http://origins.osu.edu/article/influenza-pandemics-now-then-and-again
• Varlık Nükhet. “Rethinking the History of Plague in the Time of Coronavirus.” Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University. April 30, 2020. https://islamicstudies.harvard.edu/news/rethinking-history-plague-time-coronavirus-n%C3%BCkhet-varl%C4%B1k

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Tv/streaming series.

• Angels in America (2003.) HBO.
• Cordon (2014). VTM.
• Chernobyl (2019). HBO.
• H+: The Digital Series (2012. –2013). Bryan Singer. YouTube.
• The Hot Zone (2019). National Geographic.
• The Last Ship (2014. –2018). TNT.
• The Leftovers (2014. –2017). HBO.
• Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak (2020). Netflix.
• Geoffrey Rice (7 May 2018). 1918 Influenza Presentation (Videotape). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Health (New Zealand).
• The Strain (2014). FX.
• Survivors (1975. –1977, 2008–2010). BBC.

Relevant syllabi

• Please see the web version of this syllabus for links to our growing collection of syllabi.
• “A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID19” https://covid19.omeka.net - collaboration between many universities and organized by Arizona State University.
• Corona Times [collaboratively authored blog] https://www.coronatimes.net/
• Crowdsourced #coronavirussyllabus (all disciplines), created by Alondra Nelson
• Twitter thread: #coronavirussyllabus https://twitter.com/alondra/status/1238148640268603394
• Google doc: #coronavirussyllabus https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTkJmhWQ8NcxhmjeLp6ybT1_YOPhFLx9hZ43j1S7DjE/edit
• Duke University Press’s temporarily free books: “Navigating the Threat of Pandemic Syllabus” https://www.dukeupress.edu/Explore-Subjects/Syllabi/Navigating-Pandemic-Syllabus
• Jaggers A., Czerwiec M. K., ed. Covid-19 Comics, GraphicMedicine.org
• Lewis A. David, ed. Covid-19 Comics: Free and Open Repository of Novel Coronavirus Comics Resources. Caption Box, March 2020. Covid19comics.captionbox.net
• New York Times list of pandemic thrillers: https://twitter.com/secondshelfbks/status/1236751567812001792
• Twitter list of novels by women with disease-spreading plots: https://twitter.com/secondshelfbks/status/1236751567812001792
• NPR playlist of “soothing music”: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815457669/isle-of-calm-stream-6-hours-of-soothing-music
• National Library of Medicine’s Global Health Event Archive of COVID19: https://archive-it.org/collections/4887? fc=websiteGroup : Coronavirus%20disease%20(COVID-19)%20outbreak&fbclid=IwAR1BXqw9K2odSuJ04SX39tkWbAiWF6yjHKbsKAWNaRYcEwAswQ5iDLDTfkI
• Public Books, list of University Presses with free content available as of April 2020: http://www.publicbooks.org/public-books-database/
• Charles Louis Richter’s Twitter thread on response to 1900 outbreak of plague in Hawaii
• Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project, edited by Nina Brown, Angela Jenks, Katie Nelson, and Laura Tilghman; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-IRVbz1nsBQJHcaCVh8QLRBiwj3cFT_bXSwmTNs_Hf0/edit#heading=h.fbubynqned6z