- Title
- "Active in the community" and "underlying health conditions": Exploring constructions of blame, responsibility and othering associated with Australia's Covid 19 syndemic
- Creator
- Senior, Kate; Chenhall, Richard
- Relation
- Covid Syndemics in the Global South: A World Divided p. 91-103
- Relation
- Routledge Studies in Health and Medical Anthropology
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003365358-6
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- COVID-19 in Australia, as elsewhere across the world, exposed gaps in health between high and low socio-economic groups. In the first wave, the disease was associated with high-density living, poorly ventilated working conditions, and people with multiple, poorly paid jobs. In the second wave, the disease spread to remote Aboriginal communities that experienced high levels of poverty, overcrowding, and chronic disease. Vaccination rates in Australia also followed the contours of socio-economic status, with the most affluent suburbs of the north shore of Sydney reaching a 90% vaccination rate by mid-October 2021, while the mining town of Cessnock near Newcastle had only reached 58%. While access to vaccines, tests, ability to isolate within the home, and paid sick leave are key structural determinants of COVID-19, public health and related media rhetoric remained one of individual responsibility and blame. The language of syndemics was reimagined in recent discourse to describe the elevated risks associated with COVID-19 associated with “underlying health conditions.” Clustering of diseases has political and social contexts and realities that are constituted and assembled in different ways across the globe and cannot always be measured by epidemiological modelers. In this chapter, the authors interrogate the explanations that have been the feature of endless media conferences and daily updates, to explore how COVID-19 continued to disproportionally affect the most marginalized and vulnerable people in our communities.
- Description
- 1st
- Subject
- COVID-19; socio-economic groups; public health; marginalized population groups; health and social care; social sciences
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1518446
- Identifier
- uon:57295
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781032430164
- Language
- eng
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