Looking Beyond the Lamp Post: Health Inequality in the Times of COVID-19

Abstract

In times of a pandemic, the world lives in the throes of colossal economic and public health crises. The world seems unprepared and ill-equipped to cater to the catastrophic pandemic of COVID-19. The apocalyptic infectious diseases keep revisiting to expose the global widening economic and health inequalities. This review in its different sections argues that with the “financialization of everything,” a new consciousness comprising a more general heightened sense of awareness and interest in personal health and well-being pervades whereby citizens become customers. This effectively forefends the dynamics of interaction between the individual and her/his environment with its consequent impact on health and promotes an individuated risk and responsibility. Even in times of a pandemic, draconian state surveillance, lockdown, behavior modification, self-help, and self-care have emerged as guiding principles of public health. There is an urgent need for a radical reordering of the world order beyond the hegemonic, neoliberal, capitalistic ethos of rabid consumerism and unconstrained private profit.