The pandemic within systemic injustice: Intersectional cultural dimensions of women's aging, health, and case stories of COVID-19

This book chapter delves into the intersectional cultural dimensions of COVID-19 and explores how pandemics expose and amplify past and current health inequities and disparities for minoritized women. In this chapter, the authors question how gender reflects and intersects with health determinants of oppressed and privileged identities to produce disparate health outcomes, affecting discourse, ideologies, and women's activity as they age. Additionally, issues of racism, classism, ageism, and other "isms" are examined to understand the challenges faced by aging women as they strive to stay healthy. The chapter concludes with case story narratives of women diagnosed with COVID-19, showing the virus' effect on marginalized women aging within a stratified society. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

Spotlighting hidden inequities: Post-secondary education in a pandemic

In the spring of 2020, higher education changed abruptly in the face of the global health crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in an abrupt shift to remote instruction;a form of academic triage. Information on successful online learning and accessibility is ubiquitous;this crisis exposed what is largely missing: a discussion of the ways in which inequities affect our students. Using a combination of professional experience, large faculty discussion groups, and national surveys, we employ Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital, Goffman’s presentation of self and stigma, and relative deprivation to explore inequities of access to technology, environment, and time in the United States during the initial higher education response to the pandemic. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, J. Michael Ryan;individual chapters, the contributors.

Toxic wild west syndrome: Individual rights vs. Community needs

This chapter introduces the concept of Toxic Wild West Syndrome - the combination of performative rugged hyper-individualism, a weaponized display of strength, and nationalism framed as patriotism in the United States, using Goffman’s impression management and Durkheim’s anomie as a framework. Citizen responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have fallen into two general categories: prosocial/flexible and hyper-individualist/inflexible. Most people are prosocial: self-isolated, working “essential jobs, " or sheltering in place. However, a highly visible and audible minority falls into the hyper-individualist category: assembling in public to protest public health directives, which disrupt their cherished norms. Although the prosocial response is a larger group, the hyper-individualist response is louder and more visible. Many protesters arrive armed and wearing military gear more suited to war zones than peaceful protests. This chapter calls for extensive research into methods of penetrating and mitigating this inflexibility, to maximize the safety of the population during this and future crises. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, J. Michael Ryan;individual chapters, the contributors.

Seeking stability in unstable times: COVID-19 and the bureaucratic mindset

As a bureaucracy, higher education is ill-suited to make rapid changes such as those demanded by COVID-19. In this chapter, we draw on Weber, Lenski, Durkheim, Garfinkel, and Sanford to explain bureaucraticity, or the bureaucratic culture and mindset;how its norms of assembly, rules, rule-makers, rule-enforcers, and standards were disrupted by the onset of the international pandemic in March 2020;and how some types of bureaucratic norms and actors worsened, rather than improved, institutional response to the pandemic. We suggest avenues for further research into remedies for bureaucracies when confronted with unavoidable and sudden change, noting that novel problems demand nuanced solutions, and this creates a conflict for bureaucracies, where simple, rapid solutions are the default. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, J. Michael Ryan;individual chapters, the contributors.

Evidence of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in cats and dogs from households in Italy.

SARS-CoV-2 emerged from animals and is now easily transmitted between people. Sporadic detection of natural cases in animals alongside successful experimental infections of pets, such as cats, ferrets and dogs, raises questions about the susceptibility of animals under natural conditions of pet ownership. Here, we report a large-scale study to assess SARS-CoV-2 infection in 919 companion animals living in northern Italy, sampled at a time of frequent human infection. No animals tested PCR positive. However, 3.3% of dogs and 5.8% of cats had measurable SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody titers, with dogs from COVID-19 positive households being significantly more likely to test positive than those from COVID-19 negative households. Understanding risk factors associated with this and their potential to infect other species requires urgent investigation.