Social and Health Sciences , Special issues: Impacts and Responses to COVID19
A REFLECTION ON THE PRESENT CONJUNCTURE
This inaugural Special Issue of Social and Health Sciences enters into, and thus must also speak to, a
world which increasingly demands transformative social change. Therefore, before we describe the
renewed scope of the journal and the contents of this Special Issue on COVID-19, it is worth offering
a brief reflection on our present conjuncture.
It is perhaps a banality at this stage to note that the pandemic is a political concern inasmuch as it is a
public health priority. The almost 1.5 million deaths from COVID-19 thus far – not to mention the
millions of infections – were not inevitable, and correlations have been drawn between the kinds of
government measures implemented and the variable rates of infection (see Watkins, 2020). Health
guidelines and government orders which responded to COVID-19 have ushered in secondary effects
which have profoundly changed people’s lives. Indeed, national and international economies are said
