Silver Bullets? Medical Sociologists Know They’re Hard To Come By

How do we get out of the pandemic? How do we build an equitable society wherein pandemics do not exacerbate poverty? How do we reconcile the connection between racism and poor health outcomes?

And how do we build a healthy society wherein a respiratory virus need not shut down the entire global economy?

In March a significant portion of the population thought the shutdowns induced by COVID-19 would be temporary. Yet we find ourselves now six months deep into a pandemic. Most people thought the summer months would bring the United States back to some sort of normalcy; yet here we are enduring a pandemic that is muddled through politics, economics, fear, pride, and rapid-fire changes in public health information.