Received: 1 June 2021      Revised: 6 November 2021      Accepted: 16 November 2021
DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12949
ARTICLE
In sickness and in health: The politics of public
health and their implications during the COVID-19
pandemic
Suhad Daher-Nashif
Population Medicine Department, College of
Medicine, QU-Health, Qatar University, Doha,
Qatar
Correspondence
Suhad Daher-Nashif, Population Medicine
Department, College of Medicine, QU-Health,
Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar.
Email: snashif@qu.edu.qa
Sociology Compass. 2022;16:e12949.
https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12949
Abstract
Politics is a major player in health, sickness, and death affairs.
This article reviews the role of politics in public health and its
impact on health outcomes, mortality ratios, and death sce-
narios amongst the most vulnerable populations. Further-
more, the article explains the reasons behind the absence
of politics from health and public health discourses; and
examines the role of politics during the mis/management of
COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Foucault's biopower, Me-
bmbe's necropolitics, and Butler's precarity, the article illu-
minates how public health policies are highly political insofar
as they offer some individuals access to life but create possi-
bilities of death for others. During COVID-19, politics ena-
bled governors to put at risk the most vulnerable groups, the
precariat, namely refugees, asylum seekers, stateless, and
immigrants, the majority of whom were impoverished. The
article presents COVID-19 as an example of a crisis that un-
masks these politics, claiming that these politics are not new
but rather a continuum of previous invisible policies that
COVID-19 unmasked and intensified. The article describes
how the politics of health entail privileging individuals with
capital value who can benefit the state's interests and main-
tains its power.
KEYWORDS
biopower, COVID-19, necrocapitalism, politics of public health,
precarity, refugees, stateless
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1 of 13
2 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

1  |  INTRODUCTION: PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE QUESTION OF POLITICS

“Medicine is a social science and politics nothing but medicine on a grand scale”
-Rudolf Virchow, 1848 [cited from Navarro, 2008; P. 354]

In 1848, Rudolf Virchow, a pathologist who developed the field of cellular biology, was asked by the establishment
of Upper Silesia to investigate the typhus epidemic, and he commented on the association between typhus and the
existing social conditions (Taylor & Rieger, 1985). Dr. Virchow claimed that the root of the public health problem was
the distribution of political and economic power in the region, and proposed that the solution must include political
reforms to address social inequity, powerlessness, unemployment, poverty, and the lack of education, which had led to
increased cases of the epidemic (Levinson, 2005; Navarro, 2008). Furthermore, Dr. Virchow asserted that the solution
to the public health problem required a set of measures including land and housing reforms, water regulation, and
other public interventions—all of which would have reduced the power of the property owners who held the land, the
water, the real estate and other commodities (Navarro, 2008). These owners were outraged by Virchow's statements
and proposals, shouting, “This document is not a medical document. It is a political document,” to which he responded
with his famous statement “Medicine is a social science and politics nothing but medicine on a grand scale.” He was ex-
pelled from his country by the same political power that had sent people to death (Navarro, 2008; P. 354). The silence
regarding the politics of public health policies continued until several voices from social scientists in public health rose
to prominence in the late 1990s–one and a half centuries after Virchow's statement–to shed light on social inequali-
ties and their health implications. These voices urged to acknowledge that public health practices are not carried out
in a social vacuum and are subject to the same pressures from powerful interests reflecting the political economy as
other government and state-sponsored programs (Levinson, 2005). Although a growing body of literature highlights
the social and cultural determinants of and social inequalities in health, very few studies focus on the political deter-
minants of health, on the effect of policies on health inequalities (Borrell et al., 2007; Gkiouleka et al., 2018), or on
the way politics shape public health policies and death ratios. Public health has continued to concentrate on changing
individual behaviors rather than targeting the conditions leading to these behaviors and the politics that created and
preserved these conditions. While the importance of public policy as a determinant of health is acknowledged, there
is a lack of mainstream debate on the ways that politics and governance power influence people's health (Bambra
et al., 2005), and their death as well.
Although much has changed in public health practices and perceptions over the last 2 decades, these changes do
not involve the politics of public health or death, and they mainly reflect progress in the science of improving health,
and the emergence of public-private partnerships (Curry, 2005; Gkiouleka et al., 2018).

2  |  THE ABSENCE OF POLITICS FROM PUBLIC HEALTH

The absence of the politics of public health is evident in most definitions and framings of health and public health.
For instance, the American Public Health Association states that public health “promotes and protects the health
of people and the communities where they live, learn, work and play. While a doctor treats people who are sick,
those of us working in public health try to prevent people from getting sick or injured in the first place. We also
promote wellness by encouraging healthy behaviors.” (American Public Health Association (APHA),  2021) This
definition highlights individual responsibility rather than the politics that leads an individual to have a particular
health status.
In contrast, one working group in the World Federation of Public Health Association (World Federation of Pub-
lic Health (WFPHA),  2021), called the Indigenous Group, “assists in reducing the health disparity and inequities
DAHER-NASHIF 3 of 13

­experienced by Indigenous people globally through collective advocacy.” In addition, one of the WFPHA agendas
during COVID-19 has been promoting “Equitable access to COVID-19 immunization” as a response to the “concerns
about the tendency of rich countries to secure early access to the COVID-19 vaccine for their population to the detri-
ment of at-risk populations in low income settings.” These statements reflect how the global economy furthers health
inequalities and how capitalism plays a role in access to health in general and vaccines in particular.
Although this is not stated clearly, the WFPHA statements reflect public health professionals' awareness of the
role of the political economy in shaping populations' health and death. It is important to note that while the vast ma-
jority of public health definitions, framings, statements, and agendas address those who fall within the category of
citizens, they do not address those who lack residency, that is, the stateless, refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers.
This exclusion is political par excellence and is reflected in these groups' health status and death ratios. COVID-19
death statistics and access to vaccine prevalence, reflects clearly these politics.
Citizens are subject to the state's governance, laws, policies, and public health strategies to maintain a healthy and
safe community, which in turn maintains a strong and powerful state. Those who lack citizenship or who are displaced
or stateless are not affiliated with these laws but are subject to the hosting state's emergency decisions, whereby
their lives and deaths are in a “state of exception”. The connection between the state of exception and sovereignty
was established by Carl Schmitt in 1922 where he defines the sovereign as the one who decides on the state of excep-
tion, which means the sovereign's ability to transcend the rule of law in the name of the public interest (Schmitt, 1985
[1922]). Agamben (2005) argues that although the state of exception was meant to be a provisional measure, it be-
came a normal paradigm of government in the twentieth century. In his Necropolitics, Mbembe (2003) explains how
individuals in a state of exception are subjugated to the biopower and necropower apparatuses of the sovereign, who
determines who deserves to live and who can be sent to death.
Several reasons exist behind the absence of a political analysis of public health policies and practices. One rea-
son is the disconnection between politics and health, as each is defined and managed by different disciplines and
powers. Explaining the lack of politics in public health, Levinson (2005) notes that “Not only in the delivery of ser-
vices does public health acquiesce to powerful established private interests, but it defines problems so as not to
threaten established institutional arrangements” (p. 66). Levinson claims that over time, public health narrowed its
focus in more politically acceptable directions, emphasizing personal hygiene, prevention, and medical examina-
tions with subsequent treatment. Furthermore, epidemiology–the “mother science” of public health–rarely consid-
ers broader social and political questions and mainly focuses on the immediate causes of illnesses and risk factors.
Navarro (2008) adds that public health is dominated by professionals trained in medicine, biology, epidemiology,
and statistics who perceive politics as a risky ground. He also asserts, international bodies, such as the WHO, are
under pressure to reach a consensus that will satisfy the maximum number of governments and/or not antagonize
the most powerful one (Navarro, 2008). Navarro also points out that funding agencies receive their money from
public sources that are accountable to political forces. These agencies do not welcome or fund any study that may
please some political powers but displease others that can affect funding of research institutions. An example is the
absence of the political determinants of health in the latest report of the WHO's Commission on Social Determi-
nants of Health.
A country's type of governance can constitute another reason for the exclusion of politics from public health dis-
cussions (Harrison & Pardo, 2020; Navarro et al., 2006; Navarro, 2008). Researchers have found that in democratic
societies, governing institutions respond more favorably to reports addressing the political determinants of health.
This can explain the scarcity of such reports in dictatorship regimes. Nevertheless, in social democratic regimes health
systems are based on socialized medicine, where politics is viewed less as a determinant of health outcomes. This
perception can explain the small number of reports on the political determinants of health even in these contexts. The
latest Economist's Democracy Institute (2020) shows that only 49.4% of the world's population live in a democracy
of some sort, and only 8.4% reside in a “full democracy.” Means, half of the world eliminate, avoid, and prevent any
opinion/report on politics of health.
4 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

3  |  HOW AND WHEN ARE HEALTH AND PUBLIC HEALTH POLITICAL?

Davies (2010) claimed that all deaths and suffering result (whether directly or indirectly) from local and international
political decisions and stated that good health is vital for good politics and vice versa. Several social scientists have
discussed the reasons and the ways in which health and public health are political. For example, Bambra et al. (2005)
argued that health is political because, like any other resource or commodity under a neo-liberal economic system,
some social groups have more of it than others. He added that health is political because its social determinants are
tied to political interventions and are therefore dependent on political action and inaction–that is, inaction is inher-
ently political. Bambra also suggested that health is political because a standard of living adequate for health and
well-being, as declared by the United Nations in 1948, is an aspect of citizenship and a human right. Back in the 1960s,
Marshall (1963) claimed that health is political because the political, health, and social rights of citizens were only
gained through extensive political and social struggles during Western industrialization and the development of cap-
italism. Health becomes political only when it threatens the state's power, economy, and social order. Kersh and Mo-
rone  (2005) offered an example of how obesity and tobacco use evolved from a private matter to a political issue
when they became threats to the economy and the power of the state. Oliver (2006) argues that “states and the fed-
eral government share a common agenda, influenced by market dynamics in the health care system and by changing
perceptions of social problems, population groups, and industries” (p. 207). He noted that almost every major health
policy issue, including HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, health insurance coverage, mental health parity, bioterrorism and
more, has been the subject of debate and policy proposals throughout the political system. In addition, Oliver (2006)
pointed out that governmental priorities are influenced by the public perceptions of the population affected by a given
health problem, and public health problems are stratified by income, age, race, gender, geographic location, or other
markers, meaning the problems of different groups may not be treated equally. The perceptions of the affected groups
influence the likelihood and nature of governmental action.
Early in the 1990s, few social scientists described how public health officials determined when and how some
groups deserved policies and others did not. For example, Schneider and Ingram (1993) explained that public of-
ficials find it to their advantage to provide beneficial policies to advantaged groups who are both powerful and
positively constructed as “deserving”; not only will the advantaged group respond favorably to these officers, but
others will also approve of the beneficial policy being conferred on deserving people. They argue that similarly, pub-
lic officials commonly inflict punishment on negatively constructed groups with little or no power who are treated
as not deserving. This claim is still relevant for today's public health policies, especially in times of crisis, like in the
COVID-19 outbreak.

4  |  POLITICS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Although sociologists of public health have highlighted the social determinants, societal reactions, social etiology,
and social construction of disease, they have not made the same efforts in linking public health policies to politics
(Castañeda et al., 2015; Dingwall et al., 2013; Guma et al., 2019; Levinson, 2005).
The sociology “of” public health is important in defining the field, uncovering the relationship between its func-
tions and the political economy and sociopolitical definition of public health problems (Levinson, 2005). Giving the
example of malnutrition, Levinson (2005) argues that it is understood as a problem to be treated by food supplements
or a Green Revolution, rather than by changing land ownership patterns and agribusiness production. The sociology
of public health can help to explain the narrow focus of public health practitioners and their tendency to limit health
consequences to social and cultural aspects rather than considering the political and economic logic of policies.
Gkiouleka et al. (2018) suggested using the intersectionality framework for a better sociological understanding of
health inequalities beyond the purely socioeconomic by addressing the multiple layers of privilege and disadvantage,
DAHER-NASHIF 5 of 13

including race, migration and ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Indeed, the liberal discourse of diversity obscures immi-
grants and minorities' political struggles (Bilge, 2013; Gkiouleka et al., 2018).
Intersectionality can help in understanding the interactions between the macro and the micro facets of the pol-
itics of health, especially when the role of institutions in the politics of health is still neglected and rarely examined
(Bambra, 2016; Beckfield et  al., 2015; Gkiouleka et  al., 2018). Dingwall et  al.  (2013) highlighted the role sociology
plays in pandemics, which some would claim are the exclusive terrain of microbiologists, virologists, and practitioners
in public health. They asserted that infectious disease outbreaks are sources of instability, uncertainty, and even crises
that can render ordinarily visible features of the social order opaque to investigation. According to Dingwall et al., pan-
demics represent turning points for the development of the sociology of public health because they can illuminate the
interplay between public health and national security, the dynamics of health governance, and the gendered division
of caring labor in what the researchers call an anthropologically strange world.

5  |  PUBLIC HEALTH, BIOPOLITICS, AND NECROPOLITICS DURING PANDEMICS

The lives and deaths of vulnerable groups during infectious disease outbreaks like in COVID-19, result from political
and structural violence, health and social policies, cultural interpretations, or moral decisions (Larocque & Foth, 2020).
Social policy and public health are among the factors Fassin (2009) considered relevant in biopolitics. He argued that
biopolitics is about demography, epidemiology, and psychology on the one side, and family planning, public health, and
the policing of the self on the other side. Fassin also noted that although biopolitics defined by Foucault et al. (1978)
as regulation of populations through techniques of knowledge and intervention (p. 183) – does relate to inequalities,
it is obviously related to interventions and policies, knowledge and information. Fassin (2009) explained that “to make
live” – which is how biopower is usually understood–is also “to reject into death,” either practically as a consequence
of policymakers' neglect towards certain population groups or intellectually as a result of not measuring the effects of
these policies. He also asserted that racist discrimination within social and legal systems profoundly influences every
aspect of life, including biological life. Hence, politics is not only about the rules of the game of governing but also
about its stakes and its power to de/legitimizing lives (Fassin, 2009).
COVID-19 unmasked the politics of public health policies through the death ratios of vulnerable populations. The
patterns of death during the coronavirus pandemic reveal the biopolitical governmentality of death and the power
apparatuses, or dispositifs1 in Foucault's words, used by governments to let vulnerable people die. By governmentality,
I refer to Foucault's link between the governor and the biopolitical control of populations, which he states in his defi-
nition of biopower and biopolitics as

[A] power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavours to administer, optimize, and multiply
it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations (Foucault et al., 1978, p. 137)

In the context of COVID-19, this definition is clearly embedded in governments' attempts to protect lives, control
the spread of the coronavirus, and mitigate its impact on the global economic and social order. However, governments
have also exerted their biopower in ways that negatively impact vulnerable persons' lives, endeavoring to administer
their death, minimize their lives, and let them die. On the one hand, governments have imposed behaviors, such as
physical and social distancing, the use of personal protection equipment (PPE), and enforced self-isolation, but on the
other hand, they have ignored or even hindered attempts to implement these rules among vulnerable populations who
have no access to water or PPE. Whether individuals have been forced to adapt their behaviors or ignored has hinged
on underlying governments' perceptions about who deserves life and who deserves death. Foucault's seminal lectures
on biopolitics revealed how the state's claim to authority is based on the power to make live and let die (Smith, 2020).
Similarly, Mbembe (2003) named the dichotomy central to the governing of living and dying as that of “making live/
letting die” and asserted that the “ultimate expression of sovereignty resides in the power and capacity to dictate who
6 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

may live and who must die” (p.11). Furthermore, he argued that “to exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over
mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power” (Mbembe, 2003, p. 12). This statement has
been used in sociological work on asylum seekers, refugees, and stateless and illegalized migrants to explore the con-
sensus among politicians and governments that some human lives are worthless and that it is permissible to let them
die (Daher-Nashif, 2021b; Davies et al., 2017; Mayblin et al., 2020; Round & Kuznetsova, 2016). Pandemics intensify
worthlessness because the risks faced by these populations are often overlooked; so too is their agency to respond
to these crises (McGee, 2020). Drawing on Foucault's and Mbembe's concepts of bio- and necropowers, Judith Butler
suggested the concept of precarity, defining it as a “politically induced condition in which certain populations suf-
fer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and
death” (Butler,2009a, P. 25). Butler(2009a, 2009b also noted that precariousness/vulnerability is an existential con-
dition common to all life because everyone is vulnerable in some way; everyone needs shelter and food and depends
on wider networks of sociality and labor. More specifically, precarity is the political/social/spatial predicament of those
(termed the precariat) who are exposed to disease, poverty, starvation, displacement, and violence without protection
(2009b). Joronen and Rose (2020) argued that whether it adopts a post-structuralist, Marxist, postcolonial, affective,
queer, feminist, or non-representational approach, work on precarity consistently emphasizes how it is used and in-
duced as a political, social, spatial, and/or governmental force–a means to control, resist, marginalize, and exclude.
Joronen and Rose  (2020) argue that precariousness should be approached first and foremost as a political, social,
racial, spatial, and/or gender problem, rather than a defining existential condition of all living beings.
COVID-19 mortality statistics reveal that many deaths among vulnerable populations, such as refugees, im-
migrants, stateless, and ethnic minorities, could have been prevented if governments had seen their lives as worth
saving. This section presents specific examples of COVID-19 mortality ratios and clarifies how necropolitical and
necrocapital governmentality during COVID-19 saved some lives and “reject[ed] into death” others (Fassin, 2009,
p. 52). A combination of socio-political factors such as age, race, class, gender, and citizenship structured the ine-
quality that led to increased death rates among these vulnerable groups. Hence, intersectionality is an important
framework for understanding COVID-19 mortality and some governments' practices of “letting die.” As suggested
by Gkiouleka et al. (2018), the framework of intersectionality facilitates a better sociological understanding of health
inequalities beyond the purely socioeconomic. Intersectionality highlights how power and inequality are structured
differently for groups, particularly oppressed groups, based on their varied interlocking socio-political identities
(Bowleg, 2020). This concept has been employed in many feminist works addressing how women are simultaneously
positioned as women and, for example, as Black, working-class, lesbian, or colonial subjects (Brah & Phoenix, 2004;
Daher-Nashif, 2021a). Several social and public health studies have adopted intersectionality as a framework to ana-
lyze disparities during the first and second waves of COVID-19, but other researchers have criticized the flattened
framing of intersectionality as simply defined by multiple identities, calling for its historic focus on power and inter-
locking structural inequality to be brought to the fore (Lokot & Avakyan, 2020). They also argue that this flattened
use of intersectionality has led to depoliticization and stripped the concept of its attention to power, social justice,
and praxis (Bowleg, 2021). The main argument here is that the governments' managing or mismanaging of the pan-
demic reflects the politics driving health and public health policies. A few governments, such as Brazil's, chose not to
manage the pandemic in its beginnings, which led to extremely high death rates among the most vulnerable groups.
Graves had to be dug using excavators to respond to the scale of the need, corpses were placed in rows in hospital
corridors, and elderly patients were sent to die at home (Ortega & Orsini, 2020). Furthermore, the “soft” reaction of
some governments shifted the responsibility for life and death to the individual (Giritli-Nygren & Olofsson, 2020),
which largely reflects the attitudes in public health discourses as mentioned above. The Swedish government, for
example, responded to the first wave of the pandemic with recommendations rather than prohibitions, creating a
situation in which the individuals were the decision-makers, to be blamed and viewed as responsible if they failed to
manage their health or act according to the social and/or governmental expectations. This takes us back to the public
health approach that sees individual behaviors as the key factor to better health, ignoring politics and policies and
socioeconomic determinants of health. The “soft” administration of Sweden and other governments, releases the
DAHER-NASHIF 7 of 13

state from its responsibility for saving the lives of its vulnerable inhabitants, that is, those who are most in need of
state protection in emergencies and crises like pandemics. Other governments imposed extremely strict restrictions
as a protective tool but did not consider the implications of lockdowns on vulnerable groups, who were precarious
before the pandemic. The next section focuses on governments' political policies and their impact on the precariat,
that is, the most vulnerable populations, those who are unable to control their exposure to vulnerability and death
(Butler, 2009a) due to their political status.

6  |  THE POLITICS OF HEALTH AND THE DEATH OF THE PRECARIAT

Refugees, immigrants, and stateless individuals are the precariat of COVID-19 pandemic as they are exposed to the
severely “heightened risk of disease, poverty, starvation, displacement, and of exposure to violence without protec-
tion” (Butler, 2009b: P. 2), simply because the laws of the hosting state are not relevant to them, and the majority of
them have no capital value to empower the state. The COVID-19 outbreak mis/management is an example of how pol-
itics–practiced by biopolitical and necropolitical apparatuses–have played a major role in depriving vulnerable groups
of their health and leading them to their deaths because of existing and emerging policies that are inherently political.
Refugees, immigrants, and stateless individuals, who face legal, political, economic, and social hardships, had the
highest death rates during COVID-19 in its different stages. Policies before COVID-19 had implications for their ac-
cess to health during COVID-19. Citizenship status can further compound the risk of death as a result of governments'
decades-long policies, and COVID-19 has revealed the magnitude of the problem:

Denied nationality and deprived basic rights and welfare, the stateless were already marginalised
before the crisis. They now face even greater, life-threatening marginalisation, with potentially disas-
trous consequences (Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, 2020).

This joint statement by 84 civil society organizations, released on 27 May 2020, was a response to the fatalities
witnessed globally amongst stateless persons.
Even without a pandemic, due to governments' policies of ignorance and, in underdeveloped countries, lack of re-
sources, refugees, immigrants, and stateless persons face systematic inequalities that present significant risks to their
health. They are denied access to healthcare systems; often live in poverty, under crowded conditions, or in polluted
spaces inside and near slums2; and lack access to clean water, PPE such as soap, and good nutrition (Alemi et al., 2020;
Lokot & Avakyan, 2020). Gkiouleka et al. (2018) noted that beyond race, immigrant status should be integrated into
intersectional health inequalities research (Castañeda et al., 2015). They argued that immigration is often the out-
come of particularly health-damaging conditions (e.g. poverty or prosecution) while the actual movement itself may
cause physical and psychological trauma. As a status, immigration has particular implications for individuals' access to
a range of civil, political, and human rights in the receiving societies and is associated with experiences of discrimina-
tion and everyday micro-aggressions, especially within the current climate of rising xenophobia.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed these difficulties–and worsened them. For example, Cox's Bazar in Bang-
ladesh, which hosts more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees, predicted that the outbreak would exhaust medical
resources and overwhelm the camp hospitals within 58 days, which was expected to lead to a rise in deaths from
other infectious diseases, such as malaria (Subbaraman,  2020). Malaria and tuberculosis are highly prevalent in
refugee populations, as are non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes (Dookeran et  al.,  2010; Eiset &
Wejse, 2017), which are known to increase susceptibility to severe COVID-19 and death. The WHO reports that
people who have both COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, may have poorer treatment
outcomes, especially if tuberculosis treatment is interrupted (World Health Organization,  2020). This alarming
situation is compounded by language barriers, movement restrictions, treatment avoidance due to fear of depor-
tation, and limited access to information, testing, and treatment. For example, at the end of February 2021, more
8 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

than 1000 Rohingya people were deported from Malaysia to Myanmar (Burki,  2021). In the Middle East region,
where wars and displacement have been omnipresent for more than a century, refugees and stateless populations
faced one of the most difficult periods in their painful history. For example, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported
that “The Lebanese government's Covid-19 vaccination program risks leaving behind marginalized communities,
including refugees and migrant workers […] United Nations data shows that Syrian and Palestinian refugees have
died from Covid-19 at a rate more than four and three times the national average, respectively” (Human Rights
Watch, 2021). Similarly, Kassem (2020), reporting on Syrian refugees, claimed that refugees do not report infec-
tions due to a lack of knowledge about the infection and its symptoms, a lack of access to tests, and a fear of stigma-
tization, which can lead to increased restrictions and crackdowns.
Another example is in the announcement made by the president of the Dominican Republic, that undocumented
individuals would be excluded from the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, resulting in concerns for the 210,000 resi-
dents of Haitian origin who had their nationality rescinded in 2013 (Burki, 2021, p. 1530).
Today, of the 68.5 million forcefully displaced people globally, 40 million are internally displaced and 25 million
are refugees (Ebrahim et al., 2021). Meanwhile, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.2
million people across 76 countries are known to be stateless (Burki, 2021). In March 2020, the high mortality rates of
COVID-19 among these vulnerable populations led the UN to issue a call to protect them:

The situation for refugees and migrants held in formal and informal places of detention, in cramped
and unsanitary conditions, is particularly worrying. Considering the lethal consequences a COV-
ID-19 outbreak would have, they should be released without delay. Migrant children and their fami-
lies and those detained without a sufficient legal basis should be immediately released (World Health
Organization, 2020).

Since this call, only Portugal has responded positively and granted temporary citizenship rights to migrants (Mc-
Gee, 2020). Most countries are still denying refugees and stateless people access to health, i.e., to life. Human Rights
Watch called upon the Malaysian federal and state governments to “ensure that COVID-19 related health care servic-
es are available without discrimination to all migrants, stateless people, and refugees” (Human Rights Watch, 2020).
Many of the countries in which refugees live are themselves facing economic challenges, with governments un-
able to achieve adequate support for their citizens (Ebrahim et al., 2021). Saving the lives of refugees is often not a
priority under these circumstances; their lives are thus treated as though they do not matter. Burki (2021) reported
that the social security schemes and aid packages that European governments unveiled in these challenged countries
in the wake of the pandemic have generally been restricted to citizens. Nina Murray, head of policy and research at
the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), stated that “Stateless populations are deprived of a lot of welfare sup-
port that others are entitled to” (Burki, 2021, p. 1529). The ENS report revealed instances in which stateless persons
with severe COVID-19 infections died because they could not obtain medical care in the UK. When this legal status
is compounded by factors such as poverty, race, and gender, death becomes a matter of time, and the probability of
death increases.
Refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and stateless populations are among the poorest individuals worldwide.
Poverty and socioeconomic status are key factors in access to health, even in countries with the most welfare and so-
cialized medicine, because these populations lack the legal status to access the state's services. In his opening remarks
at the 148th session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board (World Health Organisation, 2021b),
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated:

More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income coun-
tries. Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest-income country. Not 25 million; not 25 thousand;
just 25. I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price
DAHER-NASHIF 9 of 13

of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world's poorest countries. (World Health
Organization, 2021a)

Poverty is a major barrier to vaccine access, and vaccines are the greatest life-saving resource of the COVID-19
pandemic. As Dyer (2020) explained, “At least 90% of people in 67 low income countries stand little chance of getting
vaccinated against Covid-19 in 2021 because wealthy nations have reserved more than they need and developers
will not share their intellectual property” (p. 1). Studies have reported that approximately 9 out of 10 persons living
in lower-income countries will not have access to a COVID-19 vaccine until 2023 (Su et al., 2021). In higher-income
countries, vaccine hesitancy and racial and ethnic disparities may further compound the situation.
Researchers have also reported higher mortality rates among low-socioeconomic-status populations. For exam-
ple, Ji et al. (2020) argued that the different mortality rates between various regions in China can be attributed to the
substantial regional disparities in health care availability and accessibility. Such disparities might partly explain the
low mortality rates–despite high numbers of cases–in the most developed southeastern coastal provinces, such as
Zhejiang and Guangdong.
While one of the key protective practices recommended by the WHO is the regular washing of hands with soap
for 20 s, millions of people lack access to clean water or soap. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, urban-rural dispar-
ities reach 41.8% points in Rwanda, where rural residents represent 82.8% of the total population and only a quarter
of them have access to handwashing with water and soap (Jiwani & Antiporta,  2020). Ekumah et  al.  (2020) found
that approximately 46% of households in sub-Saharan countries (except South Africa) did not have in-house access to
water, sanitation facilities, and/or appropriate food storage, with only 8% having access to all three. The sub-Saharan
context is just one example of this kind of systematic deprivation among many worldwide.
Meanwhile, the realities of structural racism have determined the socioeconomic and environmental contexts of
many minorities' lives in wealthier countries over the long term (Brandt et al., 2020). Brandt et al. (2020) highlighted
the example of The Bronx, New York, which has had twice the COVID-19 cases and fatalities of nearby Manhattan;
30% of Bronx residents live below the poverty line, most of them Black and Latino (Brandt et al., 2020, p. 61), illus-
trating the intersection between race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and health. Poverty is the common factor that
vulnerable groups share, making it a shared facilitator in death and the shared barrier to life.

7 | DISCUSSION

“We're Not All in This Together.”

Bowleg (2020) opened her paper with this statement to clarify how “deadly viruses spotlight fissures of structural
inequality” (p. 917). Disparities during COVID-19 are the result of structural inequities that vulnerable populations
face due to racism, poverty, age, gender, or citizenship and legal status. The scenes of death throughout COVID-19
highlight that those whose lives were perceived as worthless by the state before the pandemic continued to be per-
ceived this way during the pandemic and will continue to be after the pandemic is over. Governments tend to save
the lives of those who will benefit the state economically and militarily if their lives are preserved. Strong bodies and
strong economies are key factors for a strong state. This reflects the capitalistic governmentality of states in admin-
istering public health in general and during crises in particular. COVID-19 has exposed the global social and racial
inequalities that stem from the racist foundations of settler-colonial capitalist societies and decades of the systematic
defunding of social, health, and welfare services fueled by a neoliberal rationale (Democracy Now, 2020; Larocque &
Foth, 2020; Urie, 2020). It has also unmasked the hierarchy of lives; some are/were able to safeguard their relatively
comfortable quality of life on the backs of those who could be sacrificed (Butler & Yancy, 2020). In other words, public
health policies are structured through the biopolitical and necropolitical governmentality that saved some lives but
10 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

sacrificed others, based on perceptions of who deserves life and who deserves death–who should be allowed to live
because they benefit the state economically, and who should be allowed to die because they cost the state. Economic
calculations were an important precondition for insurance schemes and planning in the context of public health be-
cause they could be used to determine how many, and whose, lives could be saved through particular public health
interventions (Larocque & Foth, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic brilliantly clarified how capitalist-biopolitical gov-
ernmentality functions. Ayala-Colqui (2020) argued that capitalistic governmentality does not develop without the
incorporation of the colonial concept of race, which empowers the eurocentrism of global capitalism. This incorpora-
tion can be accomplished through a connection between the governance of capital and the colonialized governance
of race. Ayala-Colqui also claimed that capitalistic governmentality is tied to gender governance, as it is founded upon
the precariousness and invisibility of women's work.
Colombo (2021) explains how during the COVID-19 pandemic, two key governmentalities monopolized the pub-
lic and political debate: the visible biomedical and the hidden capitalistic. The former called for the saving of biological
lives (zoé) to be the primary measure of governments' actions and was deployed to legitimize both governments and
their decisions. The latter was based on the cost-benefit calculation that was used to justify protecting or abandoning
populations. This capitalistic governmentality can be framed as necrocapitalism and contributes to the further subju-
gation of lives that are considered worthless.
The COVID-19 death profiles and ratios reveal how the biopolitical and necropolitical governance of the pandem-
ic devalued some lives by increasing their precarity and their exposure to sickness, violence, and death. The intersect-
ing societal, economic, and political factors shaping vulnerable populations' experiences were the facilitators of their
deaths–their political determinants of health and death.
In addition to unmasking–and perpetuating–existing inequalities, the response to COVID- 19 was, to some ex-
tent, a continuation of existing policies that created new inequalities (Larocque & Foth, 2020). Oliver (2006) argued
that in times of crisis, political leaders tend to “adopt incremental policy changes rather than comprehensive reforms
even when faced with serious public health problems” (p. 195). Furthermore, although science can identify solutions
to pressing public health problems, only politics can turn most of those solutions into reality (Ibid.).
From a sociological perspective, public health functions as an institution to control and maintain the political-eco-
nomic system by ameliorating some of its damage to vulnerable populations' health.
Renzaho (2020) called for an urgent response to strengthen cross-border social and political protection systems
embedded within human rights approaches, thus better supporting vulnerable populations and enacting health and
social security benefits. The deaths among precarious and vulnerable populations during COVID-19 reflect the glob-
al necropolitical governance of crisis rather than simply the local governance of each state. Although human rights
organizations addressed the harmful circumstances and deaths of vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pan-
demic, this acknowledgment of their suffering during a crisis reflects a perception of them as biological entities, ignor-
ing the social, political, and gendered suffering they faced before the pandemic. The suffering of these populations be-
fore COVID-19 – due to the political determinants of their health–is the crisis, while the pandemic merely unmasked
the size and depth of the existing hidden politics of public health policies. Oliver (2006) suggested that public health
professionals who understand the political dimensions of health policy can conduct more realistic research and evalu-
ation, better anticipate opportunities as well as constraints on governmental action, and design more effective policies
and programs. Meanwhile, social scientists can help public health professionals in analyzing existing public health pol-
icies, including their short and long-term impacts. Through these measures, the collaboration between social sciences
and public health can lead to improved quality, reduced precarity, and perhaps fewer politics and an increase in so-
cialized health systems. Governments and international human rights organizations should realize that in infectious
disease outbreaks, no one is safe until everyone is safe.

C ONFL ICT OF INTER E ST

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
DAHER-NASHIF 11 of 13

ORCID
Suhad Daher-Nashif https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8767-4619

ENDNOTES
1
This term was also used by several researchers to analyze the strict precautions imposed by governments to control the
virus by disciplining and controlling populations and maintaining social and political order (Ayala-Colqui, 2020).
2
Exposure to pollution, even that resulting from cooking inside a tent or slum, cigarette smoke, and traditional heating meth-
ods, can impair the upper airways (i.e. cilia). A person living in an area with high levels of pollutants is thus more prone to
develop chronic respiratory conditions and is more susceptible to any infectious agent (Conticini et al., 2020).

REF ERENCE S
Agamben, G. (2005). The State of exception. Duke University Press. 284–298.
Alemi, Q., Stempel, C., Siddiq, H., & Kim, E. (2020). Refugees and COVID-19: Achieving a comprehensive public health re-
sponse. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 98(8), 510–510A. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.20.271080
American Public Health Association (APHA). (2021). What is Public Health. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://www.apha.org/
What-is-Public-Health
Ayala-Colqui, J. (2020). Viropolitics and capitalistic governmentality: On the management of the early 21st century pandemic.
Desde el Sur, 12, 377–395.
Bambra, C. (2016). Health divides: Where you live can kill you. Policy Press.
Bambra, C., Fox, D., & Scott-Samuel, A. (2005). Towards a politics of health. Health Promotion International, 20(2), 187–193.
Beckfield, J., Bambra, C., Eikemo, T. A., Huijts, T., McNamara, C., & Wendt, C. (2015). An institutional theory of welfare state
effects on the distribution of population health. Social Theory & Health, 13(3), 227–244.
Bilge, S. (2013). Intersectionality undone: Saving intersectionality from feminist intersectionality studies. Du Bois Review: So-
cial Science Research on Race, 10(2), 405–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X13000283
Borrell, C., Espelt, A., Rodríguez-Sanz, M., & Navarro, V. (2007). Politics and Health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community
Health, 61(8), 658–659. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2006.059063
Bowleg, L. (2020). We’re not all in this together: On COVID-19, intersectionality, and structural inequality. American Journal of
Public Health, 110, 917. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305766
Bowleg, L. (2021). Evolving intersectionality within public health: From analysis to action. American Journal of Public Health,
111, 88–90.
Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women Studies, 5, 75–86.
Brandt, E. B., Beck, A. F., & Mersha, T. B. (2020). Air pollution, racial disparities, and COVID-19 mortality. Journal of Allergy and
Clinical Immunology, 146, 61–63.
Burki, T. (2021). Statelessness in the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet, 397(10284), 1529–1530. https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0140-6736(21)00901-610.1016/S0140-6736(21)00901-6
Butler, J. (2009a). Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?. Verso.
Butler, J. (2009b). Performativity, precarity and sexual politics. AIBR: Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 4(3).
Butler, J., & Yancy, G. (2020). Interview: Mourning is a political act amid the pandemic and its disparities (republication). Journal
of bioethical inquiry, 17(4), 483–487. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-020-10043-6
Castañeda, H., Holmes, S. M., Madrigal, D. S., Young, M. E. D., Beyeler, N., & Quesada, J. (2015). Immigration as a social determi-
nant of health. Annual Review of Public Health, 36, 375–392.
Colombo, E. (2021). Human rights-inspired governmentality: COVID-19 through a human dignity perspective. Critical Sociol-
ogy, 47(4–5), 571–581.
Conticini, E., Frediani, B., & Caro, D. (2020). Can atmospheric pollution be considered a cofactor in extremely high level of SARS-
CoV-2 lethality in Northern Italy? Environmental Pollution, 261, 114465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114465
Curry, L. (2005). The future of the public's health in the 21st century. Generations, 29(2), 82.
Daher-Nashif, S. (2021a). Intersectionality and femicide: Palestinian women’s experiences with the murders of their beloved female
relatives. Violence against Women. 10778012211014561.
Daher-Nashif, S. (2021b). Colonial management of death: To be or not to be dead in Palestine. Current Sociology, 69(7), 945–962.
Davies, S. (2010). Global politics of health. Polity.
Davies, T., Isakjee, A., & Dhesi, S. (2017). Violent inaction: The necropolitical experience of refugees in Europe. Antipode, 49(5),
1263–1284. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12325
Democracy Now. (2020). Noam Chomsky: Decades of the “Neoliberal Plague” left. U.S. Unprepared for COVID-19 Outbreak. [Video
file]. Retrieved from.https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/30/noam_chomsky_coronavirus_trump_response
Dingwall, R., Hoffman, L. M., & Staniland, K. (2013). Introduction: Why a sociology of pandemics? Sociology of Health & Illness,
35(2), 167–173.
12 of 13 DAHER-NASHIF

Dookeran, N. M., Battaglia, T., Cochran, J., & Geltman, P. L. (2010). Peer reviewed: Chronic disease and its risk factors among
refugees and asylees in Massachusetts, 2001–2005. Preventing Chronic Disease, 7(3).
Dyer, O. (2020). Covid-19: Many poor countries will see almost no vaccine next year, aid groups warn. BMJ British Medical
Journal, 371, m4809. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4809
Ebrahim, S. H., Gozzer, E., Ahmed, Y., Imtiaz, R., Ditekemena, J., Rahman, N. M., Memish, Z. A., Alqahtani, S. A., & Memish, Z. A.
(2021). COVID-19 in the least developed, fragile, and conflict-affected countries—how can the most vulnerable be pro-
tected? International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 102, 381–388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.10.055
Eiset, A. H., & Wejse, C. (2017). Review of infectious diseases in refugees and asylum seekers—current status and going for-
ward. Public Health Reviews, 38(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-017-0065-4
Ekumah, B., Armah, F. A., Yawson, D. O., Quansah, R., Nyieku, F. E., Owusu, S. A., Odoi, J. O., & Afitiri, A. R. (2020). Disparate
on-site access to water, sanitation, and food storage heighten the risk of COVID-19 spread in Sub-Saharan Africa. Envi-
ronmental Research, 189, 109936.
Fassin, D. (2009). Another politics of life is possible. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(5), 44–60. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0263276409106349
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. (Hurley, R., Trans.) 1.
Giritli-Nygren, K., & Olofsson, A. (2020). Managing the Covid-19 pandemic through individual responsibility: The consequenc-
es of a world risk society and enhanced ethopolitics. Journal of Risk Research, 23, 1031–1035.
Gkiouleka, A., Huijts, T., Beckfield, J., Bambra, C. (2018). Understanding the micro and macro politics of health: Inequalities,
intersectionality & institutions-A research agenda. Social Science & Medicine, 200, 92–98.
Gumà, J., Solé-Auró, A., & Arpino, B. (2019). Examining social determinants of health: the role of education, household ar-
rangements and country groups by gender. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1–9.
Harrison, T. M., & Pardo, T. A. (2020). Data, politics and public health: COVID-19 data-driven decision making in public dis-
course. Digital Government: Research and Practice, 2(1), 1–8.
Human Rights Watch. (2020). Migrants, stateless at extra risk from virus. Retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/docid/
5f50a81e4.html
Human Rights Watch. (2021). Lebanon: Refugees, migrants left behind in vaccine rollout. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/
news/2021/04/06/lebanon-refugees-migrants-left-behind-vaccine-rollout#
Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. (2020). Statelessness in a global pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/
docid/5f50a81e4.html
Ji, Y., Ma, Z., Peppelenbosch, M. P., & Pan, Q. (2020). Potential association between COVID-19 mortality and health-care
resource availability. The Lancet Global Health, 8(4), e480. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30068-110.1016/
S2214-109X(20)30068-1
Jiwani, S. S., & Antiporta, D. A. (2020). Inequalities in access to water and soap matter for the COVID-19 response in sub-Sa-
haran Africa. International Journal for Equity in Health, 19, 1–3.
Joronen, M., & Rose, M. (2020). Vulnerability and its politics: Precarity and the woundedness of power. Progress in Human
Geography, 20(10), 1–17.
Kassem, I. I. (2020). Refugees besieged: The lurking threat of COVID-19 in Syrian war refugee camps. Travel Medicine and
Infectious Disease, 38, 101736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101736
Kersh, R., & Morone, J. A. (2005). Obesity, courts, and the new politics of public health. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law,
30(5), 839–868.
Larocque, C., & Foth, T. (2020). Which lives are worth saving? Biolegitimacy and harm reduction during COVID-19. Nursing
Inquiry, e12417, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.1241710.1111/nin.12417
Levinson, R. (2005). Issues at the interface of medical sociology and public health. In P. Higgs, & G. Scambler (Eds.), Modernity,
Medicine and Health (pp. 83–98). Routledge.
Lokot, M., & Avakyan, Y. (2020). Intersectionality as a lens to the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for sexual and reproduc-
tive health in development and humanitarian contexts. Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 28, 1764748. https://doi.
org/10.1080/26410397.2020.1764748
Marshall, T. H. (1963). Sociology at the crossroads. In D. Marsh, & G. Stoker (Eds.), 2020, Theory and methods in political science.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Mayblin, L., Wake, M., & Kazemi, M. (2020). Necropolitics and the slow violence of the everyday: Asylum seeker welfare in the
postcolonial present. Sociology, 54(1), 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519862124
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15, 11–40.
McGee, T. (2020). The COVID-19 crisis and new agency for stateless Bidoon in Kuwait. London School of Economics Middle East
Centre Series.
Navarro, V. (2008). Politics and health: A neglected area of research. European Journal of Public Health, 18(4), 354–355.
Navarro, V., Muntaner, C., Borrell, C., Benach, J., Quiroga, Á., Rodríguez-Sanz, M., Vergés, N., & Pasarín, M.I. (2006). Politics and
health outcomes. The Lancet, 368(9540), 1033–1037.
Oliver, T. R. (2006). The politics of public health policy. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 195–233.
DAHER-NASHIF 13 of 13

Ortega, F., & Orsini, M. (2020). Governing COVID-19 without government in Brazil: Ignorance, neoliberal authoritarianism,
and the collapse of public health leadership. Global Public Health, 15, 1257–1277.
Renzaho, A. M. N. (2020). The need for the right socio-economic and cultural fit in the COVID-19 response in Sub-Saharan
Africa: Examining demographic, economic political, health, and socio-cultural differentials in COVID-19 morbidity and
mortality. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17, 3445.
Round, J., & Kuznetsova, I. (2016). Necropolitics and the migrant as a political subject of disgust: The precarious everyday of
Russia’s labour migrants. Critical Sociology, 42(7–8), 1017–1034. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920516645934
Schmitt, C. (1985) [1922]. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. (Trans. George Schwab). MIT Press.
Schneider, A., & Ingram, H. (1993). Social construction of target populations: implications for politics and policy. American Po-
litical Science Review. 87:334–347.
Smith, R. D. (2020). What type of governmentality is this? Or, how do we govern unknowns. Retrieved from http://somatosphere.
net/2020/governmentality-covid19.html/
Su, Z., Wen, J., McDonnell, D., Goh, E., Li, X., Šegalo, S., Xiang, Y. T., Cheshmehzangi, A., & Xiang, Y.-T. (2021). Vaccines are not yet
a silver bullet: The imperative of continued communication about the importance of COVID-19 safety measures. Brain,
Behavior, & Immunity-Health, 12, 100204.
Subbaraman, N. (2020). Distancing is impossible': Refugee camps race to avert coronavirus catastrophe. Nature, 581, 18.
Taylor, R., & Rieger, A. (1985). Medicine is a social science: Rudolf Virchow on the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia. Internation-
al Journal of Health Services, 15, 547–559.
The latest Economist's Democracy Institute. (2020). Democracy Index 2020 In sickness and in health? A report by the Econo-
mist Intelligence Unit. https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2020/#:∼:text=Democracy%20Index%20
2020%3A%20In%20sickness,lives%20from%20a%20novel%20coronavirus
Urie, R. (2020). The Neoliberal Plage. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/06/the-neoliberal-plague/
World Federation of Public Health (WFPHA). (2021). Accessed August 27, 2021.https://www.wfpha.org/working-groups/
World Health Organization. (2020). OHCHR, IOM, UNHCR and WHO joint press release: The rights and health of refugees, migrants
and stateless must be protected in COVID-19 response. Retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/docid/5f50a81e4.html
World Health Organization. (2021a). Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2005–2008). Accessed August 28,
21. https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/equity-and-health/commission-on-social-determi-
nants-of-health#:∼:text=The%20Commission%20on%20Social%20Determinants,ill%20health%20and%20health%20
inequities
World Health Organization. (2021b). WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at 148th session of the Executive Board. Retrieved
from https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-148th-session-
of-the-executive-board

AU T H O R BIOGR A PH Y

Dr. Suhad Daher-Nashif is an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences in the College of Medicine
at Qatar University. She holds MSc. in occupational therapy and PhD in sociology and anthropology, with major
in anthropology of medicine and culture. Her research work dismantles the intersectionality between science,
society, politics and bureaucracy within the modern health systems in the MENA region. She takes forensic med-
icine, mental health and medical education as her main fields of research. Dr. Daher-Nashif is an active academic
in promoting knowledge on social and political determinants of health through building and delivering medical
humanities curriclums and courses, within medical schools and healthcare settings.

How to cite this article: Daher-Nashif, S. (2022). In sickness and in health: The politics of public health and
their implications during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sociology Compass, 16(1), e12949. https://doi.org/10.1111/
soc4.12949