'This impressive book analyses the medical and social impacts of the Covid-19 virus pandemic. The medical impact has been extensive from trying to understand this new virus, create a new vaccine, and shift medical resources in the face of large infection and death rates. This ambitious book covers all of these topics under the equally important idea that Covid-19 is not simply a medical disease, but also a social one. This is the real strength of Peter Murphy’s book. He analyses the extensive social impacts from public and economic policy including lockdowns and wage subsidies, to social ones including changes to our habits that are now known as ‘social distancing’ – proximity, touch, hygiene. He argues that there were more than proportional measures on some policies and less than proportional ones on others.'Professor John Rundell, Editor-in-Chief of Critical Horizons and the Social and Critical Theory book series COVID-19: Proportionality, Public Policy and Social Distance explores the social and political response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It details the sociological aspects of the spread of the virus, the role played by social distancing in virus mitigation, and the comparative effect of social proximity and distance on national anti-viral behavior. Peter Murphy discusses various public policy approaches to the pandemic and their successes and failures. In this engaging analysis, he investigates the way that contemporary societies think about risk, threat and harm, and how social mood affected the response to COVID-19. Peter Murphy is the author of The Political Economy of Prosperity (2020), Limited Government (2018) Auto-Industrialism (2017), Universities and Innovation Economies (2015) and The Collective Imagination (2012), among other books. He is Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences at La Trobe University and in The Cairns Institute at James Cook University, Australia.

Offers cutting-edge analyses of the social and policy dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on mortality, society and economy Provides a highly original critical assessment of the public policy responses and background cultural ‘markers’ that prompted action by medical specialists, politicians and the public alike Engages in scholarly literature across the social sciences and humanities in order to extend our understanding of the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in insightful new ways Comprises a valuable new resource appealing to a wide readership across the social sciences, the humanities and medical sciences. Readers will include undergraduate students, postgraduate students, researchers and academic teachers, and also public policy experts and the interested lay public

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