Tom Douglass – författare

Providing a sociological analysis of the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in England, this study places particular analytical emphasis on the interplay between powerful structural interests and the influence on the development of COVID-19 policy. Considering a range of actors, (including the government, scientific experts and the medical profession, the media, and the public) and the nature of their relationships with one another, the authors identify the key sociological aspects that have shaped, facilitated, challenged, or constrained COVID-19 policy in England.

Drawing on published documentary material, the authors first examine government attempts to contain, delay, mitigate and suppress the spread of the coronavirus with non-pharmaceutical interventions in the absence of a vaccine (during the first wave) and then whilst vaccines were being gradually rolled out (during the second wave and third waves). The focus then shifts on to vaccination policy and the actors central in the design and implementation of the vaccination programme in England. The approach taken to the funding, development, and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines is also explored and furthermore considers vaccine coverage, vaccine passports, and vaccine nationalism. The authors conclude with a discussion of the overall impact of COVID-19 policy on health and between socio-economic groups and with reflections on the sociologies of pandemics and COVID-19.

This book will appeal and be accessible both to policymakers and health service managers and to those studying for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the social, medical, and public health sciences. 

Providing a sociological analysis of the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in England, this study places particular analytical emphasis on the interplay between powerful structural interests and the influence on the development of COVID-19 policy. Considering a range of actors, (including the government, scientific experts and the medical profession, the media, and the public) and the nature of their relationships with one another, the authors identify the key sociological aspects that have shaped, facilitated, challenged, or constrained COVID-19 policy in England.

Drawing on published documentary material, the authors first examine government attempts to contain, delay, mitigate and suppress the spread of the coronavirus with non-pharmaceutical interventions in the absence of a vaccine (during the first wave) and then whilst vaccines were being gradually rolled out (during the second wave and third waves). The focus then shifts on to vaccination policy and the actors central in the design and implementation of the vaccination programme in England. The approach taken to the funding, development, and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines is also explored and furthermore considers vaccine coverage, vaccine passports, and vaccine nationalism. The authors conclude with a discussion of the overall impact of COVID-19 policy on health and between socio-economic groups and with reflections on the sociologies of pandemics and COVID-19.

This book will appeal and be accessible both to policymakers and health service managers and to those studying for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the social, medical, and public health sciences. 

This book argues that the social story of vaccination has commonly been told through the lens of vaccine hesitancy and the myriad challenges that this broad issue poses for public health and the mitigation of preventable harms. Consequently, less sustained analytical attention has been given by social scientists to the rich tapestry of other social and political dimensions of vaccines and consequences of vaccination. This book begins from the premise that a broader approach to the technology and intervention of vaccination is required and that further social scientific analysis is needed of how societies produce and preserve high levels of vaccination coverage, as well as the social and political challenges or threats – beyond vaccine hesitancy – that may harm or restrict it. To achieve this, the book assembles and reframes evidence from medical sociology, science and technology studies, public health, health geography, and the medical humanities. In doing so it looks across the ‘immunisation social order’ by analysing dimensions that have thus far been neglected or under-scrutinised, revealing not only the functioning of and central challenges to the immunisation social order, but also bringing into sharp focus the social and political nature of vaccines themselves.