• COVID-19
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A comment on the spread of ageism during the pandemic of COVID-19

The recent revision of the International Health Regulations, say Wilson and colleagues, is both long overdue and eminently necessary to face the challenges of an increasingly globalized world.

This chapter addresses the general research questions of the book, namely the possibility that populists in Europe can profit from a peculiar crisis such as COVID-19, and it wonders whether populists reacted in a similar way across countries or whether the institutional role they play at the national level has affected their reactions. Findings show that while populists have tried to take advantage of the crisis situation, the impossibility of taking ownership of the COVID-19 issue has made the crisis hard to be exploited. In particular, populists in power have tried to depoliticize the pandemic, whereas radical right-populists in opposition tried to politicize the crisis without gaining relevant public support though.

This paper retraces the author’s personal experience of the COVID-19 lockdown from March to July 2020 at the Franco-German border from a threefold perspective: that of a cross-border worker living in Kehl, Germany, and working in Strasbourg, France; that of a Franco-German citizen with a family and children of both French and German nationality; and that of a researcher specialized in border studies. The paper deals with national re-bordering policies and their direct personal and psychological consequences for borderlanders, and also questions whether such measures are adequate to contain the pandemic, especially in a context of European Union integration which is based on the principle of a “Europe without borders”.

Debates have grown around the initial COVID-19 response of radical right-wing governments such as those of the UK, the US and Brazil. These governments initially let the virus spread among the population and delayed the enforcement of strong social distancing measures such as a lockdown. Focusing on the UK’s early response to COVID-19, this article builds on Nicos Poulantzas’ Marxist theory of the state to highlight how this pandemic management doctrine stemmed from changes in the UK’s capitalist class. It traces the ideological grounding of this doctrine, relating it to the rise of libertarian think tanks in British conservative circles and shifts in the policy committees in charge of pandemic preparedness. It suggests that this pandemic response is an episode of the ongoing replacement of the dominant neoliberal accumulation regime with a new libertarian-authoritarian one and examines how this latter materialises the interests of an emerging group of ‘disaster capitalists’. Therefore, it takes the COVID-19 crisis as an example of how the reconfiguration of capitalist accumulation regimes articulates a new doctrine of catastrophe management, radical right-wing ideologies, libertarian-authoritarian institutions and the growing power of capitalist actors able to profit from extreme events.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-psw-10.1177_14789299211001690 for Does Federalism Prevent Democratic Accountability? Assigning Responsibility for Rates of COVID-19 Testing by John Kennedy, Anthony Sayers and Christopher Alcantara in Political Studies Review

We examined the longitudinal course of, and pre- and during-pandemic risk factors for, self-injury and domestic physical violence perpetration in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data came from a Swiss longitudinal study (N = 786, age ~22 in 2020), with one prepandemic (2018) and four during-pandemic assessments (2020). The prevalence of self-injury did not change between April (during the first Swiss national lockdown) and September 2020 (postlockdown). Domestic violence perpetration increased temporarily in males. Prepandemic self-injury was a major risk factor for during-pandemic self-injury. Specific living arrangements, pandemic-related stressor accumulation, and a lack of adaptive coping strategies were associated with during-pandemic self-injury and domestic violence. Stressor accumulation had indirect effects on self-injury and domestic violence through negative emotions.

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. Background Unprecedented public health actions restricting movement and non-COVID related health services are likely to have affected abortion care during the pandemic in Europe. In the absence of a common approach to ensure access to this essential health service, we sought to describe the variability of abortion policies during the outbreak in Europe in order to identify strategies that improve availability and access to abortion in times of public health crises. Methods We collected information from 46 countries/regions: 31 for which country-experts completed a survey and 15 for which we conducted a desk review. We describe abortion regulations and changes to regulations and practice during the pandemic. Results During COVID-19, abortions were banned in six countries and suspended in one. Surgical abortion was less available due to COVID-19 in 12 countries/regions and services were not available or delayed for women with COVID-19 symptoms in eleven. No country expanded its gestational limit for abortion. Changes during COVID-19, mostly designed to reduce in-person consultations, occurred in 13 countries/regions. Altogether eight countries/regions provided home medical abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol beyond 9weeks (from 9 weeks+6 days to 11 weeks+6 days) and 13 countries/regions up to 9weeks (in some instances only misoprostol could be taken at home). Only six countries/regions offered abortion by telemedicine. Conclusions The lack of a unified policy response to COVID-19 restrictions has widened inequities in abortion access in Europe, but some innovations including telemedicine deployed during the outbreak could serve as a catalyst to ensure continuity and equity of abortion care.

Un proverbe allemand du XIVesiècle disait que la peste s’attaque à ceux qui ont le plus peur. Est-ce la peur du virus qui tue ou le virus ? Des observateurs étrangers1 s’étonnent que le confinement jusqu’ici ait été dans l’ensemble respecté en France sans révoltes véritables. Les héritiers de la Révolution française ont admis une restriction sans précédent de leurs libertés et se sont soumis à la décision du confinement. La peur du virus inconnu, invisible et sournois, qui a frappé la population, mais aussi la peur de l’autorité et des contrôles, celle de l’Autre et celle de l’étranger possibles porteurs, sont probablement pour beaucoup dans cette résignation. Mais cette peur n’est-elle pas en soi délétère, comme semble nous le montrer une rétrospective sur les épidémies passées ?