Social Science Space

These are extraordinary times, and not just because we are coming through the greatest national trauma since the Second World […]

Immunity certification for adult movies developed in California during the late 1990s, after a serious outbreak of HIV among the performers. Robert Dingwall examines the model in light of calls for a coronavirus passport system for the vaccinated.

Do we treat the coronavirus as an ordinary risk of life, much as we do with the other 30 respiratory viruses that have infected humans throughout history? Or do we try to eliminate the virus from the UK altogether – the so-called Zero COVID approach?

With this pandemic, argues Robert Dingwall, fear amplification has been policy, based on the advice of a particular group of behavioral scientists advising the United Kingdom’s government.

The reports from Britain’s hospitals in the last few days have been truly worrying. No one should doubt the reality […]

It is possible that we could abolish death by COVID, argues Robert Dingwall, by continuing the restrictions of 2020 indefinitely – the problem, of course, is that we would simply die from something else.

Robert Dingwall summons the writings of Georg Simmel to present ‘crucial arguments against the break-up of urban life that is envisioned by some contemporary Utopians: the case against the 15-minute city needs to be heard.’

What happens, asks Robert Dingwall, when governments attempt to impose a moral code on the everyday lives of citizens without the consent of those citizens?

Humanity has a long history of dealing with things like pandemics. What history shows us is that the only practicable interventions are social and behavioral. How can we slow the movement of the new infection through the population while medical science catches up with treatments or vaccines?

Robert Dingwall cites a short story from 1957 which highlights why the development of a vaccine needs to always keep an eye on its safety, no matter what the pressures are for its immediate release.

or 30 years, social scientists have been trying to educate scientific elites in the value of taking ordinary people with them rather than dismissing skepticism about science-based actions. This work has just gone out the window, argues Robert Dingwall.

The management of the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the hollowness of that alternative in policies that have been made by people with very narrow life experiences and imposed on others with whom there is, as Disraeli once said, ‘no intercourse and no sympathy’.