Introduction
The Corona pandemic has significantly disrupted people’s lives who were denied access to good food, causing death, health issues, and social and economic disruption. Food insecurity can be long-term or short-term and can be influenced by various factors, including an individual’s race, access to transportation, physical challenges, unemployment, and issues with purchasing food. COVID-19 has influenced the following theories; the Actor-Network Theory, food deserts, Emotion Management, Intersection Theory, and Neighborhood Disadvantage as they affect people’s social lives.
The Actor-Network Theory
The actor-network concept is an advent to a social ideology that argues that everything in society and the natural world comprises ever-changing relationships. Human beings are considered as necessary as objects, ideas, processes, and other factors in creating social conditions. Innovation enables people to generate new information and direct their behavior in a specific direction. The actor-network theory views technologies and objects as an ever-changing network of individuals, their activities, and interactions. Humans are agents in these networks, but non-human entities are also considered actors. These things are made and used to replace actions that people usually have to do. The infection of the Coronavirus as an inhuman act fundamentally changes everything. Viruses and their adverse effects have disrupted the existence of almost everyone on the planet. Everyone has changed their actions to avoid getting infected and spreading the virus. Weddings have been postponed, vacations have been canceled, and traditions like proms and graduations have been canceled. Contagion destroys financial stability and puts an inexplicable strain on an organization. Apart from exacerbating political tensions, it has exposed the flaws and strengths of leadership.
Food Deserts
Food deserts refer to urban areas whose residents live more than one or ten miles from a supermarket. Food deserts are often called communities that lack access to affordable and healthy food; food insecurity is worst in these food deserts. Most families living below the federal poverty level, whether in urban or rural areas, are more likely to struggle to find fresh food nearby. Many distant people in urban and rural communities are dying because of food deserts, food shortages, and COVID-19; children and women are particularly affected. The nutritional quality of food in food deserts and social determinants of food insecurity influence the transmission of COVID-19. The high levels of unemployment due to the epidemic may significantly impact the increased demand for food in food deserts. Diabetes and high blood pressure have increased among food-insecure people due to the availability of cheap, low-nutrient meals at local fast-food restaurants. Food insecurity often increases the risk of death from disease and many other adverse health issues. Improved laws and regulations must be enacted to help protect these communities without access to food.
Emotion Management
Emotion management is a therapy that helps people understand, accept, manage, and express their emotions better. Doing so helps develop more reliable and helpful ways of dealing with the significant and harmful increases in reality. The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects have evolved into a global health crisis characterized by high unpredictability, high risk, complexity, and uncertainty. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread disease outbreaks always harm physical and mental health. In line with this, an alarming increase in depression and anxiety, general malaise, sleep disturbances, and severe PTSD symptoms. Therefore, people’s emotional outcomes during COVID-19 may be affected by affective and emotion regulation strategies that alter the timing or intensity of emotional reactions. Although both adults and teenagers struggle with depression, young adults unequivocally loneliness worsens their emotional health during this pandemic. Children are also forced to use poor survival skills, such as playing alone and overinvesting in virtual entertainment. Lockdowns and development restrictions increase the potential to negatively affect people’s emotional health, with various groups of people often showing frustration and nervous reactions during the coronavirus lockdown.
Intersection Theory
Diversity refers to a concept in the social sciences that constructs how individuals face different forms of racism. This racism is based on their race, orientation, age, identity, physical ability, class, or other markers that may place them in the minority system. Although COVID-19 has disrupted modern social life, it is far from a great equalizer. Different social groups cope with other impacts of emergencies and face additional risks of infection. This indicates that disadvantaged communities face the most rapid death and spread of the virus, with minorities and immigrants facing a greater risk of disease than upper- and middle-class whites. Society is also struggling with measures of social exclusion and their adverse social and economic effects, which adversely affect the most vulnerable people in the community: ethnic minorities, children, low-income groups, and women. COVID-19 is a clear example of intersectionality: the individual and local effects on the openness of the Coronavirus are the results of different interrelated structures. The findings highlight the complex trade-offs between different factors related to race and location, including collective and financial imbalances that may exacerbate the absence of coronavirus deaths.
Neighborhood Disadvantage
Neighborhood disadvantage pertains to the shortage of social and economic resources in a neighborhood and has been shown to affect health outcomes and personal characteristics but has so far not been recognized by social science research. Racism has been linked to disparities in financial status, leading to racial welfare biases. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected minorities in the United States. Hospitalizations and deaths have increased, reflecting health inequalities that already exist. The virus has killed more people in communities with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. The COVID-19 Inequality Index, which describes the exact nature of neighborhood disadvantage, serves as a map of this. Epidemiology dominated the initial discussion of COVID-19 disparities, which may explain why communities of color have higher death rates due to health disparities (Fritz et al. 840). Despite removing race and ethnicity from the direct measurements, black neighborhoods have the highest average inequality; a neighborhood loss returns the team to racial parity. White communities have lower levels of equality and this suggests that policymakers can target public health interventions using this index of neighborhood disadvantage.
Conclusion
From the above theories; race, class, and COVID-19 infections in New York are linked. Inequality is measured: in employment and transportation systems, access to food, social and economic conditions, and access to health services. Despite ongoing efforts to increase vaccinations, the United States death toll now exceeds half a million. To reduce the disproportionate load of Coronavirus and underscore the need to comprehensively address neighborhood disadvantage, an origin of widespread racial disparities in life. Through various types of rules and improvements implemented in the class, the health of the communities is affected by food laws. State, local, and federal governments are updating and revising food safety and food desert laws and policies. Countries have begun extensive programs to provide nutritious food to rural and urban communities.
Work Cited
Fritz, Bradley A., et al. “Association of Race and Neighborhood Disadvantage with Patient Engagement in a Home-Based COVID-19 Remote Monitoring Program. Health & Place, vol. 68, 2021, pp. 838-846, Web.