Reactions to and Results of the Coronavirus

1. The Coronavirus and Social Solidarity

Reactions to COVID-19 have been varied, but one change seen across the globe has been the emergence of people wearing masks for protection. In Western countries, this change is quite new and never been seen before. Christos Lynteris with the New York Times says of this: "'Mask culture'... brings together people faced with a common threat and helps mitigate one of the secondary dangers posed by an epidemic: anomie, or the breakdown of social norms". This relates directly with Emile Durkheim's sociological theories on social solidarity and anomie. Of social solidarity, Durkheim says, "The more closely-knit members of society, the more they maintain various relationships either with one another or with the group collectively" (2007[1893], 159). This is important because the maintaining of various societal relationships strengthens our society and contributes to our customs. COVID-19 could easily break this because it limits the amount that we are physically able to be together and the amount that we can contribute to these relationships. Wearing masks has become a distant yet important way of maintaining our relationships with others because it shows others that we're thinking the same and care about each others' health. Lynteris writes, "mask-wearing created intimacy and trust in the face of danger" during the SARS epidemic, and the same is happening now during COVID-19. 

Durkheim, Emile. 2007[1893]. "The Division of Labor in Society." In Classical Sociological Theory, edited by Calhoun et al, 158-78. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 
Lynteris, Christos. 2020. "Why Do People Really Wear Face Masks During an Epidemic?" The New York Times, February 13, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020  /02/13/opinion/coronavirus-face-mask-effective.html

2. How the Coronavirus May Change Social Structures

Many people are wondering how the world may be different after all this is over. One way to look at this question is to use C. Wright Mill's thoughts on the sociological imagination and the way in which biography and history intertwine to shape society. Mills talks about biography in terms of what each person experiences and goes through in their own life, and history in terms of what the world has experienced throughout time (1959, 30). These concepts can also be applied to today's world and used to determine how this life-changing event may continue to change institutional and social structures world-wide. Medical sociologist Richard M. Carpiano related the coronavirus to 9/11 in terms of drastically changing policy (2020). Using information we know has happened and have experienced, we can come to conclusions that inform us about what may happen in the future. Mills specifically says that "the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate by locating himself within his period" (1959, 31). Carpiano does this and says that he's hoping something similar to the aftermath with 9/11 will happen "in relation to public health and promoting new conversations about what we can do to prevent something similar from happening again by strengthening our public health system" (2020). 

Carpiano, Richard M. 2020. "Sociologist explains how coronavirus might change the world around us." Interview by Tess Eyrich. Phys.org, April 2, 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-sociologist-coronavirus-world.html.
Mills, C. Wright. 1959. "The Promise." In The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3. An Instrumentally Rational Response

Max Weber laid out the multiple orientations of social actions we humans take in response to things. He said our social actions can be instrumentally rational, value-rational, affectual, and traditional (24-25). In response to COVID-19, we have had to put aside various social actions in favor of more instrumentally rational ones. Weber describes instrumentally rational action as "when the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed" (26). All of our actions during this time have been weighed against each other as we have an end goal in mind: to stop the spread of the pandemic. This means that when deciding our actions we have taken on means-end calculations in scenarios we wouldn't have had to before. The majority of us have ignored value-rational behavior such as going to church even though it may be a part of our values. We have ignored affectual behavior by resisting the urge to see and spend time with our friends and families. Traditional behaviors such as commuting to work and school have completely been turned on their heads because the result of our means-end calculations told us it would be better to stay home. Although this has taken a toll and many of us and there are people who go against this type of rationalization, for the most part our entire society for the time being has turned to these types of behaviors to achieve the end goal.

Weber, Max. "Types of Social Action." In Economy & Society, 24-26. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.