Department of Public Policies examines social vulnerabilities in times of COVID-19

The concept of “risk society” by German sociologist Ulrich Beck is more than current at this time of emergence of a new coronavirus, which has been causing the global COVID-19 pandemic. In the last five months, this pandemic has thrown the entire globe off track, causing something unprecedented in the histories of contemporary societies, which is the installation of a movement of distancing between people, voluntary or imposed by institutional instruments of a new social order never experienced by generations in this century.
In all of their works focused on the emergence of the new social pattern of risk, they highlight four essential assumptions in their analysis: firstly, risks are global, being felt by everyone, but with different intensity between social classes and everywhere, from the developed to the developing country, making the distribution of these risks apparently more democratic and equalized; second, the distribution of risks and their intensity is defined according to the characteristics of the social structure; third, the dimension of the risks is associated with the contemporary environmental crisis; and fourth, scientific and technological innovation is not completely exempt and can increase risks on a global scale.
When observing vulnerability in the context of individuals, it is noticeable that risk situations constitute more intense threats in vulnerable social groups, such as: aging populations, populations with comorbidities and populations of excluded and social minorities (poor in general, homeless people, refugees, quilombolas, indigenous people, among others). From the perspective of territories, we observe that the cases are concentrated especially in large urban centers and in areas of high population concentration and mobility flows - in particular, in the urban peripheries that constitute subnormal settlements, popularly known as favelas, whose housing is precarious and inadequate in relation to the population density, in addition to lacking access to basic resources (water, energy, sanitation) and health (health services, basic and specialized hospital network).
It is well known nationally and internationally that the Brazilian population has overlapping vulnerability conditions in relation to individuals and territories. The most vulnerable populations are in the urban territories of Brazilian cities in their diversity and complexity of forms that present themselves in metropolises, metropolitan regions, large, medium and small cities, as observed in the Municipal Vulnerability Index to the Spread of the Coronavirus (IVC)⁵ of the Brazilian cities most vulnerable to the increase in COVID-19 based on the combination of general demographic density conditions and favelas, age groups at greatest risk of COVID-19, infrastructure conditions sanitary and electrical; labor market in relation to informality and health conditions in areas with incidence of respiratory diseases.
Given this scenario, it is clear that the emergence of the new coronavirus has functioned as a new social experiment to reflect on the fact that the risks are global, affecting everyone to a greater or lesser extent. However, its most effective responses are on a local scale and require synergy from governments at all levels, as well as society's participation in individual and collective actions based on international experiences. This entire scenario should “open the eyes” of society and world governments about the need to adopt public policies or actions to face disaster situations as preventive measures to manage the potential risks involved, such as climate change and other health pandemic situations which, despite their effects being more long-term in relation to those of the new coronavirus, are also global. In a scenario of uncertainty, the experience of new pandemics with (or more) damage such as the current one caused by COVID-19 cannot be ruled out.
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