Covid-19 Idealism: Analysing Societal and Policy Unevenness in the Geographical Distribution of Covid-19 in Europe

Abstract: This thesis focusses on three distinct unevenness’s seen within the Covid-19 pandemic. Geographical unevenness shows in an uneven spread in and between countries. Societal unevenness is seen as Covid-19 deaths mainly occur in the elderly population, or people with underlying conditions. Finally, governmental policy unevenness is seen between countries as some have imposed strict health measures, and others have not. To measure this strictness within government policies, several Covid-19 strictness indexes have been developed that aim to analyse this. However, what these indexes fail to take into account are pharmaceutical policies (e.g., vaccination and hospital policies). The main aim of this thesis is to analyse the total array of government policies (including the pharmaceutical policies) and see how it affects Covid-19 unevenness between countries. The main research question is: To what extend have government implemented policies in certain European countries affected the geographical and societal unevenness seen within Covid-19? To answer this research question, the main methodology used is the creation of a new Covid-19 index, based on a theory stemming from political philosophy. This theory of idealism explains the extent to which a country is willing to go in implementing Covid-19 measures to lower the experienced societal unevenness (or to lower social injustices). By adding several pharmaceutical categories, a new index has been developed that measures a country’s level of idealism in Covid-19 policy. High scoring countries strive to eradicate all social injustices through Covid-19 policies aimed at the totality of the population. Low idealist countries accept the seen societal unevenness as a result of Covid-19. Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark) have shown to be low idealist countries, and the Southern European countries (Greece & Italy) can be regarded as high idealist countries. This thesis, analysing ten European countries over a period of nine months saw no visible relationship between a country’s idealist level and Covid-19 level (measured in cases, deaths, and excess mortality). And thus, idealism (expressed as the extent to which a country is willing to go in implementing Covid-19 measures to lower societal unevenness) has not been able to explain geographical or societal unevenness. Also, other expected factors in Covid-19 (demographics and underlying conditions) showed no visible relationship towards Covid-19 death rate. Given the existing literature on negative economic and psychological effects of Covid-19 measures, applying a similar framework with the suggested alterations in section 6.1 of this thesis should be used to see if a similar result will be found regarding a larger study area and period.