This article explores affectivity, temporality, and their interrelation in patients who contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden and with symptoms indicative of post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) that remained one year after the infection. It offers a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis, showing how being ill with acute COVID-19 and with symptoms indicative of PCC can entail a radically altered self-world relation. We identify two examples of pre-intentional (existential) feelings: that of listlessness and that of not being able to sense what is real and not real, both of which, in different ways, imply a changed self-world relation. We offer an analysis of intentional feelings: how the fear of not “returning” to one’s previous self and the hope of such a return weave together the present and the absent, as well as the past and the future, in ways that make the future appear as constricted, disquieting, or lost. We argue that a phenomenological differentiation among experiences of living with symptoms indicative of PCC—through attention to the way intentional affectivity and pre-intentional affectivity help shape the embodied self’s attunement to the world—is apt to yield a better understanding of the variations within these experiences and contribute to clinical practice.

Background At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became clear that some individuals experienced lingering symptoms after the infection. This condition, known as post Covid-19 condition (or long Covid), is defined by WHO as persistent or new symptoms 3 months after the initial infection, lasting for at least 2 months, and not attributable to another diagnosis. Hence, the definition is very broad. Aim This study aims to examine how post Covid-19 condition as a diagnosis is viewed and interpreted by Swedish stakeholders, showing how these understandings carry a range of epistemological tensions. The study also seeks to understand the implications of these epistemological tensions for treatment and care organisation. Methods Qualitative interviews with 36 experts and key individuals in Sweden have been conducted. Result Experts agree that post Covid-19 condition is a complex syndrome and that persons who suffer are in need of care. However, several tensions in post Covid-19 condition as a diagnosis can be discerned. Most experts agreed on the gender and racial disparity where white women with Swedish background were a majority of post Covid-19 sufferers, while migrant patients and the elderly are largely absent. In relation to social categories, the question if children can have post Covid-19 condition is here a highly contested question. There is also disagreement on the aetiology of post Covid-19 condition, with some experts viewing it as a new, unique condition requiring specialised treatment, while others see it as similar to other post-viral conditions, treatable in primary care. Conclusion The article concludes that experts are divided in their understanding and that this affects Swedish policy on post Covid-19 care and treatment, showing that post Covid-19 condition is not only a medical issue but also a political battleground where science, expert opinion and patient experience shape policy. Patient and Public Contribution The article focuses on studying stakeholders' perspectives as these are key for informing public opinion and policy. In this article, all main organisations and authorities involved in post Covid-19 care are represented. We also see patients as crucial stakeholders and representatives of patient organisations, as well as representatives of some migrant communities, who have been interviewed. The latter were included to gain insights from groups that were largely absent in post Covid-19 care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on abundant racial and ethnic health disparities in many countries around the world. In Sweden, statistics on COVID-19 mortality and morbidity from both the first and the second wave of the pandemic show that foreign-born individuals have been disproportionately affected, compared to Swedish-born individuals. However, as demonstrated in this article, key stakeholders including politicians, public authorities, mainstream media, and medical researchers do not draw on the same explanatory framework when conceptualizing the health disparity. Probing the different discourses that were articulated through oral and written accounts during the first wave, the article identifies three different frameworks of how ethnic health disparities in relation to COVID-19 were understood in Sweden: the socioeconomic framework, the culturalist framework and the biological framework. We discuss the importance of our findings for health policy and argue for continued interrogation of epidemiological knowledge production from a critical vantage point in order to successfully combat health inequalities.

This chapter will focus on the advantages and pitfalls of using an intersectional approach to understand and target health disparities and health inequalities. Social studies of medicine have often argued the need for interdisciplinary perspectives to understand health matters which are often confined to the sphere of medicine only. The need for social scientists perspectives are particularly urgent when it comes to understanding health disparities that occur along the lines of gender, race/ethnicity and class. The chapter will describe the usefulness of intersectionality in this context. Using Mc Calls concepts of anti-, intra- and intercategorical complexity, the chapter will build upon three empirical cases: (1) The development within medicine towards precision/personalised medicine. Here I will discuss how current trends in biomedicine (in particular human genetics) reify notions of biological differences between women and men and between different ethnically or racially defined groups, and how intersectionality as an anticategorical tool can dismantle such beliefs; (2) The case of migrant health disparities. Using an intracategoreical approach I will problematise the notion of “the migrant” in health policy and show how an intersectional approach is more beneficial to clinical practice; (3) The case of social epidemiology. Using an intercategorical approach I will discuss how a more nuanced (and complex) picture of existing health disparities can be researched and its benefits for policy. In a concluding part I will discuss how these different empirical cases links to the wider theoretical debate about intersectionality and the more general discussion in feminist theory on identity, but with a particular focus on body/medicine/health.

Swedish school’s commission to promote equal treatment and counteract discrimination is extensive and entails active work on fundamental values in everyday activities. This article presents resultsfrom an action-oriented ethnographic study in which we, together with teachers and students at the language introduction-programme in upper secondary school, reviewed and developed methods of working with fundamental values in education. Using theories of intersectionality, critical multiculturalism, and critical pedagogy, we query the possibilities to fully include students of different backgrounds. Our analysis shows how the students were approached from a deficit model and that gender and sexuality were used as ethnic markers between Swedishness and non-Swedishness. Further, the potential in starting from students’ experiences and seeing the possibilities with an anti-racist, critical perspective on ethnicity is highlighted. Thus, we propose that teaching on fundamental values in language introduction needs to break with the idea of an imagined normative Swedishness and switch from a monocultural to an intercultural perspective in order to increase students’ opportunities for participation and inclusion.

Den svenska skolans uppdrag att främja likabehandling och motverka diskriminering är omfattande och innebär bland annat att ett aktivt värdegrundsarbete ska genomsyra verksamheten. I denna artikel redovisas resultat från en aktionsorienterad etnografisk studie där vi tillsammans med lärare och elever på gymnasieskolans språkintroduktion granskat och vidareutvecklat metoder för arbete med värdegrundsfrågor. Med utgångspunkt i intersektionalitetsteori, kritisk mångkulturalism och kritisk pedagogik fokuseras frågan om undervisningens möjligheter att inkludera elever oavsett bakgrund. Analysen visar hur undervisningen utgick från ett bristperspektiv och att genus och sexualitet användes som etniska markörer mellan svenskhet och icke-svenskhet. Vidare belyses potentialen i att utgå ifrån elevers erfarenheter här och nu och att se möjligheterna med ett antirasistiskt, kritiskt perspektiv på etnicitet. Därmed föreslås att undervisning om värdegrundsfrågor på språkintroduktion behöver bryta med idén om en föreställd normativ svenskhet och skifta från ett monokulturellt till ett interkulturellt perspektiv för att öka elevers möjligheter till delaktighet och inkludering.

Recent decades have seen much interest in racial and ethnic differences in drug response. The most emblematic example is the heart drug BiDil, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2005 for "self-identified blacks." Previous social science research has explored this "racialization of pharmaceutical regulation" in the USA, and discussed its implications for the "pharmaceuticalization of race" in terms of reinforcing certain taxonomic schemes and conceptualizations. Yet, little is known about the racialization of pharmaceutical regulation in the USA after BiDil, and how it compares with the situation in the EU, where political and regulatory commitment to race and ethnicity in pharmaceutical medicine is weak. We have addressed these gaps by investigating 397 product labels of all novel drugs approved in the USA (n = 213) and the EU (n = 184) between 2014 and 2018. Our analysis considered statements in labeling and the racial/ethnic categories used. Overall, it revealed that many labels report race/ethnicity demographics and subgroup analyses, but that there are important differences between the USA and the EU. Significantly more US labels specified race/ethnicity demographics, as expected given the USAs greater commitment to race and ethnicity in pharmaceutical medicine. Moreover, we found evidence that reporting of race/ethnicity demographics in EU labels was driven, in part, by statements in US labels, suggesting the spillover of US regulatory standards to the EU. Unexpectedly, significantly more EU labels reported differences in drug response, although no drug was restricted to a racial/ethnic population in a manner similar to BiDil. Our analysis also noted variability and inconsistency in the racial/ethnic taxonomy used in labels. We discuss implications for the racialization of pharmaceutical regulation and the pharmaceuticalization of race in the USA and EU.