The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential.

COVID-19 大流行引发的变革海啸使社会发生了一系列连锁危机。与更具暂时性和空间限制的灾难不同，这一流行病在一年多的时间里持续在时间和空间上蔓延，留下了异常广泛的二级和三级危害。在全球范围内，与其他危机不同的是，这场大流行病的异常情况几乎影响了我们生活的方方面面。这场流行病加深了现有的不平等，并造成了与社会孤立、监禁、非自愿被排除在劳动力市场之外、经济机会减少、工作场所的生死风险以及一系列新出现的数字、情感和经济鸿沟相关的新脆弱性。与此同时，许多处境不利的个人和群体因恐惧和焦虑、错误信息以及危机政治化的影响而遭受了与这一流行病相关的不成比例的困难。其中许多现象都会有一个我们才刚刚开始理解的长尾巴。尽管如此，该研究还在多个方面提供了韧性的证据，包括灵活的组织反应、紧急的沟通实践、自发的团结和希望的力量。虽然我们不知道后 COVID-19 世界会是什么样子，但这里的学术研究告诉我们，该病毒尚未耗尽社会的适应潜力。