Infectious Disease in Contemporary Society

Abstract

This paper tries to describe potential effects of COVID-19 pandemic on our society from the standpoint of human ecology, focusing on societies in developed world. Rather than discussing the direct, public health impact of disease on demographic phenomena, this paper examines the indirect effects of the pandemic on our behavior in terms of niche construction. Niche construction refers to the acts of organisms that would change environment like nest making by animals as well as photosynthesis and oxygen generation by plants. Due to our behavioral changes brought by the pandemic, such as lock down or tele-working, we are facing with new social environment, in which our official space/time has been shrunken while our private space/time expanded. This new social environment urges us to think about what we did not think before, to see the society in a way that we did not see it, which may nudge us to engage in new type of niche construction, type of behaviors which might not be even imagined before pandemic. Also, this new social environment can be a chance to raise awareness to the climate change.