The social effects of COVID-19: A sociological evaluation of diagnosis, treatment and discharge periods

COVID-19 is a disease with a process from an epidemic propagated in China at the end of year 2019 and announced as 'pandemic' in March, 2020. Our knowledge about the cascading and inclusive effects of COVID-19 on almost every aspect of both individual and community life accumulates owing to scientific studies. The aim of that study is to make sociological evaluations on social components of medical issues as protection-contagion axis; interactional concepts as isolation, privacy, and stigmatization-separation experiences in and out of the hospital; economic effects; interpersonal relations. To use a qualitative study design with face-to-face (though via internet), semi-structured interviews make it possible to make discourse analyses on several social cases related with diagnosis, treatment, and discharge of COVID-19 patients, and in the final analysis to make inferences on social scope through the individual data. The originality of the study is being designed and investigated by a researcher who used the experience of both fields as a physician worked with COVID-19 patient and a sociologist familiar with sociologic thinking. The main hypotheses of the present study presuppose that; (1) the presence of social inequality related with pandemic, although at first sight seen through a perception error as being an 'equalizer'; (2) the social negative effects of strict isolation in respect to 'confinement'; (3) violation of privacy brought about the stigmatization and exclusion of patient and other family members; (4) due to solidarity arising in social relationships the sociological negative impacts of the disease diminish. The findings of that study have shown existence of several social and physiological problems related to isolation, reproduction of inequality through further economic loss among economically vulnerable population, the expansion of scope for 'public interest' concepts besides fading of the borders in privacy and unconventional excuse for that situation by the exposed individual, frequent attitude of self-exclusion, the introduction of COVID-19 into the stigma archetypes, and diversification of the solidarity examples strengthen the social division of labor. The present study considered in the scope of Health and Disease Sociology contributes to the studies on health-diseases particularly in pandemic era not from out of medical science, but as an insider observer.