The COVID-19 pandemic beyond health sciences: Reflections on its social determination

Abstract

This paper aims to perform a theoretical reflection on the historical-social founda-tions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The “capital worldization”, “capital-imperialism”, “space-time compression”, and “structural crisis of cap-ital” categories are conjured from the historical materialistic-theoretical matrix, outlining a course that transcends the limits of Health Sciences to understand global health, of which the COVID-19 pandemic is an expression. We then return to the field of health, when the category of “social determination of health” allows elu-cidating the bases of the pandemic studied. We show that, other elements typical of the current phase of contemporary capitalism have become universal besides the SARS-CoV-2 characteristics or the dynamics of the rapid movement of people and objects around the world, unifying the health social determination process.