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Accepted Paper:
Epidemiology and anthropology: exploring the link between kinship and Covid-infection in northern Italy
Patrick Heady
Barbara Pieta
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
We discuss what can be gained when Covid-mortality figures from northern Italy (February-April 2020) are related to ethnographic and statistical data on local patterns of social interaction, including intergenerational co-residence and the localisation of marriage and other social and economic ties
Paper long abstract:
Covid-19 prevention policies are often based on models which– because of their tendency towards large-scale aggregation- do not give enough consideration to the local patterns of social interaction which may strongly influence the air-borne transmission of the virus. This insensitivity of the current models to local patterns of sociability poses a risk of not only inaccurate/too generalized prognosis but also of unrealistic containment measures.
In this presentation, we take a closer look at models of Covid-mortality distribution in northern Italy in the first weeks of the 2020 pandemic outburst. We will show what can be gained when the mortality figures are related to ethnographic and statistical data on local patterns of social interaction, including intergenerational co-residence and the localisation of marriage and other social and economic ties. Building on quantitative data from two large-scale studies on kinship and community behaviour in Europe (KASS and SHARE) as well as on ethnographic data on solidarity patterns in other communities in North Italy, we argue that the extremely high levels excess mortality in the rural communities surrounding Bergamo in the first weeks of the pandemic, can be partly explained by the ease of inter-generational transmission within multi-generational households, reinforced by socially mediated re-transmission within the same local community.
While the discussed example aims to be only descriptive and not conclusive, it suggests the relevance of anthropological knowledge, including classical kinship theory, to the epidemiological debates on Covid and beyond. The talk will conclude with a discussion on challenges and benefits of combining ethnographic and statistical methods.