This book is about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human society. The current global pandemic has thrown a diverse set of entwined social, psychological, and economic disruptive impacts of human suffering on societies, groups, and individuals due to the flow on effects of not only the disease itself but massive dislocations of the everyday routines of life driven by mandated restrictions imposed by national governments. This intersecting set of experiences has evoked considerable human distress particularly in the fields of employment, education, healthcare work, and bereavement rituals. This text reviews, from existing knowledge and the research emanating in the last two years from around the world, the issues and problems faced by people and their governments.

Robert Burns, now retired in Australia, spent 40 years teaching, and researching in universities around the world in applied psychology in various Education, Psychology, Health and Business faculties. Dr. Burns is an experienced author with over 25 texts published by major publishing houses including Longmans, Sage, Allen and Unwin, Kluwer, and Addison-Wesley.