Geographies of Covid-19: how space and virus shape each other

Abstract

This paper contributes to a geographically-informed preliminary assessment of the diverse and uneven immediate impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and outlines an agenda for geographical studies of its longer term effects. Intrigued by the apparent tendency of an inverse relationship between a country's health security capacities and Covid-19 mortalities, the paper explores the significance of a range of geographically situated contextual factors in the realms of the economy, governance and culture as mediators of the public health impacts of Covid-19, and questions how these realms may also be reshaped by this viral pandemic. The paper concludes with reflections on the path dependency and state centrality of pandemic response, and the potential postpandemic reconfiguration of state-market-society relationships.

The Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on Postsecondary Teaching and Learning

“…Use the pandemic as a learning focus. Viewed through the various lenses of different subfields of geography or through the key concepts of a particular geography course, geographers can contribute to our understanding and mitigation of the multiscalar impacts of COVID-19 (Chung, Xu, and Zhang 2020). This can "convey the qualities of geography that capture its distinctive benefits as a subject of study" (Bednarz, Heffron, and Huynh 2013, 19).…”

The changing climates of global health

“…The virtues of off-shoring industrial production have been put into question, as some countries seek to renationalise the production of masks, hand-sanitisers, ventilators and vaccines. 30 ‘Vaccine nationalism’ remains a present threat to the ability to expand access across the world. 31 …”

“…It has also called into question the ways in which pandemic preparedness is measured and understood in high-income settings. 30 47 …”

State power and the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Finland

“…The combination of the health security capacity (according to the Global Health Security Index) of Finland (Nuclear Threat Initiative & The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 2019) and the COVID-19 mortality rate, signals that Finland belongs to the group of states with high health security capacities and a relatively low COVID-19 mortality rate (cf. Chung, Xu, and Zhang 2020). As such, Finland differs from some of its European counterparts, notably including Sweden.…”