The geography of the US’s mishandling of COVID‐19: A commentary on the politics of science in democracies

Schrager, Benjamin

doi:10.1111/geoj.12363

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“… Democratic insitutions and leaders and their support We expect that the pandemic will not have grave long-term effects on established democracies, the repercussions of the pandemic can aggravate the situation in countries that are already experiencing democratic erosion, and the long-term economic effects of the pandemic may be more detrimental to non-democratic governance. Schrager (2021) [ 116 ] Essay article Problematic trends that hinder the capacity for democracies to respond to present and future crises. Democratic legitimacy of scientific expertise COVID-19 is new, but it intersects with the vexing challenges that confront democratic governance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

Sorsa,

Kivikoski

2023

BMC Public Health

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Background The resilience of democracy is tested under exogenous shocks such as crises. The COVID-19 pandemic has recently tested the resilience of democratic institutions and practices around the world. Aim The purpose of this article is to scope the early research literature that discusses democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic. We review scientific journal articles published during the first two years of the pandemic. We ask three research questions in scoping this body of literature: (1) what are the key topic areas of all published research that associates itself with both democracy and COVID-19, (2) what kinds of conceptual and theoretical contributions has research literature that more specifically discusses democracy under the pandemic produced, and (3) what are the impacts of democracy to the pandemic and vice versa according to empirical research? Methods The scoping review methodology draws on systematic literature search strategies, computational methods, and manual coding. The systematic Web of Science search produced 586 articles for which we conducted a Correlated Topic Model. After technical and manual screening, we identified 94 journal articles that were manually coded. Results The early research on democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic offers a versatile body of scholarship. The topic modeling shows that the scholarship discusses issues of crises, governance, rights, society, epidemiology, politics, electorate, technology, and media. The body of papers with conceptual and theoretical contributions has offered new insights on the difficulties, possibilities, and means to maintain democracy under a pandemic. Empirical research on democracy’s impact on the COVID-19 pandemic and vice versa varies in terms of methodology, geographical scope, and scientific contributions according to the direction of influence studied. Democracy appears to have a significant impact on some aspects of policy responses and epidemiological characteristics of the pandemic. In most parts of the world, the scope, franchise, and authenticity of democracy narrowed down due to the pandemic, albeit in most cases only temporarily. Conclusions A significant number of papers show that the pandemic has accentuated democratic backsliding but is unlikely to have undermined established democracies that have proved resilient in face of the pandemic. But empirical research has also made visible some weak signals of antidemocratic tendencies that may become more accentuated in the longer run.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

Sorsa,

Kivikoski

2023

BMC Public Health

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“…Scientific advice informed policy‐making and the many spatial approaches to the pandemic (see for instance Moisio, 2020 for Finland). This did not go unnoticed by geographers who have pointed out the responsibilities of academics in general and geographers in particular during the pandemic (DFG, 2022; Lewis & Morgan, 2021; Schrager, 2021). Spatial concepts such as borders and scales are appealing and seem straightforward to the untrained eye.…”

Section: Framing Geographical Research On Covid‐19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven geographies of COVID‐19: Reviewing geographical research agendas and concepts from a syndemics perspective

Butsch,

Everts,

Bork‐Hüffer

2024

Geography Compass

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Building upon a review of geographic research agendas and concepts related to the uneven geographies of COVID‐19, this first of three articles debates the benefits of geographic analyses to the syndemic approach and, vice versa, of a syndemics perspective to geographic analyses. The syndemics perspective was proposed by critical medical anthropologists. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the structural dimensions and processes that lead to the convergence and cascading of multiple epidemics in specific population groups. Geographers have also highlighted the intersections of multiple health or other crises during COVID‐19, when the pandemic and global health emergency coincided with and escalated existing structural inequalities produced by the climate crisis, environmental degradation, political conflicts and war, socio‐economic disparities and poverty, social divisions, racism, hatred and violence, mental health problems and stress. Geographers have mobilized concepts such as scale, territory, borders and intersectionality to unravel the uneven unfolding and consequences of the global health emergency for diverse population groups. We therefore argue that geography has a lot to contribute to the understanding of the spatial and contextual dimensions of COVID‐19 as a pandemic as well as a syndemic – but it has so far not actively employed the latter concept's analytical lens. Mobilizing the syndemics approach can contribute to more comprehensive accounts of the structural dimensions and processes that continue and cascade in pandemics.

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“…The COVID‐19 pandemic is not an exception. To consider the appropriate public health response to those more vulnerable, the spatial distribution of health outcomes and socioeconomic characteristics of the underlying population is required (Schrager, 2021 ). In this way, health inequalities can be traced and reduced through implementing localised interventions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the socioeconomic drivers of COVID‐19 mortality across various spatial regimes

Grekousis

Lü

Wang

2022

Geographical Journal

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Identifying the socioeconomic drivers of COVID‐19 deaths is essential for designing effective policies and health interventions. However, how the significance and impact of these factors varies across different spatial regimes has been scantly explored. In this ecological cross‐sectional study, we apply the spatial lag by regimes regression model to examine how the socioeconomic and health determinants of COVID‐19 death rate vary across (a) metropolitan vs. non‐metropolitan, (b) shelter‐in‐place vs. no‐shelter‐in‐place order, and (c) Democratic vs. Republican US counties. A total of 20 variables were studied across 3108 counties in the contiguous US for the first year of the pandemic (6 February 2020 to 5 February 2021). The results show that the COVID‐19 death rate not only depends on a complex interplay of the population demographic, socioeconomic and health‐related characteristics, but also on the spatial regime that the residents live, work and play. Household median income, household size, percentage of African Americans, percentage aged 40–59 and heart disease mortality are significant to metropolitan but not to non‐metropolitan counties. We identified lack of insurance access as a significant driver across all regimes except for Democratic. We also showed that the political orientation of the governor might have impacted COVID‐19 death rates due to the public response (i.e., shelter‐in‐place vs. no‐shelter‐in‐place order). The proposed analysis allows for understanding the socioeconomic context in which public health policies can be applied, and importantly, it presents how COVID‐19 death related factors vary across different spatial regimes.

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The geography of the US’s mishandling of COVID‐19: A commentary on the politics of science in democracies

Cited by 5 publications

References 13 publications

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

Uneven geographies of COVID‐19: Reviewing geographical research agendas and concepts from a syndemics perspective

Exploring the socioeconomic drivers of COVID‐19 mortality across various spatial regimes

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