Health Geographies And The Covid 19 Pandemic

This volume provides a critical response to the COVID-19 pandemic showcasing the full range of issues and perspectives that the discipline of geography can expose and bring to the table, not only to this specific event, but to others like it that might occur in future. Comprised of almost 60 short (2500 word) easy to read chapters, the collection provides numerous theoretical, empirical and methodological entry points to understanding the ways in which space, place and other geographical phenomenon are implicated in the crisis. Although falling under a health geography book series, the book explores the centrality and importance of a full range of biological, material, social, cultural, economic, urban, rural and other geographies. Hence the book bridges fields of study and sub-disciplines that are often regarded as separate worlds, demonstrating the potential for future collaboration and cross-disciplinary inquiry. Indeed book articulates a diverse but ultimately fulsome and multiscalar geographical approach to the major health challenge of our time, bringing different types of scholarship together with common purpose. The intended audience ranges from senior undergraduate students and graduate students to professional academics in geography and a host of related disciplines. These scholars might be interested in COVID-19 specifically or in the book’s broad disciplinary approach to infectious disease more generally. The book will also be helpful to policy-makers at various levels in formulating responses, and to general readers interested in learning about the COVID-19 crisis.

This volume of case studies focuses on the geographies of COVID-19 around the world. These geographies are located in both time and space concentrating on both first- and second-order impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. First-order impacts are those associated with the immediate response to the pandemic that include tracking number of deaths and cases, testing, access to hospitals, impacts on essential workers, searching for the origins of the virus and preventive treatments such as vaccines and contact tracing. Second-order impacts are the result of actions, practices, and policies in response to the spread of the virus, with longer-term effects on food security, access to health services, loss of livelihoods, evictions, and migration. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic will be prolonged due to the onset of variants as well as setting the stage for similar future events. This volume provides a synopsis of how geography and geospatial approaches are used to understand this event and the emerging “new normal.” The volume's approach is necessarily selective due to the global reach of the pandemic and the broad sweep of second-order impacts where important issues may be left out. However, the book is envisioned as the prelude to an extended conversation about adaptation to complex circumstances using geospatial tools. Using case studies and examples of geospatial analyses, this volume adopts a geographic lens to highlight the differences and commonalities across space and time where fundamental inequities are exposed, the governmental response is varied, and outcomes remain uncertain. This moment of global collective experience starkly reveals how inequality is ubiquitous and vulnerable populations – those unable to access basic needs – are increasing. This place-based approach identifies how geospatial analyses and resulting maps depict the pandemic as it ebbs and flows across the globe. Data-driven decision making is needed as we navigate the pandemic and determine ways to address future such events to enable local and regional governments in prioritizing limited resources to mitigate the long-term consequences of COVID-19.

This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of the causes and impacts of COVID-19 on populations, economies, politics, institutions and environments from all world regions. The book maps the causes, effects and impacts of the virus and describes the impact of the virus on among others health care, teaching and learning, travel, tourism, daily life, local and regional economies, media impacts, elections, and indigenous populations and much more. Contributions to this book come from the humanities, social and policy science disciplines as well as from emerging transdisciplinary fields including climate change, sustainability, health care and epidemiology, security, art, visualization, economic and social well-being, law and borderland studies. As such, this book will be a rich source of information to all those geographers, social scientists and urban and regional planners working in this field.

The last half century has witnessed two landmark events in medical history. The 1970s saw euphoria about the defeat of one of humankind's oldest disease scourges with the global eradication of smallpox. To set against this, the 2020s are experiencing the pandemic ravages of new viral diseases, of which COVID-19 is currently the most potent. But it is only the latest of a succession of threats. A Geography of Infection explores the distinctive spatial patterns and processes by which such infectious diseases spread from place to place and can grow from local and regional epidemics into global pandemics. This resource focuses initially on the local scale of doctors' practices and small islands where epidemic outbreaks are slight in the numbers infected and in geographical extent. Such local area studies raise two questions. First, how and where do epidemic diseases emerge and second, why do more diseases appear to be emerging now? To approach such questions implies a shift in spatial gear from painting epidemics with a fine-tipped local brush to an expanded palette on which doctors' practices and small islands are replaced by regional and global populations. Simultaneously, time bands are extended backwards to the origins of civilization and forwards into the twenty-first century. It eventually leads to a consideration of global pandemics - both historical (for example, plague, cholera and influenza) and contemporary (HIV/AIDS and COVID-19) and examines the ways the spread of infection can be prevented. All chapters are extensively illustrated with full-colour diagrams and maps - some of which are in colour for the first time. Bringing together the authors' collective 150 years of experience in research, mapping, and writing on spatial aspects of medical history, this is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the spread, control, and eradication of epidemic and pandemic diseases.

Despite advances in modern medicine, the power of plagues to terrify, disrupt and bring huge swings in morbidity and mortality in their wake remains potent. A Geography of Infection explores the spatial mechanisms by which infectious diseases, such as measles and influenza, can develop into epidemics and pandemics.

This book provides the first wide-ranging account of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in two contrasting island regions - the Caribbean and the Pacific - and in several islands and island states. It traces the complexity of effects and responses, at different scales, through the first critical year. Written by a range of scholars and practitioners working in the region the book focuses on six key themes: public health; the economies (notably the collapse of tourism, the revival of local agriculture and fishing, and the rebirth of self-reliance, and even barter); the rescue by remittances; social tensions and responses; public policy; and future ‘bubbles’ and regional connections. Even with marine borders that excluded the virus all island states were affected by COVID-19 because of a considerable dependence on tourism – prompting urgent challenges for governance, economic management and development, as small states sought to balance lives against livelihoods in search of revitalisation or even a ‘new normal’.

This book describes the spatial and temporal perspectives on COVID-19 and its impacts and deepens our understanding of human dynamics during and after the global pandemic. It critically examines the role smart city technologies play in shaping our lives in the years to come. The book covers a wide-range of issues related to conceptual, theoretical and data issues, analysis and modeling, and applications and policy implications such as socio-ecological perspectives, geospatial data ethics, mobility and migration during COVID-19, population health resilience and much more. With accelerated pace of technological advances and growing divide on political and policy options, a better understanding of disruptive global events such as COVID-19 with spatial and temporal perspectives is an imperative and will make the ultimate difference in public health and economic decision making. Through in-depth analyses of concepts, data, methods, and policies, this book stimulates future studies on global pandemics and their impacts on society at different levels.