Announcing Swine Flu and the Interpretation of Pandemic Anxiety

This paper discusses the ways in which 2009 novel swine‐origin influenza A (H1N1) was announced and resonated with current pandemic anxieties. In particular, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are used as a lens through which recent pandemic anxieties can be analysed and understood. This entails a closer look at the securitisation of public health and the challenges and struggles this may have caused within public health agencies. In that light, CDC' formal entanglement with global health security and its announcement of the H1N1 pandemic are interpreted, followed by an ethnographically informed focus on various people who were engaged in the H1N1 emergency response and their practices and practical struggles in the face of pandemic anxiety.     

Electoral Behavior in the Russian Far East, 1995-2000: Contextual and Compositional Effects

A group of political scientists specializing in Russia's post-Soviet electoral behavior explores the question of whether genuinely regional effects of voting behavior can be discerned (and at what scale) by controlling for variations in compositional characteristics measured by aggregate social and economic data. The paper seeks to identify situations in which contextual effects may be operating, using a scale of analysis that is intermediate between regional (oblast)-level case studies and nationwide surveys—that of the Russian Far East macroregion. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O50, Z10. 4 tables, 40 references, 1 appendix.     

新冠肺炎对旅游业的影响：研究进展与展望

通过对Web of Science数据库中1435篇文献的梳理,回顾和评述了“COVID-19对旅游业影响”的早期研究进展。结果表明,新冠肺炎直接威胁人的生命健康,加剧了旅游者的负面情绪和感知风险,降低了旅游者的出游意愿,并改变了以往的行为模式。新冠肺炎通过旅游者在旅游目的地、旅游企业、旅游交通之间传播,从而对旅游系统产生全面、持久的影响,对全球旅游业造成史无前例的巨大冲击。同时,新冠肺炎还引发了对于旅游业发展方式和增长模式的反思,转型发展成为后新冠时代全球旅游业恢复重建的重要手段。最后,从“目标—要素—保障”视角对未来研究进行了展望。     

COVID-19 and employment relief programs: A tale of spatially blind policies for a spatially driven pandemic

We use the case of Chile to analyze the effectiveness of a spatially blind employment relief program (hereafter referred to as the LPE program) established by the Chilean government and implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chile is an interesting case because on the one hand its nonpharmaceutical interventions were spatially driven by health indicators based on small geographical areas; hence, producing sizeable regional and temporal variation of the local conditions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the LPE program was designed and implemented nationally without distinction of local labor market or pandemic conditions, and each firm could decide whether to enroll in the program. By exploiting the spatial-temporal variation of exogenously imposed lockdowns and using a difference-in-differences panel data framework, we find that the LPE program was only effective for a group of regions in the country but, more importantly, that the LPE program was less effective during lockdowns. Moreover, the requirements of the LPE program were vague and did not target specific populations or entities. Consequently, our results suggest that women, informal and small firm workers, and most economic sectors throughout the country were less able to take advantage of the benefits of this program.     

From high-touch to high-tech: COVID-19 drives robotics adoption

Abstract

Global economic and social life has been severely challenged since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 disease a pandemic. Travel, tourism and hospitality, in particular, has been massively impacted by the lockdowns used to maintain social distance to manage the disease. Robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interactions have gained an increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals, airports, transportation systems, recreation and scenic areas, hotels, restaurants, and communities in general. Humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and other intelligent robots are used in many different ways to reduce human contact and the potential spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, providing safety or security, and comforting and entertaining patients. While controversial in the past due to concerns over job losses and data privacy, the adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence in travel and tourism will likely continue after the COVID-19 pandemic becomes less serious. Tourism scholars should seize this opportunity to develop robotic applications that enhance tourist experiences, the protection of natural and cultural resources, citizen participation in tourism development decision making, and the emergence of new ‘high-touch’ employment opportunities for travel, tourism and hospitality workers.     

COVID-19 in Chihuahua,Mexico: Assessing its spatial behaviour through the inverse distance weighted interpolation technique

This study focused on the spatial evolution of COVID-19 in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Data were retrieved from governmental databases and analyzed by means of GIS, applying the inverse distance weighted (IDW) method. The period of December 2019 through November 2021 was split into eight seasons. The root mean square error (RMSE) was used to assess the reliability of the interpolations, showing acceptable values (RSME < 25). During the period, the municipalities of Juarez and Chihuahua reached the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths, Juarez being the main hotspot of contagion (37.2% of confirmed cases; 46.9% of deaths). Four waves of contagion were identified during the evaluated period, with Fall 2020 being the strongest season. Since Fall 2020, the spread of the disease was more often observed in municipalities with the highest human mobility. Although the spread of COVID-19 decreased after Spring 2021, in Fall 2021 records indicated a continuous increase in cases in the state. That could be due to a relaxation of the implementation of sanitary measures, as well as to the propagation of novel COVID-19 variants having an elevated infectious level. Geospatial techniques allowed for an understanding of the spatial spread of COVID-19 and could be useful for its control.     

Military and Maritime Evidence of Pandemic Influenza in Canada during the Summer of 1918

Analysis of archival correspondence, the daily logs of troopships transporting soldiers to Europe and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database for soldier deaths from pneumonia and influenza across Canada indicate that influenza was more common during the summer of 1918 than previously thought. Evidence of pandemic influenza so close to the outbreak of the fall wave calls into question the storyline of a mutated virus causing the emergence of the fall wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic. This highlights the significance of other host, social and environmental circumstances, many related to the First world war, that may have contributed to the severity and timing of pandemic waves in Canada.     

Lessons from COVID-19 can prepare global tourism for the economic transformation needed to combat climate change

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cessation of almost all international travel in the first half of 2020. A return to pre-pandemic growth patterns will take time and depend on the depth and extent of the recession sparked by COVID-19. The recovery phase will overlap with global efforts to deal with the evolving climate crisis. For the tourism industry to thrive in a future world it must look beyond the temptation of adopting strategies based on a return to the pre-COVID-19 normal of the past and instead seek to understand how it should respond to the emerging transformation of the global economy to carbon neutrality. Many of the lessons that emerged from the pandemic can be applied to strategies to deal with climate change. Of most interest is the success of strategies such as “flattening the curve”. Application of similar strategies plus adoption of the circular economy model to wind back Green House Gas emissions will help avert the global environmental disaster that will occur if global temperatures continue to increase. These strategies point to what a future carbon-neutral economic production system might look like, the path to which could offer the tourism industry numerous opportunities to transform from the current model that favours a high resource consumption model to one that is environmentally friendly and resource neutral.     

Ecological grief generates desire for environmental healing in tourism after COVID-19

Abstract

Tourism research is starting to take interest in the psychology of environmental distress, particularly as it relates to climate change. For both the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and the climate change movement that dominated international media in 2019, psychological parallels exist in terms of our experience of loss. As the world grapples with the pandemic and tourism grinds to a halt, stories on social media are surfacing that claim wildlife is returning to quarantined cities and that the Earth is healing itself. Much of the implicit critique of these stories is directed at the tourism industry, with two viral posts in particular supposedly documenting the ‘rewilding’ of Venice, that infamous icon of overtourism. While the popular media have been concerned primarily with the factual accuracy of these claims, what has gone largely unexplored is the apparent desire for environmental reparation that they express. The fixation on environmental healing evidenced in tourist social media can be interpreted as a response to widely-felt ‘ecological grief’, triggered by the events of COVID-19. In this context, animal reclamation of urban spaces can be identified as a motif of environmental hope that symbolises life, regeneration and resilience, the understanding of which may contribute to the project of hopeful tourism in the post-COVID-19 era.     

Pandemics,transformations and tourism: be careful what you wish for

Abstract

Disease outbreaks and pandemics have long played a role in societal and economic change. However, the nature of such change is selective, meaning that it is sometimes minimal and, at other times, and change or transformation may be unexpected, potentially even reinforcing contemporary paradigms. A comprehensive overview of pandemics and their effects is provided. This is used to help contextualise the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on tourism and government, industry and consumer response. Drawing on the available literature, factors that will affect tourism and destination recovery are then identified. Some measures will continue or even expand present growth orientations in tourism while others may contribute to sustainability. It is concluded that that the selective nature of the effects of COVID-19 and the measures to contain it may lead to reorientation of tourism in some cases, but in others will contribute to policies reflecting the selfish nationalism of some countries. However, the response to planetary limits and sustainable tourism requires a global approach. Despite clear evidence of this necessity, the possibility for a comprehensive transformation of the tourism system remains extremely limited without a fundamental transformation of the entire planet.