Author: TheConversation

By Joshua Aizenman, Professor of International Relations and Economics, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences If cities across the U.S. had moved just one week faster to shut down restaurants and businesses and order residents to stay home, they could have avoided over 35,000 coronavirus deaths by early May, new research suggests. If they had moved two weeks earlier, more than 50,000 people who died from the pandemic might still be alive. Those U.S. estimates, from a modeling study released May 20 by researchers at Columbia University, came to similar conclusions that I...

By Shelly M. Wagers, Assistant Professor of Criminology, University of South Florida As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to ravage the American public, an unsurprising story emerges: Poor communities are hot spots for COVID transmission. The death rate from COVID-19 appears to be staggeringly high among African Americans compared to whites. The Washington Post reports, for example, that while 14% of the Michigan population is black, 40% of COVID-19 deaths are among blacks. This is a familiar pattern to a social and infectious disease epidemiologist like myself. It is evidence of centuries of segregation and discrimination that have disproportionately placed...

By Shad Thielman, Lecturer in History, California State University San Marcos At some point in late April, COVID-19 claimed the life of its 58,221st victim in the United States. We do not know the victim’s name or the exact time of death, but the death was significant: It meant that the coronavirus had claimed more American lives than the entire Vietnam War. That conflict, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, resulted in the deaths of 58,220 Americans. COVID-19 surpassed that number in less than four months. Much like the nightly death counts that took place during the Vietnam era,...

By Richard leBrasseur, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director, Green Infrastructure Performance Lab, Dalhousie University The COVID-19 pandemic has altered humans’ relationship with natural landscapes in ways that may be long-lasting. One of its most direct effects on people’s daily lives is reduced access to public parks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines urging Americans to stay at home whenever feasible, and to avoid discretionary travel and gatherings of more than 10 people. Emergency declarations and stay-at-home orders vary from state to state, but many jurisdictions have closed state and county parks, as...

By Setha Low, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Geography and Psychology and Director of the Public Space Research Group, CUNY Graduate Center Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic implies many painful losses. Among them are so-called “third places” – the restaurants, bars, gyms, houses of worship, barber shops and other places we frequent that are neither work nor home. The third place is a concept in sociology and urban planning that recognizes the role these semi-public, semi-private places play in fostering social association, community identity and civic engagement. In giving people a familiar setting for social interaction among regulars, they...