The article focuses on the analysis of border control agencies and practices of coordinating, classifying and deploying data. The authors' primarily goal is outlining these processes, opening up possibilities for future analysis of power relations (p. 65). Our shared research question further encourages us to ask how different actors and publics could critically engage with the data practices.
Industrial meatpacking plants in countries all over the world (USA, Germany, Australia) have all become hotspots of COVID-19 (Link).
The close proximity in which workers working in such plants, the gruelling hours, the lack of access to healthcare among workers (many of whom are immigrants, refugees and POCs), are all reasons why such plants have emerged as hotspots. This Propublica article talks about the amont of preparation that such an industry has for pandemic flu outbreaks that could wipe out animals, but failed to do the same for their workers (Link). Moreover, our desire of meat (bad for the environment and unsustainable), has resulted in these companies having a tremendous amount of clout which allowed some to go over the heads of local officials as the ProPublica article reports.
A well publicised Harvard study reported an association between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and COVID-19 deaths (Link). Another recent study that consider multiple pollutants found a signficiant association between nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a traffic-related pollutant and COVID-19 deaths, and not PM2.5 (Link).
Air pollution and COVID-19 have intersected in other ways. The decreases in air pollution due to the lockdown were seen as one of the few silver linings of the crisis (Link). Although early optimism has been dashed as air pollution levels have jumped right back up in China (Link) and other places when the lockdown was lifted. Some may say that under the cover of COVID-19, the Trump administration also rolled back several environmental regulations (Link), and it is unclear yet what the long-term effects of such rollbacks will be.
Air pollution is also a carrier of COVID-19 (Link), and researchers have been investigating the transmission of the virus by simulating mundane activities such as speaking in the elevator and even flushing a toilet.
Some of the other ways however, in which air pollution and COVID-19 will intersect are at infrastructure such as warehouses, which we will see increase as more and more people move to shopping online. Already in the recent pasts of the building of massive warehouses have been challenged for environmental justice reasons, as they tend to be built in poor, minority communities and result in heavy freight traffic, which in turn burdens such communities with increased pollution (Link1, Link2). Amazon employees themselves have documented the nature of siting of warehouses (Link), and it is likely to become an even more fraught site of contention as we move forward.
This study sought to establish the prevelance and corelation of intimate partner violance victimization in the six months before and after Hurricane Katrina. The studies conducted showed the following results:
The percentage of women reporting psychological victimization increased from 33.6% to 45.2 %.
The percentage of men reporting psychological victimization increased from 36.7% to 43.1%
Reports of physical victimization increased from 4.2% to 8.3% for women, but were unchanged for men.
The studies also showed that various socioeconomic standings from before the storm had significant impacts on how intimate partner violance increased after the storm.
This article was published throught the National Institute of Public Health's Public Access database. The NIH makes all of the peer reviewed articles and studies that it funds available to the public on this platform "to advance science and improve public health."
The data for this study were collected as part of a larger, population-based, representative study of persons living in the 23 southernmost counties of Mississippi prior to Hurricane Katrina. This is not a new or inventive way of studying this issue, as a representitive study of a population is one of the classic ways social research is conducted.
According to Google Scholar, this study has been cited 21 times in various papers on the topics of mental health in the face of disaster and studies on domestic violance.
Data from this study could be an indicator to public health officials of a new, possibly overlooked, aspect to health in the aftermath of a major disasterm and could be used to create new programs or policies to combat this in the future.
This study is primarily about vulnerable populations, showing that in areas where people have been effected by major disasters, domestic violance increases, especially in households with lower overall socioeconomic status.
This study was funded by the National Institute of Health, which is why it was made available through their public access database.