GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS:

This interesting article from Wired discusses how the pandemic is re-introducing us to the importance of "where."

"The pandemic is redefining our relationship with space. Not outer space, but physical space. Hot spots, distance, spread, scale, proximity. In a word: geography. Suddenly, we can’t stop thinking about where. ... [I]n an era when we can fly anyplace, learn anything online, order just about everything from Amazon, and use Google Earth to zoom in on faraway lands, we can get lulled into thinking that our spatial reality amounts to little more than an afterthought. ... We’re thinking about it at the smallest scale, navigating supermarket aisles or converting closets into serviceable home offices. We’re dealing with it at the regional scale, moving medical equipment from places with surplus to places with need. And we’re watching epidemiologists working at the national and planetary scale, as they race to comprehend precisely how a virus could travel so far so fast and cause such devastation. ... [N]aturally people want to know which places have the greatest disease burden and transmission rates. They want to know where the ICU shortages are, where the cruise ships are docked, where to buy masks, and where the testing kits are hiding. Our very safety now depends, at least in part, on geography."
www.wired.com/story/amid-pandemic-geography-returns-with-a-vengeance/