A&S scholars sharing their COVID-19 expertise in the media this week

May 15, 2020 by Sean Bettam - A&S News

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our community and the world, scholars from a range of disciplines across the Faculty of Arts & Science are sharing their expertise on pressing issues in the media — from the use of location-tracking smartphone apps to the earning prospects of new graduates in a recession.

Here’s some of what A&S scholars had to say this week.

May 8, 2020

  • History professor Margaret MacMillan describes how the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by surprise in a Globe and Mail op-ed. MacMillan compares and contrasts the states of societies around the world, and their abilities to cope with the pandemic and doubts that the world can go back to the way it was before COVID-19.
  • Scot Wortley, an associate professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, comments in a Toronto Star (paywall) story on why gun violence remains high in Toronto amid the lockdown. With violence often linked to the illegal drug and firearms trade, Wortley says the closure of Canada’s border with the United States may have heightened the stakes. “Has it shrunk the illegal economy and, therefore, is there more competition for the limited resources? And in this case, are there more ruthless participants in that economy?” he asks.
  • Matti Siemiatycki of the Department of Geography & Planning and the School of Cities appears on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning to discuss how urban environments may change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re at a moment of opportunity and a moment of change and it could go one of two ways,” says Siemiatycki about transit, car ownership, the use of public spaces and the future of urban planning.
  • Department of Economics professor Philip Oreopoulos is quoted in a Vancouver Province story about both the short-term and lifelong earning prospects for students who graduate in a recession, saying that graduates lucky enough to get a job during a recession year earn 10 to 15 per cent less on average than those who graduate in better years. He also suggests that a recession may prompt new graduates to develop other skills that may alter their career trajectory completely.

May 10, 2020

May 11, 2020

  • Professor Peter Loewen of the Department of Political Science and the Munk School, comments in the National Post on the degrees to which North American political leaders have been adhering to public health guidelines during the pandemic and the impact on citizens. “I suspect that not seeing [U.S. president] Trump wearing a mask and seeing that he’s defiant around it is increasing the defiance of Republicans,” Loewen says.

May 12, 2020

  • Mel Cappe and Bob Rae, both professors at the Munk School, write an opinion piece in the Toronto Star (paywall) on the potential for continued coordination between the Canadian federal government and the provinces post-pandemic. “Canadians have rightly been impressed by the ability of Canadian First Ministers to set partisanship and regional differences aside (for the most part) and work co-operatively in dealing with the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” they write. “We can only hope the spirit of cooperation and collaboration in the acute phase of the pandemic will continue into the post recovery phase.”
  • Matti Siemiatycki of the Department of Geography & Planning and the School of Cities speaks with the Globe and Mail (paywall) about how cancelling the CNE in Toronto will impact the city. Of such annual events that make up the social and cultural fabric of cities across Canada, Siemiatiycki says, “They become the touchstones, these points in the calendar that you build your year around. In a moment where we’re really experiencing all sorts of different types of losses [this] is really just another reminder of how profound this pandemic has been and how unusual this moment is.”
  • Siemiatycki also discusses what the TTC will need to do to survive once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.
  • John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab at the Munk School, speaks to BBC News about the increased use of digital mass surveillance programs to track COVID-19 cases in Israel. “What scares me is that, at least for now, the norm is suddenly changing," he says. "People who have been [quietly] doing these things which are highly questionable are suddenly saying: 'Look, we're your saviours here.’”

May 13, 2020

  • Sean Speer, assistant professor at the Munk School, discusses the impact of the pandemic on neoliberalism politics on TVO’s The Agenda. “The COVID-19 crisis has only accelerated the need for us to have this debate about the role of markets, the role of government, and ultimately how to create the conditions for broad-based economic opportunity,” Speer says.

May 14, 2020

  • Economic historian Shari Eli, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, discusses changes in the buying behaviours of Canadian consumers in a Radio-Canada story (in French, but available in translation). Eli notes that during a recession, people tend to buy more perishable foodstuffs and cheaper essentials and restrict their purchases of durable and luxurious products. “It is difficult to predict for many people whether they will have a job and a source of income in the coming months,” she says.
  • A study by Munk School researchers Drew Fagan, Sean Speer and Ian T.D. Thomson that provides recommendations on how the Ontario government should deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic, is featured in the Toronto Star (paywall). “The immediate priority remains to minimize the public health and economic effects of the crisis,” they write in the study. “But the government must also maintain a focus on Ontario’s long-term economic recovery.”

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