• Preprint close
• Mémoires en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication close
• Hyper Article en Ligne - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société close
• COVID-19 close

Two types of methods currently make it possible to analyze the proximity of living things or viruses: automatic classification and phylogenetic trees. Automatic classification makes it possible to assess the distances between certain sequences of related genomes in order to establish the relative proximity of the elements that carry them. Phylogenetic trees are schematic representations of the evolution between different related species based on their genetic and physical similarities. Viruses are biological species that consist of nucleic acid sequences. They are subject to a wide range of evolutionary changes, including mutations in their sequences. The ability of these to accumulate changes through mutations or recombination with other species gives rise to new viral lines. The data available today make complex a definitive attribution of the SARS-Cov-2 species, at the origin of the CoVid-19 pandemic, and make it also difficult to answer the question of its origin. Certain peculiarities of the virus in particular cast doubt on its natural origin.; Deux types de méthodes permettent actuellement d’analyser la proxi- mité des vivants ou des virus : la classification automatique et les arbres phylogé- nétiques. La classification automatique permet d’évaluer la distances entre certaines séquences de génomes apparentés afin d’établir la proximité relative des éléments qui les portent. Les arbres phylogénétiques sont des représentations schématiques de l’évolution entre différentes espèces apparentées en fonction de leurs similitudes génétiques et physiques. Les virus sont des espèces biologiques qui comprennent des séquences d’acides nucléiques. Ils sont sujets à un large éventail de changements évolutifs, y compris des mutations de leurs séquences. La capacité de celles-ci à accu- muler des changements par mutations ou recombinaison avec d’autres espèces donne naissance à de nouvelles lignées virales. Les données dont on dispose aujourd’hui rendent complexes une attribution définitive de l’espèce SARS-Cov-2, à l’origine de la pandémie CoVid-19, et permettent difficilement de répondre à la question de son origine. Certaines particularités du virus laissent notamment planer un doute sur son origine naturelle.

After a brief introduction to viruses and their characteristics, here we are more specifically interested in Coronaviruses and the origins of SARSCoV2 as well as its genetic lineage. From the study of the abundant international literature existing on the question, as well as a thesis and a dissertation in Chinese medicine describing severe atypical pneumopathies in people who worked in a mine infested by bats in southern China (Mojiang, Yunnan, 2012), it appears that the virus extracted from this mine could have played a role in the birth of the pandemic. Originally named by the Wuhan Virological Institute (WIV) with the acronym RaBtCoV/4991, it was later renamed RaTG-13 and presented, without this identity being reported, in a WIV publication subsequent to the appearance of the pandemic. However, this virus is known to be the closest to SARS-CoV-2 to date. This information, as well as the real pathologies and the death of 3 of the 6 miners from Mojiang, which the director of the concerned laboratory of the WIV initially concealed, then was forced to recognize, are, like it or not, facts. Although the connection is difficult to establish between the events of Mojiang and the appearance of the pandemic due to SARS-Cov-2, due to the time lag and the difficulty of identifying the chain of contaminations, it seems that pneumopathies of Mojiang are fairly comparable to the forms that we will experience later in the CoVid-19 epidemic. In addition, the genetic strangeness of SARS-CoV-2, which makes it practically more adapted to the penetration of humans than any other species that could serve as an intermediate host, leaves some doubt as to the operations that may have been carried out. at the WIV in the pre-pandemic period. When we add to this the ban on entering the Mojiang mine, the withdrawal of an essential database from the WIV, the refusal to communicate laboratory notebooks and personnel bio-security files, and, in general, the lack of transparency on the part of China and the establishment of an unreasonable delay of one year before a very supervised visit to the Wuhan laboratory could be carried out by representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO), it is clear that we are faced with serious presumptions of withholding essential information concerning the origin of the pandemic. Subsidiarily, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 revives the problem of the dangerousness of new techniques for anticipating or preventing pandemics, in particular by gain in function and, more generally, in the safety of the laboratories where they are developed.; Après une brève introduction sur les virus et leurs caractéristiques, nous nous intéressons ici plus spécifiquement aux Coronavirus et aux origines du SARSCoV2 ainsi qu'à sa filiation génétique. De l'étude de l'abondante littérature internationale existant sur la question, ainsi que d'une thèse et d'un mémoire de médecine chinois décrivant des pneumopathies atypiques sévères chez des personnes ayant travaillé dans une mine du sud de la Chine infestée de chauves-souris (Mojiang, Yunnan, 2012), il ressort que le virus extrait de cette mine pourrait avoir joué un rôle dans la naissance de la pandémie. Primitivement nommé par l'Institut Virologique de Wuhan (WIV) avec le sigle RaBtCoV/4991, il a été plus tard rebaptisé RaTG-13 et présenté, sans que cette identité fût signalée, dans une publication du WIV postérieure à l'apparition de la pandémie. Or ce virus est connu comme étant le plus proche, à ce jour, du SARS-CoV-2. Cette information, ainsi que les pathologies réelles et la mort de 3 des 6 mineurs de Mojiang, que la directrice du laboratoire concerné du WIV a d'abord cachées, puis a été contrainte de reconnaître, sont, qu'on le veuille ou non, des faits. Bien que la filiation soit difficile à établir entre les événements de Mojiang et l'apparition de la pandémie due au SARS-Cov-2, du fait du décalage temporel et de la difficulté d'identifier la chaîne des contaminations, il semble que les pneumopathies de Mojiang soient assez comparables aux formes qu'on connaîtra plus tard dans l'épidémie CoVid-19. De plus, l'étrangeté génétique du SARS-CoV-2, qui le rend pratiquement plus adapté à la pénétration des êtres humains que de toute autre espèce qui pourrait servir d'hôte intermédiaire, laisse planer un doute sur les opérations ayant pu être effectuées au WIV dans la période pré-pandémique. Quand on ajoute à cela l'interdiction d'entrer dans la mine de Mojiang, le retrait d'une base de donnée essentielle au WIV, le refus de communiquer les cahiers de laboratoire et les dossiers de bio-sécurité du personnel, d'une façon générale, le manque de transparence de la part de la Chine et l'établissement d'un délai déraisonnable d'un an avant qu'une visite, très encadrée, du laboratoire de Wuhan ait pu être menée par des représentants de l'Organisation Mondiale de la Santé (OMS), il est clair qu'on se trouve en face de présomptions sérieuses de dissimulation d'informations essentielles concernant l'origine de la pandémie. Subsidiairement, l'émergence du SARS-CoV-2 relance le problème de la dangerosité des nouvelles techniques d'anticipation ou de prévention des pandémies, notamment par gain de fonction et, plus généralement, de la sécurité des laboratoires où elles s'élaborent.

The year 2021 marked the 200th anniversary of the 1821 Revolution against the Ottomans, which eventually led to the formation of the modern Greek state. In order to celebrate the momentous occasion, a special committee called Greece 2021 was formed to organize the national festivities of the bicentenary commemoration in March 2021. Greek businesswoman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, best known as the president of the bidding and organizing committees for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, served as the head of Greece 2021. Many prominent business people, mainstream academics, cultural figures, and historians participated in the committee. For the right-wing government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis that organized the celebration, as well as for the economic elite connected to it, this was a great opportunity to stage a series of events that would boost its popularity and occupy the news agenda. But things didn't go as expected because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the social, economic and political tensions that it triggered. The majority of the planned events were cancelled, leaving plenty of room for the dissemination of controversies around the 1821 bicentenary in social media that largely countered the official agenda. In this paper we propose an original method combining large scale network and lexicometric analysis in order to link identifiable communities of Twitter users with the main discursive themes they used around the 1821 revolution bicentenary. This in order to distinguish the political and cultural issues and cleavages within Greek society that were made visible on Twitter on the occasion of this event.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised discussions on ethics for individual and social resilience. This paper dissects the cognitive biases and heuristics, affective influences and social and cultural factors that impact COVID-19-related risk judgments and compliance with protective behaviors. The analysis shows that these factors may distort people’s mental models of risk—including their individual and shared moral values—as well as their confidence and trust related to distinct stakeholders involved, such as government, science, the health system, and vaccine manufacturers. This has led us to an innovative articulation between risk education and communication on the one hand and the resilience of moral values, mental models of risk and trust on the other hand. The objective is to increase people’s understanding and acceptance of authorities’ recommendations to enhance social resilience, not only during the pandemic but also in view of future disasters. We conclude by discussing the need for a framework that integrates the resilience of ethics and ethics of resilience for disaster management, which should include cultural and societal aspects.

This paper questions whether firms’ internet connectivity and adoption helped them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on 31,387 firms from 39 developing and developed economies, our results stress that businesses using website before the crisis showed higher absorption capacities than other firms during the crisis. The positive role of website use was mainly through the adoption of coping strategies, in particular home-delivery services, online sales or remote work. In contrast, the positive effect played by the prior use of internet is not explained by better access to external public (government support) or private (bank loan) financial resources. If prior internet use had a role on the resilience of firms, this is not the case for internet access. A negative effect of firm survival and labour adjustments is indeed found, but further analysis shows that this finding is explained by the mediating effect of 4G coverage on COVID policies’ stringency, suggesting that these policies were more effective in places with better internet coverage.

The article introduces the approach of economics and sociology of conventions (in short EC) as a neopragmatist institutionalism in the field of economics and sociology of health. For EC, conventions are regarded as institutional logics of valuation, valorization and coordination, and EC emphasizes the empirical plurality of orders of worth and values, actors rely on and institutions are built on. Especially health, health care and its institutions are closely linked to value issues and norms. Because of the pluralism of possible value systems and orders of worth, tensions and critiques are an important empirical phenomenon to be addressed in the health care system. The contribution sketches main positions and perspectives of EC in the analysis of values, medical professions and ethics, of datafication, quantification and classification (related to health and health care institutions), of social inequalities, as well as in the analysis of health policies and health capitalism. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences are discussed from the standpoint of EC, finally social trends and perspectives in times of the pandemic are outlined.; Cet article est l’introduction du numéro spécial de la revue Historical Social Research (46, 2021) consacré aux apports du courant de l’Economie des conventions dans le domaine de la santé. L’article présente l'approche de l'économie et de la sociologie des conventions (en abrégé EC) comme un institutionnalisme néopragmatiste dans le domaine de l'économie et de la sociologie de la santé. Pour l’EC, les conventions sont considérées comme des logiques institutionnelles d'évaluation, de valorisation et de coordination et l’EC met l'accent sur la pluralité empirique des ordres de valeur sur lesquels les acteurs s'appuient et sur lesquels les institutions sont construites. En particulier, les soins de santé et leurs institutions sont étroitement liés aux questions de valeurs et aux normes. En raison du pluralisme des systèmes de valeurs et des ordres de valeur possibles, les tensions et les critiques sont un phénomène empirique important à prendre en compte dans le système de soins de santé. La contribution esquisse les principales positions et perspectives de l’EC dans l'analyse des valeurs, des professions médicales et de l'éthique, de la quantification et de la classification des données, des inégalités sociales, ainsi que dans l'analyse des politiques de santé et du capitalisme sanitaire. De plus, la pandémie COVID-19 et ses conséquences sont discutées du point de vue de l’EC.

La crise du COVID-19 a mis en évidence la carence de l'assurance des pertes d'exploitation, en cas de pandémie de dimension mondiale. De telles pandémies sont des événements de nature systémique, et c'est ce qui les distingue des autres risques catastrophiques comme les catastrophes naturelles ou les accidents industriels majeurs. Ce caractère systémique rend impossible leur mutualisation par les mécanismes usuels d'assurance ou de réassurance. Face à ce défi, la capitalisation, jusqu'ici limitée à l'assurance-vie ou à la prévoyance, offre des perspectives nouvelles au risk management des entreprises, avec un rôle important et nouveau pour le secteur de l'assurance.

AIMS. To determine the contribution of social distancing and face mask wearing in the prevention of COVID-19 infections in Argentina. METHODS. Attendance to the funeral of ex-soccer star Diego Maradona was estimated by the area occupied by the mourners and their density. The people congregated to celebrate the America's Cup victory was deduced mainly from TV ratings. The proportion of individuals wearing or not face masks was calculated from photographs taken at both events. The COVID-19 epidemiological data used was released by the Argentinean Ministry of Health from March 3 rd 2020 to August 31 st 2021. RESULTS. We estimated that Maradona's funeral was attended by approximately 250,000 mourners. Approximately 5.083.958 followed by television the America's cup final in Buenos Aires alone. Extrapolating to the whole country suggests that over 4 million individuals congregated in person to celebrate the victory. The percentage of individuals not wearing face masks at the funeral was 54.0% ± 5.2 % and at the soccer victory celebrations 84.5 % ± 6.9 %, both estimates with a confidence of 99%. Daily COVID-19 infections in Buenos Aires remained at less than 5,000 per day during 30 days before-as well as during 24 days following-the funeral. New infections in Argentina remained less than 21,000 during 10 days before as well as 30 days following the soccer cup celebrations. CONCLUSIONS. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 median incubation is 5.1 days, the time periods following Maradona's funeral and the America Soccer Cup celebrations provided ample time for COVID-19 to flare up if significant contagion would have proliferated amongst the crowds. The lack of an increase in COVID-19 infections after two independent and large gatherings with people in close proximity and limited wearing of face masks, raises questions about any beneficial effect of social distancing and of mask wearing during the pandemic.