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Abstract This article analyzes the audio diaries of a Tibetan physician, originally from Amdo (Qinghai Province, China), now living in New York City. Dr. Kunchog Tseten describes his experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring and summer 2020, when Queens, New York—the location where he lives and works—was the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The collaborative research project of which this diary is a part combines innovative methodological approaches to qualitative, ethnographic study during this era of social distancing with an attunement to the relationship between language, culture, and health care. Dr. Kunchog’s diary and our analysis of its contents illustrate the ways that Tibetan medicine and Tibetan cultural practices, including those emergent from Buddhism, have helped members of the Himalayan and Tibetan communities in New York City navigate this unprecedented moment with care and compassion.

In the Economic Impact Payment letter to American citizens in Spring 2020, President Donald Trump wrote that “we wage total war on this invisible enemy.” Trump likely did not intend to explicitly link this to the rich theory about “total war” in military history, but this article examines the American rhetoric surrounding the war on COVID-19 to see whether it corresponds to definitions of total war in military strategic thought. The Clausewitzian origins of the idea of “absolute war” and limited war will also be examined to ascertain their relevance as a framework for understanding the American approach to the conflict with the virus. A total war strategy would have implied either mobilizing the entire population into the health sector or imposing a total national lockdown. This article examines both the strategy outlined by Donald Trump and the reality of what was undertaken by the Federal Government. The military was involved in the war effort against the virus in the U.S., but only in a logistical and financial sense. A national lockdown was never intended due to its potential adverse effects on the economy, and in any case, the Federal Government did not have the authority to impose health policy on individual states and local authorities. The result was a variety of local responses to the crisis with little federal coordination, much like what occurred with the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19. Despite its military and hyperbolic rhetoric, the Trump Administration did not choose a total war strategy. Instead, it decided to adopt a limited holding strategy that accepted human losses while protecting the economy and waiting for a Government-sponsored vaccine to save the day. Dans la lettre adressée aux citoyens américains au printemps 2020 qui accompagnait un versement censé diminuer l’impact économique de la pandémie, le président Donald Trump écrivait : « nous menons une guerre totale contre cet ennemi invisible. » Trump n'avait probablement pas l’intention d'établir un lien explicite avec la célèbre théorie de la « guerre totale » en histoire militaire, néanmoins cet article examine la rhétorique américaine autour de la guerre contre le COVID-19 pour voir dans quelle mesure elle peut correspondre aux définitions de la « guerre totale » dans la pensée stratégique militaire. Les origines clausewitziennes de la notion de « guerre absolue » et de « guerre limitée » seront également examinées afin de déterminer leur pertinence comme cadre conceptuel pour comprendre l’approche américaine dans sa lutte contre le virus. Une stratégie de guerre totale aurait impliqué soit la mobilisation de l’ensemble de la population dans le secteur de la santé, soit l’imposition d’un confinement national total. Cet article examine la stratégie exposée par Donald Trump et la réalité de ce qui a été entrepris par le gouvernement fédéral. Si l’armée a bien participé à l’effort de guerre contre le virus aux États-Unis, cet effort était uniquement logistique et financier. Un confinement national n’a jamais été envisagé en raison de ses effets négatifs potentiels sur l’économie et, de toutes façons, le gouvernement fédéral n’avait pas le pouvoir d’imposer une politique sanitaire aux différents États et autorités locales. Le résultat a été une variété de réponses locales à la crise avec peu de coordination fédérale, un peu comme ce qui s'est passé avec l’épidémie de grippe de 1918-19. Malgré son discours martial et hyperbolique, l’administration Trump n’a pas choisi une stratégie de guerre totale. Au lieu de cela, elle a adopté une stratégie d’attente limitée, acceptant les pertes humaines, tout en cherchant à protéger l’économie jusqu’à ce qu’un vaccin financé par le gouvernement vienne sauver la situation.

Abstract The global lockdowns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic forced an immediate change in the way people moved about;namely, travel was slowed from a turbulent river to a trickle In-person meetings, often involving long-distance flights, were either canceled, postponed, or shifted over to virtual modes People who were unfamiliar with online meetings quickly became acquainted with them

International audience; Have negative experiences (in particular, natural disasters) that central bankers’ have known in their early life influenced monetary policy decisions in front of the COVID-19 pandemic? We answer this question using a sample of 19 developing countries. We show that central bankers who experienced episodes of epidemics in their early life lowered interest rates faster and lower during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal experience of decision-makers has contributed strongly to explain their behavior during the crisis.

We estimate the causal effect of state-mandated business closures on economic and health outcomes in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in the US. We first show that business closures lead to a substantial drop in sales, earnings, and market values for affected firms. We then exploit sectoral variations in exposure to these restrictions across areas within the same state, and show that locking down 10% of the labor force is associated with a significant contraction in employment, but allows to reduce COVID-19 weekly infection and death rates by respectively 0.023 and 0.0015 percentage points. The findings translate into 24,000 saved lives for a cost of $115 billion. Finally, our empirical analysis suggests that the cost per life saved associated to business closures could have been significantly reduced if restrictions had targeted areas with intense workplace interactions

Face à la pandémie du COVID-19, la science de l’information se trouve confrontée à un certain nombre de nouvelles problématiques, liées aux crises d’information, auxquelles elle n’était pas préparée. Qui dit crise mondiale, crise économique, crise énergétique, changement climatique, etc... dit crise d’information, crise caractérisée par une augmentation drastique de la quantité d’informations, par une épidémie d’information i.e. une infodémie et par de nouvelles et nombreuses mauvaises conduites des pratiques informationnelles. La crise sanitaire liée à la pandémie du COVID-19 n’échappe pas à la règle: infodémie de bonnes informations médicales et sanitaires mais aussi infodémie de mauvaises informations, bonnes pratiques informationnelles mais aussi nombreuses inconduites. Habituée au registre de la vérité scientifique, la science de l’information doit affronter le registre de la post-vérité et du complotisme qui semble caractériser nos sociétés actuelles. Information-soupçon, information-dénonciation, information- mensonge, c’est, pour la science de l’information, un nouvel horizon guère réjouissant qu’elle devrait pouvoir maîtriser sans problème en mobilisant son arsenal de concepts, de méthodes, de lois, de modèles et de théories bien établis en conservant et en développant l’horizon réjouissant de l’information-vérité. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, information science is facing a number of new challenges related to information crises for which it was not prepared. Who says global crisis, economic crisis, energy crisis, climate change, etc ... says information crisis, crisis characterized by a drastic increase in the amount of information, by an information epidemic ie an infodemic and by news and numerous misconduct of information practices. The health crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception to the rule: infodemic of good medical and health information but also infodemic of bad information, good informational practices but also numerous misconduct. Accustomed to the register of scientific truth, information science must confront the register of post-truth and conspiracy that seems to characterize our current societies. Information-suspicion, information-denunciation, information-lies, it is, for the science of information, a hardly encouraging new horizon that it should be able to master without problem by mobilizing its arsenal of concepts, methods, laws, of well- established models and theories by preserving and developing the joyous horizon of information-truth.

Covid-19, climate change, flash floods, heat waves, wildfires: the present contribution originates at a moment in history when emergencies and their retinue of emergency measures proliferate, supersede and worsen (less often improve) each other, and when the side effects of one inform and transform our perceptions of the other. Between the environmental consequences of the current disease outbreak, its economic impacts on clean energy transition and the increased frequency of natural disaster...

International audience; Digital platforms have experienced pressure to restrict and regulate political ad content as a matter of national urgency. Digital ad venues therefore need to identify ads as having political content in order to police whether or not they have appropriate disclosures. However, an algorithmic approach to the categorization may hit difficulties in times of rapid change and if there is not a consensus on what a political ad actually is. We collect data on European and American ads published in the Facebook Ad Library and show that algorithmic determination of what constitutes an issue of national importance resulted in COVID-19-related ads to be disqualified because they do not have an appropriate disclaimer. Our results show that ads run by governmental organizations to inform the population about COVID-19 are more likely to be banned by Facebook's algorithm than ads run by non-governmental organizations. We suggest that this implies that governmental organizations failed to recognize that COVID-19 was a matter of national significance and that ads referring to COVID-19 required a disclaimer. We show that this primarily affects European governmental organizations' ads. It seems that Facebook's policy related to "{Social Issues, Elections or Politics}'' ads is based on US political broadcasting and political advertising rules which are less familiar to European organizations. Our results suggest that in general, most parties, falling within the political ad space have difficulty determining what might be governed by political ad policy, especially in the context of national emergencies.