scholarly journals COVID-19 – A Tale of Two Cities: Seattle and Vancouver

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Ben Yuk Fai Fong ◽  
Vincent T. S. Law

The coronavirus pandemic has been affecting many countries in the world over the past six months. Nowhere sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Precautionary measures, lockdown, as well as control of crowd gathering and movement have been implemented by all governments, with the sacrifice of economic activities. It is interesting to review how things were happening in North America where the United States has been hard hit by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), scoring over two million confirmed cases and about 120 thousand deaths at the top of the list of the world. Canada ranked eighteenth with about 100 thousand cases and just about 8 thousand deaths. Both the cases and deaths per capita are lower in Canada, which shares the same border and similar culture with the United States. Seattle and Vancouver have some of the highest incomes and educational levels in both countries. These two West coast cities are only 200 kilometres apart and are near the U.S.-Canada border. They are selected for this review to study the different approaches in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott A. Beaulier ◽  
William J. Boyes ◽  
William S. Mounts

One of John Maynard Keynes's most quoted statements (1935, p. 383) is: … the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. The number of economists per capita in the United States has risen in the past few decades. At the same time, the public has become more comfortable with big government. This raises intriguing questions regarding just how economists are influencing public opinion; we are left wondering whether economists are instilling a desire in the public for more government or whether, in opposition to Keynes's statement, economists are losing influence. In this paper, we provide some answers. We find that the increased role of economists in society and in policymaking has led to an increase in favorable attitudes toward government intervention.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 961-963

This year marks the 42nd anniversary of the American Academy of Pediatrics. From its original 35 members, in this short span of years, the Academy has become a progressive, rapidly growing, vigorous group of more than 14,000 Fellows-four-fifths of all the United States pediatricians and a representative percentage of the pediatricians in Central and South America and Canada. During this interval, the Academy has consistently developed its programs and activities to advance and promote the health and welfare of children. Yet for the first 35 years we were basically an educational, disease-oriented organization, with little impact on community-oriented medical services, or on the socioeconomics of health care. Fortunately in the past several years there has been a decided change in the policies, priorities, and direction of the Academy. This is best reflected by its recent expanded goals and objectives in a complete revision of Article III, Section I of its Constitution. Even though we are still primarily disease-oriented physicians, we must not forget the problems that are deterrents to good health. We can hardly expect mcdicine to solve every social, political, and economic ill of the ghetto, suburbia, and the rural areas of our country; however, we do have an important role to play and we do have an important contribution to make in our communities. These areas, large or small and wherever they may be, will not have the same medical health and manpower needs, nor the same priorities, and will continually need our individual and collective attention. The United States has more physicians per capita than all but three or four other nations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.


2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN

The frequent use of the Vietnam analogy to describe the situation in Iraq underscores the continuing relevance of Vietnam for American history. At the same time, the Vietnam analogy reinforces the tendency to see current events within the context of the past. Politicians and pundits latch onto analogies as handles for understanding the present, but in so doing, they obscure more complicated situations. The con�ict in Iraq is not Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, but this article considers all three in an effort to see how the past has shaped, and continues to affect, the world the United States now faces.


Author(s):  
Assaf Razin

A more generous welfare state (particularly with an aging population) has financing needs that immigrants could fill. With high-skilled immigrants more likely to pay in rather than draw on the welfare state, more generous welfare states are more inclined to try to attract high skilled. Israel ranks third in the world in the number of university graduates per capita, after the United States and the Netherlands. It possesses the highest per capita number of scientists in the world, with 135 for every 10,000 citizens (compared to 85 per 10,000 in the United States). Israelis took full advantage of the immigration skill bias. When examining the index for educated émigrés, i.e., those with a college degree, the average index is 12.41 and Israel's index is more than three times higher, 41.45. Using this index, Israel is higher than Portugal and the gap between Israel and Ireland (49.09) narrows considerably.


Horizons ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 374-396
Author(s):  
William L. Portier

This article1offers an impressionistic look back over the past five decades, from 1968 to 2016, in Catholic theology in the United States. At the heart of this story are Christology, the world of grace, and their relationship. This memoir unfolds in three parts: “Running on Empty, 1968–1980”; “Jesus and the World of Grace, 1980–2016”; “Can Liberal Catholics Come Back?” It identifies the most neuralgic question left to us from this period: How is Christ related to the world of grace?


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (127) ◽  
pp. 377-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Daly

In the proclamation that was issued on Easter Monday 1916 the provisional government of the Irish Republic undertook to grant ‘equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens’ and to ‘cherish all the children of the nation equally’. It also emphasised that the Republic was ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from a majority in the past’ and referred to the support given to the Republic ‘by her exiled children in America’. The belief that the Irish nation included all inhabitants of the island was a central tenet of Irish nationalism both before and after 1922, and the numerous visits that nationalist leaders have paid to the United States from the time of Parnell and Davitt to the present testify to the importance that has been attached to the Irish overseas. In November 1948, while introducing the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, noted that ‘The Irish at home are only one section of a great race which has spread itself throughout the world, particularly in the great countries of North America and the Pacific.’


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline A. Sparks

Psychiatric drugs have been a mainstay of treatment for a range of behavioral and emotional problems over the past 6 decades in the United States and around the world. Although their use has skyrocketed, the problems they purport to alleviate have not diminished but, in fact, have increased (Whitaker, 2010a). This article summarizes current evidence for the efficacy of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and stimulants. Findings from meta-analyses, reviews, and major trials do not support widespread use of these drugs.


Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.


Significance On March 12, Cairo announced a 2-billion-dollar deal to buy advanced fighter jets from Russia. This comes against the background of new data showing that Egypt has climbed to third place in the world in a ranking of arms imports over the past five years. Impacts Diversification of Egypt’s procurement away from the United States will reduce Washington’s political leverage. The Egyptian armed forces’ prestige will be enhanced by the arms build-up. Gulf funders may exert pressure on Egypt to deploy its enhanced military muscle in support of conflicts in which they are engaged.


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