COVID‐19 is highlighting and exposing how public health and geopolitics intersect across spaces, scales, and settings. Existing literature focuses on the geopolitical determinants of health such as the allocation of foreign health‐related assistance in postcolonial spaces and the relationship between population health and the health impacts of exploiting resources for economic benefit. How populist nationalism shapes public reactions to disease has also been documented. There is a popular geopolitical dimension to how COVID‐19 is portrayed—with expertise questioned, conspiracies circulated, lockdowns contested, and mask‐wearing ridiculed. Calls to keep “foreign” pathogens and viruses out of national territory carry with them possibilities for exceptional measures, xenophobic politics, and heightened surveillance on the border and beyond. The place of the World Health Organization (WHO) within global health security remains complicated by the intersection of public health and geopolitical contexts. By using three themes, within and beyond the WHO, we explore how COVID‐19 has been productive of three geopolitical narratives: public health as emblematic of great power rivalries, the bordering of the virus, and the (surgical) facemask as power projection. Our paper concludes with an assessment of how important it is to track and trace the relationship between health and geopolitics.

中文翻译：

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不健康的地缘政治？冠状病毒时代的疾病

COVID-19强调并揭示了公共卫生和地缘政治如何在空间，规模和环境之间相交。现有文献关注健康的地缘政治决定因素，例如在后殖民空间中分配与外国健康相关的援助，以及人口健康与为经济利益而开发资源对健康的影响之间的关系。民粹主义民族主义如何塑造公众对疾病的反应。描绘COVID-19的方式具有普遍的地缘政治维度，其中包括对专业知识的质疑，散布的阴谋，对锁定的质疑以及对戴口罩的嘲笑。呼吁将“外来”病原体和病毒排除在本国领土之外，这使他们有可能采取特殊措施，仇外政治，以及加强对边境及周边地区的监视。世界卫生组织（WHO）在全球卫生安全中的地位因公共卫生和地缘政治背景的交叉而变得复杂。通过在WHO内外使用三个主题，我们探索COVID-19如何产生三种地缘政治叙事：公共卫生是强国竞争的象征，病毒的边界以及（外科）面罩是权力的投射。本文的结尾是评估跟踪和追踪健康与地缘政治之间的关系有多重要。公共卫生是强国竞争的象征，病毒的边界以及（外科）口罩是强国的象征。本文的结尾是评估跟踪和追踪健康与地缘政治之间的关系有多重要。公共卫生是强国竞争的象征，病毒的边界以及（外科）口罩是强国的象征。本文的结尾是评估跟踪和追踪健康与地缘政治之间的关系有多重要。