The Covid-19 pandemic is global in terms of its spread, restrictions on personal freedoms and economic crises. However, striking differences have been observed in mortality, rates of transmission, policies, and beliefs and behavioural responses, in relation to Covid-19 in different societies and groups. The interplay between a cultural context and the experience and behaviours related to Covid-19 are thus germane to its understanding as it is a disease spread by social contact and managed at least in part through social interventions. Friedler states that we are in many ways the architects of our own pandemics. According to her, wet markets that represent heightened risk for novel pathogen behaviours and host crossovers due to their capacity to link sociocultural and eco-biological networks act as biocultural hubs. These markets exist because of their cultural value (e.g. valued social interaction, beliefs that local products are healthy, cultural value of traditional medicines derived from wild animal products). The timing of the Covid-19 outbreaks appears to have intimate cultural links, e.g. the Spring Festival in Wuhan, China and the festival season in India acted as super-spreader events.
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