Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

President-elect Joe Biden holds up a face mask as he speaks about the U.S. economy following a briefing with economic advisers in Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 16, 2020.

Under normal circumstances, an American president-elect and his team have 2 ½ months to effect an orderly transition with the outgoing administration. Intelligence is shared, potential threats are flagged, policies and operations are explained. 

But these are not ordinary times. As winter approaches, the COVID-19 pandemic is surging, and President Donald Trump continues to fight the overwhelming evidence that he lost the Nov. 3 election. His administration has yet to allow the routine transition process to start, amid concern it would signal that the president has conceded defeat.

Analysts point to the risks a delayed transition could pose to national security. But there could also be an immediate impact on fighting the pandemic, officials say. Without a formal transition, for example, the Biden team cannot access the administration’s COVID-19 data and vaccine distribution plans. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top epidemiologist, has warned of a slower rollout of potential vaccines.

President-elect Joe Biden, too, speaks of potentially severe outcomes from the delayed transition. “More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Mr. Biden said at a press conference Monday. 

To date, the nation’s COVID-19 caseload has topped 11 million people, with more than 245,000 deaths. Public health experts warn of a dark winter ahead.

“You are seeing right now a replay of the overwhelmed health care system” from earlier this year, says Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health under President George W. Bush. “People are exhausted. The first responders are out of their wits.”

Add to this a president who appears mostly focused on politics. President Trump has not attended a White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting in more than five months, task force member Adm. Brett Giroir acknowledged Sunday, though he added that Vice President Mike Pence briefs the president on the meetings. The task force last met Monday in a briefing for governors.

Carlos Barria/Reuters

President Donald Trump holds an event about "Operation Warp Speed," the joint Defense Department and Health and Human Services initiative to help speed up the search for vaccines and effective treatments for the pandemic, in the Rose Garden in Washington, Nov. 13, 2020.

What the country needs: a bipartisan situation room

Given the magnitude of the public health crisis, a joint Trump-Biden effort on COVID-19 would make sense before Inauguration Day, Dr. Zerhouni suggests. 

“A situation room [should be] created, which should be bipartisan with the current and future administration,” the former NIH director says. “That is the reasonable thing to do for the country.” 

Such a joint effort seems far from likely, given the hyperpartisan atmosphere. But Biden team members are hardly standing idly by, and have found workarounds as they prepare to take on the expected federal role – including public messaging and state coordination – in combating the nation’s worst pandemic in more than 100 years. 

Epidemiologist Kenneth Bernard notes that the Biden transition team is reaching out directly to local and state authorities. 

“That’s the only option open to them,” says Dr. Bernard, who ran offices on global health threats in the Clinton and second Bush White Houses. “The Biden team is truly nailing it, given the constraints they’ve been put under.” 

What he sees as a federal leadership vacuum in public health practice presents an opportunity for the Biden team. It gives them “a little opening to at least reach out to the states, because they know that in 60 days this is going to be the new policy director for the United States,” Dr. Bernard says.

The Biden transition team has also announced its own COVID-19 task force, populated by former government health officials, academics, and major figures in medicine. They now appear regularly on television, publicizing public health advice and presenting a counter to the controversial Trump coronavirus adviser, Scott Atlas. 

Dr. Atlas, who is a neuroradiologist and not an epidemiologist, has tweeted that masks don’t help stop the spread of COVID-19, contradicting guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Monday, Stanford University put out a statement distancing itself from Dr. Atlas, who is a senior fellow at the university’s Hoover Institution. 

Dr. Fauci, a civil servant and member of Mr. Trump’s coronavirus task force, is also ubiquitous on TV and expected to remain a key public health voice under a President Biden. 

On Tuesday, Dr. Fauci said the nation needed a more unified, national approach to combat the virus. “We need some fundamental public health measures that everyone should be adhering to, not a disjointed ‘One state says one thing, the other state says another thing,’” he said at a virtual conference.

Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, says that during a normal presidential transition, there would be lots of mutual learning on both sides, as the old team prepares to hand off to the new team.

In the case of the Biden team, a benefit is that it’s only been four years since the Democrats handed over the reins to the Trump team. Memories are that much fresher, though of course they left office before the coronavirus pandemic started. But top players in the Biden team have experience dealing with viral disease outbreaks, starting with incoming Biden chief of staff Ron Klain, who served as President Barack Obama’s “Ebola czar” in 2014 and 2015.

“Under normal circumstances, many of these meetings [of transition teams] are friendly, to a point,” says Professor Light. “The best form of transition briefing is interactive and involves mutual learning. There can be a kind of drop-your-swords thing going on.”

This time, he suspects, “that ain’t happening.”

At local level, it’s all hands on deck, every day

On the ground, in local public health departments around the country, the challenges have been the same for months, but now, amid the latest surge, it’s all ramping up again – and it’s exhausting.

“We have to be in all-hands-on-deck response mode every single day,” says Lisa Macon Harrison, public health director for Granville and Vance counties in rural North Carolina.

North Carolina public health is decentralized, which means local officials have a lot of authority and regulations vary among counties. Communication is a challenge, she says, and her department has to stay in contact with national, state, and local leaders, while also monitoring trends at each level.

“We’re doing an amazing job with the resources we have [but] we could always be doing better,” says Ms. Harrison, a board member of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “It’s hard and it’s a very long response. And that gets our folks kind of tired around the edges.”

She’s also disappointed that Americans don’t have a common, trusted source for information on public health measures.

“It’s just sad that the sanctity of life and the promotion of health is not something that feels like a unifying force for Americans,” Ms. Harrison says. “This should be easy for us to come together and decide to fight together and to keep our neighbor and our family and our friends safe. That shouldn’t end up being a political infight.”

When asked for sources of optimism, policy analysts say they hope that once there’s a presidential transition, the politics of the pandemic will fade. Even before a transition, there’s no reason good work can’t happen.

“There are people still on the Trump team, still hanging around, doing the right thing,” says Professor Light. And “my hunch is that the Biden team is way up to speed. There’s an awful lot of expertise there.”

As cries of “long live the king” echoed outside the palace walls, Sirinrat Khittichet and her mother waited in line to catch a glimpse of Thailand’s royal family. They were among thousands of yellow-clad royalists gathered on a sticky November evening in support of King Maha Vajiralongkorn during a rare walkabout in the Thai capital. 

“My family and I have always been loving and loyal to the [royal] family,” says Ms. Sirinrat. 

But she knows that not everyone shares that loyalty in a country roiled by months of youthful political protests, which is why she came out. “We want to let His Majesty and people who use vulgar words to attack him know that there are people who still love and have faith in him.”

Faith in the monarchy has been the bedrock of modern Thai identity, backed by a panopticon of propaganda and criminal punishment for criticism. The palace remains a symbol of power, spirituality, and prestige. But King Vajiralongkorn, who replaced his long-serving father in 2016, is facing unprecedented opposition from restless young Thais who have rallied across the country to demand political change, including curbs on royal power and wealth. 

While protesters insist their goal is reform, not abolition, of the monarchy, some have grown bolder and more insulting in their rhetoric; social media posts have also ridiculed the previous widely revered ruler, King Bhumibol. These taboo-breaking insults, and a recent show of disrespect toward a royal motorcade, have provoked counterdemonstrations by royalists and even calls for the military to seize power so as to protect the monarchy.

On Tuesday, police used water cannons laced with chemicals to disperse anti-government protesters who rallied outside the Thai parliament. There were also smaller clashes nearby between some protesters and supporters of the monarchy.

Behind this political struggle is a generational divide, as younger Thais shed the deference of their parents toward the monarchy and other traditional institutions. “They’re more willing to question and challenge the hierarchies that dictate who you are and what you do in Thailand,” says Tamara Loos, a professor of history and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University.

And what makes their dissent so potent is the reputation of King Vajiralongkorn as an impulsive thrice-divorced ruler who enjoys a lavish lifestyle abroad. That reputation jars with the upright ethics of his late father, whose decades of diligence and decorum endeared him to young and old, including pro-democracy activists who praised his intervention in a 1992 political crisis. 

“There’s a real moral dilemma for many Thais … who have been raised with the monarchy but are also pro-democracy and have a moral code,” says Professor Loos. “They revered and respected Bhumibol. He was regarded as a moral and ethical human being – and that’s not true of King Vajiralongkorn.”

Sakchai Lalit/AP

Pro-democracy demonstrators raise a three-finger salute, a symbol of resistance, as they gather at a junction in Bangkok, Oct. 15, 2020. A student-led campaign has shaken Thailand’s ruling establishment with the most significant push for political change in years.

Father and son

Since 1932, when absolute monarchy ended in this Buddhist kingdom, the powers of the crown have waxed and waned. King Bhumibol, who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ascended to the throne in 1946 when political power was held by the Thai military. During the Cold War, U.S. advisers sought to rebuild the Thai crown as a unifying symbol against Communism, and the king began to visit rural towns and villages, carrying a map and a camera. Photos of his visits, and stories of his efforts to develop underserved regions, are still iconic.

Historians debate his role in Thailand’s fitful democratization as the Vietnam War wound down; defenders say King Bhumibol tried to reconcile factions and promote good governance, while critics accuse him of legitimizing coups, including the 2006 overthrow of a popular elected leader. 

Still, few doubted his humble lifestyle and hardworking habits, and his death in 2016 plunged the nation into mourning. His heir, King Vajiralongkorn, a military-trained pilot, replaced him. 

King Vajiralongkorn has spent most of his reign living in southern Germany. He insisted on amending the Thai Constitution so he could legally rule from there and took personal control of a royal trust that holds an estimated $40 billion in property and assets. Last year he married for the fourth time and named another woman as his royal consort, a title not used in modern times. 

“We measure him against the backdrop of his father, and it’s so hard for him to succeed,” says Thongchai Winichakul, a Thai historian and former leftist student leader. 

He argues that even a morally impeccable sovereign would struggle to define himself, given the expansion of the monarchy under King Bhumibol and the cult of personality that emerged. 

“The monarchy is a peculiar institution anywhere in the world. It’s an institution of one person,” says Professor Winichakul, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 

Defending the crown

Last month, thousands of anti-government protesters marched to the German Embassy in Bangkok, calling for an investigation into the king’s conduct in Germany, including his tax records. German authorities have said Thai politics shouldn’t be conducted on their territory. 

Like other Thai royals, King Vajiralongkorn almost never grants interviews and his affairs are shrouded in secrecy, though his louche image has made him a curiosity to German tabloids, which have published candid photos that Thai anti-royalists have seized upon to mock him.  

During his recent walkabout here, a CNN correspondent was allowed to ask him on camera about his reaction to the protesters. “We love them all the same,” he replied. 

That’s a view that Ms. Sirinrat shares. “I think everybody has a right to protest, and everybody thinks differently. We need to listen to everybody,” she says.

She also defends the king’s overseas sojourns at taxpayers’ expense. “I think that it’s his personal affairs. Commoners like us sometimes travel abroad. We should focus on his royal duties for Thais,” she says. 

Also in the crowd that night was Suwit Thongprasert, an outspoken former monk who led an ultra-royalist faction of a protest movement in 2014 that ended in a coup. After he handed a floral garland to the queen, King Vajiralongkorn then struck up a conversation with him. Mr. Suwit said later the king had thanked him for organizing local events promoting the legacy of the royal family. 

Like other royalists, Mr. Suwit won’t discuss King Vajiralongkorn’s lifestyle. He describes the crown as “one of Thailand’s three main pillars: the nation, the religion, and the monarchy. If a pillar was for a house, and it was nibbled by termites and collapsed, the house [Thailand] would not be able to stand.”

Mr. Suwit says he plans to hold more events in villages to celebrate the monarchy, funded by donations from fellow royalists. He praises the king for spending more time in Thailand since his return last month from Germany. 

“When people are calling that they want to be closer to His Majesty, His Majesty then shows his honesty by becoming closer to the people, closing the gaps between himself and the people, and gradually unifying together. He is reforming himself,” he says. 

Shutdown ahead?

So far, calls for reform of Thailand’s military-backed government and the monarchy have fallen on deaf ears. Some fear that a political stalemate could, as in the past, end in a coup. 

Army chief Narongpan Jitkaewthae has ruled out a coup, saying politicians must solve the crisis; his predecessors issued similar denials before seizing power, including the current prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the 2014 coup. An ultra-royalist group recently submitted a petition to the government to “shut down” the country in order to end the protests. 

“People that are calling for a coup are a minority,” says Chaiyan Chaiyaporn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. If there is one, “it will not end very easily. The coup will complicate and damage the monarchy’s situation even more,” he warns. 

After the royal walkabout, with the family driven off in a motorcade, Ms. Sirinrat’s face is bathed in sweat. Her smile is undimmed as she praises the man who she says is still learning his role as king. 

“When you have a new friend, you need to give them time and chance so that you can adjust to each other. This is the same. I am giving him the time. If he doesn’t abandon us, we will not abandon him,” she says.

Staff writer Simon Montlake reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

In February, Marc Fischer heard worrying information from his business contacts at the country’s top medical schools. There could soon be a pandemic disrupting the United States, he recalls being told, and life was about to change dramatically.

Mr. Fischer, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Dogtown Media, a mobile app development company, decided that he needed to react quickly. First, he called his employees and told them that he was shutting down Dogtown’s Los Angeles office, and that everyone should work remotely for the foreseeable future.  

Then he went to Airbnb and booked a remote ranch house near Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert. He and his girlfriend, Caroline Berezina, moved to the house in March. And they haven’t been home since – at least not if “home” means the pricey Marina del Rey apartment they shared before the pandemic. Instead, after three months amid the pinyon pine and magical rock formations of the high desert, Mr. Fischer returned to Los Angeles briefly, gave the keys back to his landlord, transferred his furniture into a storage unit, and, as he puts it, “took off on the open road.”

“We’ve been going strong ever since,” he says. “We have covered 3,000 miles of distance since June.”

Courtesy of Marc Fischer

Marc Fischer and Caroline Berezina pose at Rainbow Curve in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado in July. “We have covered 3,000 miles of distance since June. There’s no reason to stop living this lifestyle. ... All I need to operate my business is Wi-Fi and my laptop.”

In recent months, Mr. Fischer has lived in a home overlooking the mountains in Taos, New Mexico. He stayed for a month in the Colorado Rockies. He went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Whitefish, Montana; and rural Idaho. He makes sure each home has fast internet, is within an hour of a national park, and within a half-hour of grocery stores. And he doesn’t see any reason to settle in one place – at least not now.

“It’s been a very peaceful lifestyle,” he says. “It’s very freeing. ... Technically, I’m homeless. Yet I can have my home anyplace.”

Mr. Fischer is the first to acknowledge that his situation is privileged – he has the finances and flexibility to move from one well-situated rental house to another. But he is far from alone when it comes to people reimagining what it is to be “at home” during the pandemic, and not even particularly unique when it comes to those adopting transient lifestyles. 

This summer, the Pew Research Center found that nearly a fifth of American adults either moved because of the pandemic or knew someone who did. A recent survey conducted by the AceableAgent real estate group found that 23% of respondents had decided to move within the next six months. Some of this is a result of economic trauma, as those facing unemployment look for less expensive housing. But there is also a large group that is deciding, for a host of reasons, that the way and place they live should change. 

Courtesy of Marc Fischer

Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is one of Marc Fischer's destinations. Mr. Fischer runs an app development company and can work from the road.

Rural states that early on were perceived as “COVID-19 safe,” such as Vermont and Montana, are seeing a surge of new people. Rents in previously booming cities, such as San Francisco, have plummeted as residents go elsewhere with their newly remote jobs. Short-term housing companies say they have seen a dramatic growth in people looking to relocate. And according to research conducted this year by MBO Partners, a business services company, some 10.9 million Americans – 49% more than last year – now describe themselves as “digital nomads,” people moving from location to location, unattached to a physical workplace. Another 19 million say they want to become digital nomads within the next two years.

“We are in a transition moment where our spaces and our time and our roles are in flux,” says Michelle Janning, professor and chair of sociology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. “People are challenging the way things were.”

Although still a tiny group, these new nomads are emblematic of larger, pandemic-era forces shaking up American domestic life. Once a fairly niche community of primarily millennial and Generation Z workers, often in the gig economy and jetting between low-cost international destinations, digital nomads are now becoming part of mainstream culture, according to Dr. Janning. 

Their peripatetic lifestyle shows a lot about the way Americans are fundamentally rethinking their sense of work and home – and about the challenges and inequalities that may follow. 

Courtesy of Marc Fischer

While working from the road, Marc Fischer stopped at Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

***

The only reason Wes Todd and his wife, Megan, lived in San Jose, California, was because of his office. Mr. Todd is a software engineer, and before the pandemic he went to work every day. Ms. Todd ran her own business from home, sewing and selling children’s clothes, and also took care of the couple’s bubbly, 20-month-old daughter.

Neither had relatives in the area, and while they had some nice acquaintances, neither felt particularly attached to the city. They mused sometimes about what it would be like to have a more mobile lifestyle. Mr. Todd had even brought up the idea of traveling around the country in a recreational vehicle. But those were fleeting thoughts, ideas quickly suppressed amid the reality of everyday life and routine.

Then, with the pandemic, Mr. Todd’s office shut down. His work shifted entirely to home. For two months, the family sheltered in place, walking around the same neighborhood block day after day. Finally, one weekend, Mr. Todd recalls, they turned on a television nature show and started watching gorgeous drone footage of the California coast. They realized how much they missed traveling.

“We were like, ‘Hey, what are we doing here?’” he recalls. Two weeks later they bought a truck and trailer, gave their landlord notice, and started planning a new life that would be totally mobile. 

Courtesy of Megan Todd

Megan and Wes Todd hike with their daughter in Yosemite National Park in California in July.

That was four months ago. Since then they have lived in their new 40-foot RV, driving across the country with stops in Dallas; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and eventually the East Coast. They have stayed away from crowds, but have deepened their connections with those they know best, visiting people they weren’t otherwise able to see because of pandemic-related travel restrictions.

Mr. Todd still works his 9-to-5 job, but at a standing desk he sets up outside the trailer, connecting to the internet through his cellphone. They expect to continue this way for at least another year or two, assuming Mr. Todd’s work remains remote. 

“It feels like home at this point,” Ms. Todd said recently from their RV, which at the time was parked outside Washington, D.C. “I don’t miss California. The moving around doesn’t affect me as much as I thought it would.”

Chris Gifford, operations director of Ready.Set.Van., a new company that advertises “super comfortable, highly functional off-grid adventure vans,” says he has encountered couples with similar stories. 

Business has exploded during the pandemic as families look for new ways to vacation. But he also estimates that around 1 of every 8 vans he sells is going to a customer planning a more nomadic lifestyle. 

“We’ve seen a huge uptick in ... people who live normal lives but who spend three to six months out of the year driving around the country because their workplaces now allow it,” Mr. Gifford says.

***

The shift to remote work in the U.S. has been dramatic and sudden. Nearly half of the workforce is still entirely out of the office, according to researchers. But there are clear socioeconomic divides reflected in who gets to work at home. 

Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, has been studying this, and he says the data are stark. “There is a very straight class hierarchy,” Dr. Cohen says. “The higher-paid white-collar job people are working from home.”

Dr. Cohen has also found an educational and racial breakdown. Workers still physically tied to their workplace are, on the whole, less educated and less white than the group that is working remotely. They are also more likely to lose – or have lost – their jobs.

He sees another divide as well. Although some families are newly connecting with neighbors during the pandemic, he says many white-collar remote workers are continuing to build lives that are relatively disconnected from a particular place. He calls this a “translocation identity,” in which switching cities or neighborhoods has little impact on their friends, media consumption, distance from family members, and social causes. Their sense of neighborhood isn’t tied up in a physical neighborhood. They are – and can be – more mobile.

“People are living in their communities in very different ways,” he says.

This virtual neighborhood, which has only increased during the pandemic, was already a hallmark of digital nomad existence, says Beverly Thompson, a sociology professor at Siena College in New York who is writing a book about digital nomads.

Although transient workers ostensibly focus their lives around travel and around new destinations, Dr. Thompson argues that location has always been primarily a backdrop for a fairly uniform culture. In her research, she found that nomads typically socialize with each other, don’t learn local languages when traveling abroad, and are rarely “part” of a place they visit.

“They don’t think of themselves as tourists,” she says. “They think they’re more sophisticated than that – that this isn’t vacation, this is their life. But they act exactly like tourists.”

Over the past few years, a number of new hospitality companies have started offering semistandardized housing for digital nomads and other workers who want a mobile lifestyle. The company Outsite, for instance, offers co-living communities and lodging across the world for “remote workers and creatives.” Rebecca Males, head of content for Outsite, said in an email that the company now sees a huge new potential market for its services – particularly for long-term stays.  

“Physical spaces will always be important for humans looking for a sense of home, this is why all Outsite Spaces have a similar ‘look and feel,’” she wrote. “It creates a sense of home for the user. We also believe people find home through the people they surround themselves with, their rituals and routines – and these can be taken anywhere.”

Yet according to Dr. Thompson’s research, digital nomads express high levels of loneliness – despite the Instagram photos that would suggest otherwise. That’s something researchers are starting to find among pandemic remote workers, as well, particularly younger workers who do not have spouses or children.

The isolation of modern remote work is what motivated Taige Zhang to create Fairytrail, a dating app geared toward remote workers. A millennial who has lived in multiple countries himself, Mr. Zhang says that finding ways to authentically connect with others within the context of a mobile lifestyle is key. 

“I’m very passionate about solving loneliness for people,” he says. “Even before coronavirus, remote workers have reported loneliness as one of their top problems. ... Now with the lockdown it’s so much worse.” 

Courtesy of Taige Zhang

“Even before coronavirus, remote workers have reported loneliness as one of their top problems. ... Now with the lockdown it’s so much worse.” – Taige Zhang, creator of a dating app aimed at remote workers, standing by Dyce Head Lighthouse near Castine, Maine

Mr. Zhang designed Fairytrail to work differently from typical dating apps. Rather than a subscription model, which critics say motivates companies to tempt users with endless potential matches to keep them on the app, Fairytrail charges one entrance fee. Mr. Zhang says his goal is to make it possible for a worker in any city to find real connection with a potential partner anywhere in the world. 

As for himself, he left his San Francisco apartment when his lease ended in June. He moved temporarily outside Philadelphia to join his girlfriend, who also works remotely. They don’t know where they will go next. It’s still open, he says.

***

Those who study the American workforce suspect that this ability to “take work anywhere” will continue – at least for a certain slice of the population. 

“This isn’t a blip where we are going to revert back to where we were before,” says Brian Kropp, chief of research for the human resources practice at Gartner, an information technology consulting firm. “This pandemic ... has created some really fundamental changes in where people do work, and how.”

His group estimates that 20% of jobs that can be done remotely will stay completely remote, while another substantial group will do their job remote part time. He also sees a shift in the nature of labor markets, where companies are more likely to hire contractors and other remote independents.

“The digital nomad labeling is certainly something that is catching on,” says Miles Everson, CEO of MBO Partners, the business services group focused on high-income independent workers. “But it is a subset of bigger trends.” 

Remote work, he says, is the result of a workforce that is moving toward a more project-based existence, with a growing number of higher-level white-collar professionals working for themselves. He calls this the “portfolio-ization of career” – the idea that workers will no longer stay at a single company, but will instead develop personalized skill sets that can match the needs of many customers. It is also connected to forces similar to those that shaped the hospitality industry, which moved from big hotel companies to individuals independently renting their houses on Airbnb. 

“With the digital nomad, we are fractionalizing the human career and the workday,” he says. 

But that’s something that worries Dr. Thompson. In her research, she saw gig-work digital nomads using the culture of freedom and exploration to mask increased financial insecurity. This came through clearly during the pandemic, she says, when many American digital nomads traveling in low-cost countries realized they couldn’t afford to come home.

“This isn’t some fancy lifestyle,” says Dr. Thompson. “These are broke young people.”

The new wave of domestic nomads, though, is more likely to have traditional full-time employment – at least for now. But that still brings its own set of challenges. For this group, the new merger of work and home has brought up a slew of new questions, from whether it’s OK to show co-workers the inside of one’s bedroom on Zoom, to how to transition from private to work life without a commute. Perhaps most important, it highlights the difficulty of managing both work and children learning at home.  

Those who thrive, says Dr. Janning of Whitman College, are people who have the control to determine where and how they are living and working. Those with the ability to shut a home-office door are in better shape than those trying to work in the kitchen next to remote-schooling children. Those evaluated on the quality of their work have a different remote work experience – and thus home experience – than those workers subject to a new host of workplace surveillance measures, such as keystroke tracking or constant monitoring by Zoom camera. 

“More people are being digital nomads now,” Dr. Janning says. “But what’s hidden in that is how this is exacerbating the differences between people. And connected to that is how much control you have, how much status you have in your employment.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Elise Willer and her husband, Justin Will, holding their 8-week-old daughter, Isabelle, walk down the road in front of their home in rural Vermont in late October.

***

Which is perhaps why, for some newly remote workers, there is a pull not toward an increasingly mobile world, but to a more traditional sense of community and home.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Vermont and other rural states have seen an influx of new residents. Some newcomers are moving into second homes, hoping to wait out the pandemic away from denser areas considered more dangerous. Others are taking the opportunity to experience a beautiful landscape and more pastoral lifestyle.

But Richard Watts, director of the Center for Research on Vermont at the University of Vermont, sees another reason for the migration.

“There’s a sense of community here, and they’re looking for community,” he says.  

Dr. Watts has been studying Vermont’s new telecommuting residents, asking both what drew them to the state initially and what might make them stay. Vermont’s level of community engagement, with its town meetings and high levels of local volunteerism, regularly turned up as an attraction. 

“They said they could be anywhere, but they wanted to have a place that’s home,” Dr. Watts says.

This was certainly true for Justin Will and his wife, Elise Willer. Before the pandemic, the two considered themselves digital nomads. Mr. Will is an entrepreneur who runs his own company, Inspired Coffee Merchants, and Ms. Willer is a mediator and conflict management consultant. They had purchased a house in Vershire, Vermont (population 743), early last year with the intention of renting it as an Airbnb property. While they knew they could always spend time in Vershire if they wanted, they had no intention of settling down there.

Then, in March, with Mr. Will in Ethiopia and Ms. Willer in Ghana for work, the two decided it would be best to return to the U.S. And they chose to make the Vershire house their home.

“We had joked about it being our zombie apocalypse house,” Mr. Will says. “It became our pandemic house.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Justin Will works at the dining room table while his wife, Elise Willer, comforts their baby girl, Isabelle. Mr. Will runs Inspired Coffee Merchants. Ms. Willer works as a conflict mediation consultant.

They were struck immediately by the friendly, local nature of their new community. They received a personal call from a representative of the state’s health department when they moved in – just to check in on them. They have signed up to get food from a community-supported agricultural group. They have had a baby daughter, Isabelle, who is getting used to a hiking backpack.   

“When you move around a lot – so really, anyone with a nomadic lifestyle – you don’t really become part of a community,” Mr. Will says. 

That doesn’t mean that his family is ready to commit to Vershire forever. They appreciate the slower, deeper nature of this way of living, but see it as something they could replicate – if they wanted.

“Home is always going to be an abstract concept for a nomad,” Mr. Will says. “But it feels more home than the places we’ve gone for a couple weeks or a couple months.”

In Disney’s historical fantasy “Mulan,” a young woman defends imperial China from hordes of invaders. Ironically, the $200 million production about women’s empowerment has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Chinese government’s own acts of oppression. 

First, “Mulan” actress Liu Yifei used social media to express support for Hong Kong police at a time when China is tightening control in the region. Soon after, it was discovered that “Mulan” contained shots filmed on location in the Xinjiang region of China, where at least 1 million ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs and Kazakhs are being held in “reeducation camps.” 

That may create an ethical dilemma for subscribers to Disney+. On Dec. 4, they will be able to watch “Mulan” without paying an additional premium to do so. But Disney is banking on viewers not paying much attention to the earlier controversy.

“Disney was deeply embarrassed,” says James Tager, author of a recent PEN America report, “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing.” But the corporation’s public relations strategy, he says, seems to be, “Let’s not talk about it and hope it goes away.” 

Western entertainment companies and celebrities have a profound soft power to influence worldwide opinion on social issues. But they’re notably silent when it comes to China. Now that Asia’s geopolitical powerhouse is becoming the globe’s biggest movie market, Hollywood works closely with Beijing and usually concedes to its censorship demands. Consumers may find it difficult to sway Hollywood to speak out against China. But awareness of the issues may encourage viewers to think through the ethics of spending their money on Hollywood products shaped by Beijing’s agenda. 

“[Consumers] probably can’t stop a company from doing what it does,” but at least they can avoid participating, says Chris MacDonald, an expert on business ethics and director of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University in Toronto. “Even if the boycott has no impact today, it may send a signal that affects the company’s behavior, or the behavior of other companies, in the future.”

Access to a major market

Observers say there’s a simple reason why the Hollywood community hasn’t spoken up in defense of the Uyghurs or in support of protesters in Hong Kong. China is on the verge of becoming Hollywood’s biggest market. But in order for studios to access millions of Chinese viewers, it has to appease the government gatekeepers. There’s another element to that quid pro quo: heeding Chinese censorship guidelines. Consultants now vet movies at the start of a project to preempt content that Beijing may deem problematic. That includes portrayals of LGBTQ characters. 

“What we need right now is unified action from Hollywood as an industry because if they do not draw the line around certain free expression principles now, that line will simply just be drawn and redrawn for them,” says Mr. Tager, deputy director of free expression research and policy at the nonprofit PEN America. 

Sometimes filmmakers’ hidden concessions to the Chinese Communist Party do make the news. Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” changed the nationality of a key character from Tibetan to Celtic because China contests Tibet’s sovereignty. And the upcoming sequel to “Top Gun” obscured the Japanese and Taiwanese flags sewn on to Tom Cruise’s iconic motorcycle jacket. (China is engaged in long-running territorial rivalry with Japan and disputes Taiwan’s de facto independence from the Chinese mainland.) Those alterations were made even though a pro-U.S. military film such as “Top Gun” is unlikely to be released in China. It’s widely believed that the Chinese Communist Party has a blacklist. No one wants to be added to it. 

“People who have spoken out are the people whose work has very little chance of ever appearing in China,” says Aynne Kokas, author of “Hollywood Made in China.” “For example, Judd Apatow, whose screwball sex comedies will never enter the Chinese market, spoke out.”

One cohort that has been outspoken is U.S. politicians. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley accused Disney’s CEO of “whitewashing” the genocide of Uyghurs. Five Republican senators also sent a letter of complaint to Netflix about its coming sci-fi series, “The Three-Body Problem,” because the Chinese author of the novels on which the series is based has defended his nation’s treatment of the Uyghurs. (Beijing has denied that the Uyghurs are abused and says that the camps are a response to violent attacks by Uyghur separatists.) Netflix responded, “We do not agree with his comments, which are entirely unrelated to his book or this Netflix show.” 

Marshaling support 

But if studios and celebrities are too afraid to speak out, where does that leave concerned consumers of pop culture? 

For Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy protesters, the answer was to type “#BoycottMulan” in large letters on a computer screen. Then he tweeted a picture of himself holding up the monitor like a digital protest sign. His more than 720,000 followers took note. 

“I was disappointed in Disney for giving special thanks to the Xinjiang government in the ‘Mulan’ movie,” says Mr. Wong, author of “Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now.” “It’s time for the Hollywood industry to realize it should not kowtow to China.”

Kin Cheung/AP

A student puts up a poster urging a boycott of the Disney film “Mulan” at the University of Hong Kong on Sept. 29, 2020.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project, a Washington-based nonprofit, has also expressed dismay over “Mulan.” Many activists say that large Western corporations such as Disney should pull out of China. But disinvestment is a complex issue.

There are other things at stake if Disney were to decide not to do business with China, says Nicole Hassoun, an ethics scholar and a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University in New York. “I don’t know what that means for Disney’s bottom line, for the number of jobs that are going to be lost for people inside China, people outside of China. But at the same time, I don’t think the mere fact that this will harm your bottom line ... gets you off the hook.” 

Disney hasn’t released the number of viewers who paid a premium to watch “Mulan” on its initial release in September. But there’s scant evidence that Mr. Wong’s call for a boycott has been widely adopted by ordinary viewers. It has, however, generated media stories. 

Victor Claar, who has taught economics at a Chinese university each summer, says it’s difficult to rally U.S. consumers for issues happening on the other side of the globe. But, he says, there are ways for consumers to make their voices heard, such as targeted donations to nongovernmental organizations. “You might be much more effective by giving, rather than trying to use your buying [power] to get bad actors in places like China to change their ways,” says Dr. Claar, the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise and associate professor of economics at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. “We need to do our best to do the right thing.”

AP

Leaders of 15 countries pose Nov. 15 for a virtual group photo after signing on to a trade bloc called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

On Sunday, 15 Asian nations signed one of the largest free-trade deals in history, covering about 30% of the world’s population. On Jan. 1, more than 30 African countries will start to implement a free-trade zone from Cairo to Cape Town. And this year, a number of Arab countries have set up economic ties with tech-savvy Israel and also decided, in response to COVID-19, to establish a food supply network.

In an era of populist backlash to globalization, these sorts of agreements aren’t suppose to happen. And with the pandemic, the disruption to the movement of people and goods has chilled the world economy. All this contributes to what The Economist calls “slowbalisation,” or less interest by nations in a dependency on global supply chains.

In the United States, hostility to the impact of globalization on workers could cause the incoming Biden administration to be as wary of trade deals as President Donald Trump. “As president, I will not enter into any new trade agreements until we have invested in Americans and equipped them to succeed in the global economy,” wrote now President-elect Joe Biden in a Foreign Affairs article last spring. He also promised a “buy American” approach to trade.

Even with the headwinds against interdependence, nations still search for trade deals. Why? A big reason is they realize domestic growth depends heavily on the flow of ideas across borders. Closing off imports of physical goods can hinder the import of intangible goods, such as the latest research in digital technologies.

“Ideas are different from all other goods in that they can be used simultaneously by any number of people,” writes a group of Stanford University scholars in the American Economic Review. “Economic growth arises from people creating ideas.”

Despite a pandemic and populist sentiments against globalization, countries need each other to build an “innovation economy.” From 2004 to 2014, the flow of knowledge accounted for about 40% of the growth in global productivity, finds the International Monetary Fund. That flow is needed now more than ever. “The unstoppable advance of digital technologies might provide a new tailwind to ensure the continuing growth in [global value chains] activity worldwide,” said economist Pol Antràs of Harvard University in a speech at the European Central Bank last week.

The new Asia trade pact is just the latest signal of a desire for progress through shared ideas rather than protectionism. The European Union is also aggressively seeking trade deals while shoring up its own success in breaking down trade barriers among its member states. The capacity to tap ideas yet underutilized or undiscovered knows no boundaries.