When I first started preparing for this issue of the CDJ in February 2020, little did I imagine that the editorial would be written from my kitchen table because Ireland was in lockdown. Stories about the terrible impacts of the Coronavirus on East Asia were circulating in our media, but it still seemed possible to wallow in our own complacency. That illusion, like so many others, has now been shattered. The CDJ readership is diverse and international, but wherever we are physically located we are becoming familiar with a terrifying and, at the time of writing, still unpredictable globalising force—Covid-19. The pace and scale of infection, the lives lost or shortened, the havoc wrought in public health systems, the depth and degree of restriction on movement, each of these consequences is unfolding in its own locally and nationally specific ways. Describing this as the ‘defining health crisis of our time’ the World Health Organization warns that ‘this is a global crisis that requires a global response’ (WHO, 2020). Behind the simple truth of that statement, however, lies a complex and troubling reality: local encounters with this crisis, as with so many others, are being mediated by profound inequalities in power, resources and visibility.