The COVID pandemic very quickly became the world’s most serious social and economic problem. This paper’s focus is on the spatial aspect of its spread, with the aims being to point to spatial conditioning underpinning development of the pandemic, and to identify and assess possible socio-economic features exerting an impact on that. Particular attention has been paid to the percentage of positive tests for the presence of the coronavirus, as well as mortality due to the disease it causes. The statistics used relate to 102 countries, with the research for each extending from the time first cases of COVID-19 were reported through to 18 November 2020. The focus of investigation has been the stochastic co-occurrence of both a morbidity index and a mortality index, with intentionally selected socio-economic variables. Results have then been summarized through the classification of countries in relation to the two indices. Highest values relate to Latin America. A significant co-occurrence of morbidity and mortality with GDP per capita has been identified, as values for the indices are found to be lower in wealthier countries. The basic conclusion is that the dependency of the pandemic on environmental and socio-economic conditioning became more complex and ambiguous, while also being displaced gradually as concrete political decisions came to be taken.

We prove that a finite group with nilpotent subgroup H and H-connected transversals is solvable. The proof depends on the classification of finite simple groups.

The assessment of assets regarding their potential for tourism development is a well-recognised aspect of quantitative geographic research. This paper confines such matters to environmental and landscape-related attributes. The methodological objective is to propose a synthetic index for holistic measurement of a complex system of assets at the local level for Poland’s rural areas, followed by its empirical verification. The natural and landscape-related potential of a given area is perceived broadly, as the aspects involved are diverse and complementary: the quality of the landscape, the value of the environment, forest cover, relief, accessibility to surface waters and local bioclimate. The cognitive advantage of this research project is attained by confronting this index against a measure of tourist movement, as well as classifying rural areas by means of combining both dimensions. A considerable number of communes in Poland are characterised by relatively high potential, albeit they are not being exploited for tourism development to a correspondingly large degree.