Foreword

Abstract

It’s never be too late to wish our readers Happy New Year for 2021. May you all have strong willpower to pull through this challenging year with courage, the right consciousness and a balanced mindset!
Among the uncertainties are issues of vaccination safety and accessibility, and thus how long the intense economic effects of the pandemic will be with us, impacting people around the globe? One prediction made by Bloomberg is a K-shaped recovery resulting in a widening gap between rich and poor (www.bloomberg.com).
In a way, however, COVID-19 has been and is a great equalizer. Among the most affected countries are well-developed, world leading countries! while others, in the majority, are still the poor, underdeveloped nations. In some societies, the virus has uncovered what has been hidden under the carpet, issues of illegal gambling, and illegal immigrant workers. Now, in Thailand there is a call for migrant workers to be among the highest prioritized groups for vaccination, second only to health professionals, as they are the backbone of the country’s economy and live in poor over-crowded housing.
A promising sign is the recent inauguration of the new US president, which seems to bring a new hope to democracy, unity, and a returned focus on global & social inequality and environmental issues.
A special note before we get into what we have in this issue, is our new submissions platform for authors, which opened on January 15, 2021. I wish to thank the TCI – Thai-Journal Citation Index Centre and TSRI – Thailand Science Research and Innovation – for their kind support. We hereby express our deep empathy to all authors who experienced difficulty in their submissions using the new platform. We do hope the new EM platform [www.editorialmanger.com/abacj/] will soon offer a better system for submissions and for the journal review process.