Epidemics

Former President Jimmy Carter’s family has announced that he is undergoing hospice care at home, a sign of his imminent passing. In his honor, I am reprinting this column with some updates. The guinea worm may be the second major human disease after smallpox to be completely eradicated. It is a parasite that you get […]

Climate Crisis

8 billion people: Four Ways Climate Change and Population Growth combine to threaten Public Health, with Global Consequences

The Conversation

By Maureen Lichtveld, University of Pittsburgh | – There are questions that worry me profoundly as a population- and environmental-health scientist. Will we have enough food for a growing global population? How will we take care of more people in the next pandemic? What will heat do to millions with hypertension? Will countries wage water […]

Climate Crisis

58% of human infectious diseases can be worsened by climate change – we scoured 77,000 studies to map the pathways

The Conversation

By Tristan McKenzie, University of Gothenburg; Camilo Mora, University of Hawaii; and Hannah von Hammerstein, University of Hawaii | – Climate change can exacerbate a full 58% of the infectious diseases that humans come in contact with worldwide, from common waterborne viruses to deadly diseases like plague, our new research shows. Our team of environment […]

censorship

Iran: Rights Defenders Sentenced for Questioning Covid Policies: Arbitrary Arrest and Unfair Prosecution

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities sentenced five prominent human rights defenders to prison on June 19, 2022, for attempting to file a legal complaint against government agencies and officials for mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should quash the convictions of the human rights defenders, which […]

Epidemics

My Pandemic in Three Acts: Dealing with the Disease that Never Seems to Leave Town

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – On New Years’ Eve 2019, Americans celebrated the advent of the roaring ‘20s with fireworks and champagne, amid ominous news alerts from China. Surely that virus would stay on the other side of the planet. I cringe at how entitled we felt then. Covid-19 has now wiped […]

Anti-Vaccination

Pandemic Anti-Rights Syndrome

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Last month, not long after Florida federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the transportation mask mandate was illegal, I flew from New York City to Miami. Videos of airplane passengers in midflight ripping off their masks and cheering with joy had already gone viral following […]

Epidemics

The Poor at the Crossroads: The First and Worst Hit by Pandemics of Every Sort

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The 54th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., just passed. Dr. King was shot down while organizing low-wage sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, he was building the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to organize America’s poor into a force to be reckoned with. In […]

Epidemics

Americans in poorer Counties have died of COVID at Double the rate of Wealthier Counties

OtherWords

By Karen Dolan | – ( Otherwords ) – As our country approaches 1 million deaths from COVID-19, it can feel impossible to wrap our heads around such a devastating figure. But it’s essential if we want to treat the pre-existing conditions that made it so deadly. In the beginning, many thought the pandemic would […]