Epidemics

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump is insisting that schools must open normally in the fall or he will cut their funding. About 10 percent of US K-12 education funding comes from the Federal government but most of it is paid for by local taxes. The Federal portion is allotted by Congress and Trump doesn’t […]

Climate Crisis

Coal and Covid: Trump Facilitates both in a backward US as Europe makes strides against Both

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US management of the Covid-19 crisis has been horrible compared to Europe, as the famous chart makes clear. I don’t know if the bar-goers actually know how to read a chart, but that line going up is the US and that is bad, and the line hugging the bottom […]

African-Americans

Maskless in the Red Death: The Pathology of Trump’s Racism is turning our Pandemic into Negligent Genocide

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – As Donald Trump sits idly by, the nation is experiencing both a catastrophic public health collapse that has brought international humiliation as well as a convulsive, impassioned protest movement that indicts police brutality and systemic racism. Trump’s negligent response to the pandemic — morally amounting to genocide — has […]

African-Americans

How racism in US health system hinders care and costs lives of African Americans

The Conversation

By Tamika C.B. Zapolski | – As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the U.S., the virus hit African Americans disproportionately hard. African Americans are still contracting the illness – and dying from it – at rates twice as high as would be expected based on their share of the population. In Michigan, African Americans are […]

Authoritarianism

For “Safety and Happiness:” On the 4th of July, we Need a Declaration of Independence from Donald Trump

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The founding generation of Americans was deeply concerned with well-being. The Declaration of Independence says that if a government won’t provide it, it is time “to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to […]

Donald Trump

In the U.S., the Second Wave of the Pandemic Is Already Here

John Feffer

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – If the United States had quick-thinking and efficient leadership, the pandemic would have infected about 100,000 people and killed only a couple thousand. That’s the experience of South Korea, times seven to account for the difference in population. If the United States had overwhelmed but reasonably sensible leadership, the coronavirus […]

Climate Crisis

Baghdad Bob on the Potomac: Trump’s Hoaxes, from “Disappearing” Covid-19 to Climate to Russiagate

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Authoritarian regimes breed lies like rotting meat breeds maggots, and as Trump marches the United States into an imperial presidency beyond accountability, his rate of lying has become astronomical. If I just read ten a day, it would take me five and a half years just to read all 20,000 […]

Donald Trump

The Real Enemy: US Elites Squandered Trillions on War Spending and Underfunded Public Health

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington has initiated its largest spending binge in history. In the process, you might assume that the unparalleled spread of the disease would have led to a little rethinking when it came to all the trillions of dollars Congress has given the Pentagon in […]

Epidemics

History’s crystal ball: What the past can tell us about COVID-19 and our future

Ellen Amster

(The Conversation) – During this pandemic, historians have been consulted like the Oracle of Delphi. Is COVID-19 like the Black Death? The 1918 flu? What lessons of history can be applied to today? But can history show us what we want to know? In some ways, yes. In others, no. And we need to broaden […]