Epidemics

(Tomdispatch.com ) – I went to a birthday party recently. The celebrants greeted each other with hugs on the patio. After an outdoor barbeque dinner, we stood shoulder to shoulder around the island in the kitchen, eating cake from small paper plates. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, […]

Epidemics

A People’s Vaccine Against a Mutating Virus and Neoliberal Rule

Nicolas J. S. Davies

( Nicolas J. S. Davies) – A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) […]

Epidemics

Why was there such Resistance to the (correct) theory of Aerosol Transmission of Covid-19?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Droplets or aerosols? This was the issue that gripped pandemic politics for months. The scope of the disease and the appalling number of lives at stake constituted one reason for the intensity of the conflict. Equally important was the fact that this was and remains at least […]

Epidemics

Lest we Forget: Trump’s and Billionaires’ Covid Profiteering, Debasing Science and Death on the scale of the Civil War

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Now that we’re all unmasking and the economy seems set to roar into the 2020s, what will we remember about how disastrously, how malignantly, the Trump administration behaved as the pandemic took hold? And will anyone be held to account for it? The instinct to forget pandemics, […]

Education

Covid-19, our Public Schools and the Real-Time Lessons of Civic Democracy

Belle Chesler

By Belle Chesler | ( Tomdispatch.com) – It seems appropriate that the 2020-2021 school year in Portland, Oregon, began amid toxic smoke from the catastrophic wildfires that blanketed many parts of the state for almost two weeks. The night before the first day of school, the smoke alarm in my bedroom went off. Looking back, […]

Epidemics

Can President Biden’s planned Waiving of Covid Vaccination Patents: begin a grassroots movement against Big Pharma?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – When the Biden Administration announced it would no longer oppose suspension of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) standards regarding production of COVID vaccines and therapies, there was joy in the world health lobby and anguish in the big pharma camp. Understandable as these reactions […]

Epidemics

Pfizer and Big Pharma need to waive Patents on Covid-19 Vaccine to Save the World

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – It is a familiar story. A Pharma giant sells life- saving vaccine , which costs no more than 7 dollars a dose, to most nations at almost 20 dollars per shot. Knowing that unseemly profits in the midst of a global pandemic may elicit outrage and perhaps […]

Epidemics

Why We Forget Epidemics and Why This One Must Be Remembered

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – The second Moderna shot made me sick — as predicted. A 24-hour touch of what an alarmed immune system feels like left me all the more grateful for my good fortune in avoiding the real thing and for being alive at a time when science had devised a 95% effective […]

Epidemics

Science also Wants Jim Jordan to Shut his Mouth– it isn’t Just Rep. Maxine Waters

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan chomped on to Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday like a rabid dog and spewed foam and spittle while prattling on about people being deprived of “liberty” during the pandemic. He also managed to show complete disrespect to the chairman of the session, Rep. Jim Clyburn, […]