Health Care

By Michael Head | – Israel has been one of the focal points of the pandemic in 2021 owing to its rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. By late February, authorities had administered at least one dose to 50% of the population, with much of Israel’s immunisation programme using Pfizer vaccines. Society then in effect reopened […]

Epidemics

America’s Lost Causes: Misty-eyed Nostalgia for Bounty Hunters, Slave-Holding and Wife-beating

H. Scott Prosterman

We have a conflagration of “Lost Causes” in America. Some people in the South still revere the Confederate leaders who betrayed the United States during the Civil War. Now much of the South is wrapped up in another “Lost Cause” a series of destructive myths – the fiction that the election was stolen from Donald […]

Climate Crisis

Top 5 Health Dangers of Climate Emergency that are far more Pressing than Covid Pandemic (- 230 Top Medical Journals)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Some 230 medical journals carried an editorial on Sunday, “Call for Emergency Action to Limit Global Temperature Increases, Restore Biodiversity, and Protect Health.” In my view, the editorial buried the lead by putting this sentence two-thirds of the way down and by not giving it its own paragraph: “Rises above […]

Anti-Vaccination

Demented DeSantis denounces “Hysteria” over Florida Hospitals Filling up with Covid-19 Victims, rejects Masks, Vaccine Mandates

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – Just like the noble from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who read so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become the knight-errant Don Quixote to revive chivalry and serve his nation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis similarly has lost his mind and portrayed himself […]

Anti-Vaccination

Republican Governors have gone too Far in Banning Local Mask, Vaccine Mandates

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – With the Delta variant of Covid 19 now producing escalating case counts and hospitalizations, talk among pundits has turned to the possibility of a federally imposed vaccination mandate. Many of these discussions and debates have revolved around familiar albeit simplistic dichotomies, such as voluntary choice versus government […]

Children

As Florida’s cases Spike to Unprecedented 21,683, Ron “Satan” DeSantis wants to Kill your Kids

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jeffrey S. Solocheck at the Miami Herald reports that Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Friday issued a royal decree forbidding school districts to require that pupils wear a mask and threatening to cut funding from any that defied him. DeSantis has also banned Florida municipalities from putting in renewed mitigation […]

Displaced and Refugees

Refugees and Asylum-Seekers are at high risk of COVID-19 infection, but low priority for vaccines

The Conversation

By Yvonne Su | – ( The Conversation ) – In June, the G7 pledged 870 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, or COVAX, to help it meet its two billion vaccine goal for lower- and middle- income countries by the end of 2021. The global vaccine-sharing initiative is pooling funds and […]

Anti-Vaccination

It is Time to Call Republican Rejection of Vaccines and Masks what it is: Selfish

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Washington Post reports that the rate of coronavirus infections is twice as high in Trump-voting counties as in Biden-voting ones. And ABC News reports that the US now has the highest average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the world.. Only about 57% of Americans ages 12 and […]

Health Care

Why we need to stop Warehousing the Mentally Ill in Jail: Only Private Prison Corps. Profit

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – By essentially rejecting the provisions of the U.S.Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, a very well designed 1963 Kennedy era program entitled, “Action for Mental Health” and other attempts to trim mental health budgets and services, many states and localities have opted to spend the same dollars […]