Health Care

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) — President Biden, the Democratic Party and America’s neoliberal vision of world order is rooted in an economic philosophy of privatization and financialization. To assure privatization goals of the 1% oligarchs, distinguished economist Michael Hudson writes that this is achieved by “conquering the brains of a country by shaping […]

Epidemics

Rich Nations are Getting Vaccines, Poor Countries Not: Which is a Big Danger to Rich Countries

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Our commercial media have followed the ups and downs of the vaccine roll out in the United States even as much less attention is devoted to the experience of poor nations. Pundits and TV anchors periodically acknowledge that lethal viruses don’t respect borders but seldom discuss the […]

Epidemics

Typical Republican: The Racism and Anti-Science behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s Lifting of Covid Restrictions

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this week lifted the Texas mask mandate and allowed businesses freely to open. Roughly half the deaths and severe illness owing to Covid-19 are among minorities, including African-Americans and Latinos, even though those two groups make up less than a third of Americans. State Sen. Borris […]

Epidemics

The Real Threats to America are the Pandemic and Poverty; why Give Ever More Money to the Pentagon?

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have […]

Epidemics

Covid-19 Demonstrated How This Country Fails Its Most Vulnerable: A Field Guide to Our Threadbare Social Safety Net

Rajan Menon

( Tomdispatch.com) – Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before. Between […]

Epidemics

President Biden Honors 500K Dead. He didn’t say so, but they didn’t have to Die

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden on Monday honored the deaths of 500,000 Americans from COVID-19. It is a very large number, and commentator Sanjay Gupta at CNN had tears in his eyes because, he said, “they didn’t have to die.” President Biden clearly cares about these deaths. He commemorated their lives and their […]

Epidemics

President Biden wants More Vaccine Doses Sooner: Why it is Physically Impossible before Summer

ProPublica

By Isaac Arnsdorf and Ryan Gabrielson | – ( ProPublica ) – President Joe Biden has ordered enough vaccines to immunize every American against COVID-19, and his administration says it’s using the full force of the federal government to get the doses by July. There’s a reason he can’t promise them sooner. Vaccine supply chains […]

Epidemics

Israeli Ministry of Health Study finds Pfizer Vaccine stops 89.4% of Virus transmission, Raising Hopes of Return to Normalcy: Der Spiegel

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s national health system, an artefact of its past as a country founded by socialists, has allowed the country of 9 million to vaccinate almost half of its citizens already, the most progress made by any country in the world. This accomplishment (which unfortunately excludes the five million stateless Palestinians […]

Epidemics

WHO Busts Wuhan Myths: Pandemic started with wild Animal, not Lab, and Wet Market wasn’t Ground Zero

The Conversation

By Dominic Dwyer | – As I write, I am in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after returning from Wuhan, China. There, I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Much has been said of the politics surrounding the mission to investigate the viral […]