Health Care

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The “Spanish Flu” did not originate in Spain, but Spain had been neutral in WW I and so the Spanish press was uncensored, since the government was not worried about public morale during hostilities. The most lurid accounts of the disease, which was unusually lethal and went on to kill […]

Donald Trump

Stop Saying more have died from Coronavirus than in Vietnam: US War Killed a Million There

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The rash of headlines blaring that the coronavirus has now killed more than died in the Vietnam War betrays an incredible amnesia and national tunnel vision that takes the breath away. Implicitly, these comparisons are with the 58,220 US military personnel who died fighting in Vietnam. But somehow the over […]

Epidemics

How the Corporate Food System Is Making the Coronavirus Crisis Worse

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The global food system has been very much front and center in the COVID-19 story. Everyone, of course, is aware that hunger is closely tracking the virus as its wreaks havoc in both the global North and global South. Indeed, one can say that, […]

Donald Trump

To Stop America’s downward Spiral into the Great GOP Depression, Save the States!

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Me. (Special to Informed Comment) – Congress recently juiced up its Paycheck Protection Program with another 310 million dollar authorization. Much of the discussion centered around what businesses qualified for this assistance and whether and when Congress might be asked to provide more. Too little attention focused on larger and more immediately pressing […]

Donald Trump

The US is no Longer the World’s Science Leader: Trump Fiddled While South Korea, Germany, China Swung into Actions

Dilip Hiro

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Historically, in hyper-crises, local and global systems can change fundamentally. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit first China and then the rest of the globe, the question of whether the American imperial era might be faltering was already on the table, amid that country’s endless wars and with the world’s most capricious […]

Epidemics

Iran fails to contain COVID-19 as internal political clashes prevent a timely and unified response

Global Voices

By Ezzatullah Mehrdad | – ( Globalvoices.org) – Since the outbreak of COVID-19 started in Iran in February 2020, internal political clashes have prevented the authorities from adequately responding to the pandemic. As a result, Iran has become one of the worst affected countries: as of April 24, more than 88,000 Iranians have been infected […]

China

Trump trots out Blaming China for his own Pitiful Covid-19 Failures

Reese Erlich

The Republican Party is trying to shift blame for President Donald Trump’s disastrous coronavirus policies onto China. Chinese communists, Republican leaders claim, hid the pandemic from the public, allowing it to spread worldwide. Trump has even given credence to the conspiracy theory that China intentionally developed the virus in order to kill Americans. Scapegoating China […]

Donald Trump

Some Medieval Towns handled Plagues Better than Trump’s Unequal, Rundown America

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – King Soloman in Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us that “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” President Harry S. Truman stated that, “The only thing […]

Corruption

Trump, Inc.: How Jared Kushner is Tackling White House Coronavirus Response — Without Any Evident Experience

ProPublica

by Andrea Bernstein, WNYC | – This story was co-published with WNYC. (ProPublica) – On April 2, Jared Kushner uncharacteristically took to the podium to speak at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing. He’d been given the task, he said, of assisting Vice President Mike Pence’s Coronavirus Task Force with supply chain issues. “The president,” […]