Health Care

Coronavirus: Corporate Media ignores how Privatization of Hospitals explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for more federal assistance and a need-based system for allocating aid among the states was […]

Epidemics

People are Dying: Why are We Waiting for Medicare for All?

contributors

By F. Douglas Stephenson (The Gainesville Sun)- An old social justice chant, “Why are We Waiting,” is sung to the tune of the beautiful and inspiring Christmas carol, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The lyrics apply to the situation today: Even with the dangerous coronavirus pandemic, big insurance and big pharma continue opposing legislation for […]

Democratic Socialism

The Novel Coronavirus has a Well-Known Left-Wing Bias

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The character played by comedian Stephen Colbert, back when he was parodying Fox “News” anchors, lamented that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” The fact is, the novel coronavirus has a well-known left-wing bias. Given the hoaxes perpetrated on the American people by the Right wing for the past few […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus Proves It: We Need Medicare for All

OtherWords

By Ashar Foley | (Otherwords.org) – For decades, critics of single-payer health care have raised the menace of rationed care, long waits, and “death panels.” Now, in our collective national effort to “flatten the curve” — to slow the spread of coronavirus to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed — we are seeing all three of […]

Donald Trump

Trump, putting Profit Motive and Reelection over Public Health, Undermining Coronavirus Social Distancing Strategy

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s daily dog and pony show, which he holds at 6-8 pm every evening to catch audiences tuning in for the day’s news and reach families after supper, took a dire turn on Monday. The big cable news networks irresponsibly just turn their screens over to Trump, who spews a […]

Afghanistan

What Americans Don’t Know About the hardships of Military Families

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As each of my husband’s Navy submarine deployments came to an end, local spouses would e-mail me about the ship’s uncertain date of return. They were attempting to sell tickets to a raffle in which the winner would be the first to kiss her returning sailor. […]

Epidemics

Medical Worker on Covid-19: Struck me How Different it is when I saw Young Guy gasping out Pink Froth

ProPublica

By Lizzie Presser | – (ProPublica ) – As of Friday, Louisiana was reporting 479 confirmed cases of COVID-19, one of the highest numbers in the country. Ten people had died. The majority of cases are in New Orleans, which now has one confirmed case for every 1,000 residents. New Orleans had held Mardi Gras […]

China

Why Americans should stop Talking about “China Flu” and Learn some things from China

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – There is an old saying that politics stops at the water’s edge. Never really true, it is even less appropriate today. Domestic politics and international relations interact with each other, often in subtle or unseen ways to the detriment of us all. President Trump’s insistence on calling […]

Featured

Not Giving up on Happiness: Care of the Self and Well-Being in a Plague Year

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The specter of plague haunts our world, and it brings with it not only the ghouls of disease and death but vast economic and social uncertainty of a sort only the most elderly among us remembers (the Great Depression and World War II). My father is 90 and when I […]