Health Care

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 […]

Epidemics

Disaster Capitalism and the Real Culprit in the Italian Covid-19 Catastrophe

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein worries that the Coronavirus pandemic will provide another opportunity for neoliberal elites to impose more of their right wing agenda on a citizenry scared and confused by this mysterious and dangerous disease. Klein of course is expanding on her award winning […]

Donald Trump

America, the Vulnerable: COVID-19 and the Exposure of a Broken System

Tareq A. Ramadan

The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 (‘Coronavirus Disease’, virus name SARS-CoV-2 for ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2’), was first identified in Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, China in early December of 2019 (though a case from Nov. 17, 2019 may be the earliest according to LiveScience) and has spread across 151 countries […]

Epidemics

Will DC’s Neoliberal Model of Drug Costing Finally Kill Us All? Why is there even a debate on whether any Coronavirus Vaccine Should be Free?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Why is there even a question as to whether any Cov19 vaccine or diagnostic test kit should be free? Vaccines and diagnostic tests are essential components of any public health program, not merely conveniences to an isolated individual. When symptomatic patients are tested for a disease, indispensable […]

Epidemics

How many Iranians will die of Coronavirus because of Trump’s Economic Blockade on that Country?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Babak Dehghanpisheh at Reuters reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday that the coronavirus Covid-19 has spread to nearly all of the 31 provinces of the huge country (Iran is as big geographically as Spain, France and Germany combined, and its population rivals that of Germany at 81 […]

Epidemics

Heckuva Job, Pencie! A US ruled for and by the Rich leaves Workers at Risk for Coronavirus

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Is the United States prepared to deal with a public health emergency? At this point such an emergency seems likely, but, even if it were not, the consequence of inaction are catastrophic and must be planned for. Preparation for a national health emergency depends on two variables, […]

Health Care

The Lie of Health Care ‘Choice’

Jim Hightower

( Otherwords) – In our corporate-run health system, consumer “choices” are shaped entirely by profit-seeking monopolists. By Jim Hightower | February 19, 2020 Lyndon Johnson had a saying about special interests trying to get his support to pass some blatantly self-serving legislation: “They can’t make chicken salad out of chicken (bleep)!” Yet chicken (bleep) is […]

Climate Crisis

Congress Needs to Step up on Climate Emergency, Support Clean Energy and cut Big Oil Subsidies

Amanda Millstein

The climate crisis is here. It is real and it is hurting our health. As physicians in Northern California, my colleagues and I see how climate change is making our patients sicker every day. We see infants and children with worsening asthma due to wildfire smoke exposure. We see adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease […]