Health Care

( Tomdispatch.com ) – It feels odd to admit this, but I miss the stillness of the first few disorienting and terrifying weeks of the pandemic, when the noise and hustle of my world quieted down. In March and April of 2020, spring somehow seemed more riotously colorful and gratuitously lush. Choruses of birds replaced […]

Epidemics

The Boosted are 97 times less likely to die of Covid, as Republican Party Death Cult Kills Tens of Thousands

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United States has failed Covid. Compared to most other industrialized countries, its per capita rate of infection and death is much higher. Despite having plenty of vaccines, there has been a lag in getting them into people’s arms, especially into the arms of the most at-risk group, of those […]

Donald Trump

America’s Two Pandemics: And How They Mixed and Matched

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Imagine that you were experiencing all of this (and by this, I mean our lives right now) as if it were a novel, à la Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The famed author of Robinson Crusoe — Defoe claimed it had been written by the fictional Crusoe himself […]

Health

Is the Government Stealthily Privatizing Medicare without Telling You?

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – ALERT TO ALL ENROLLEES IN THE TRADITIONAL MEDICARE PROGRAM : The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to move all those in Traditional Medicare into a deceptively innocent “care relationship” with third party, for profit private middlemen without seniors’ knowledge or consent, and without congressional oversight. […]

Economy

160 mn. Fell into Poverty during Pandemic as 10 Wealthiest Men doubled Wealth to $1.5 Trillion (Oxfam)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The charitable organization Oxfam reports this week that 160 million people fell into poverty during the past two years of pandemic, while the richest 10 men in the world doubled their wealth from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion. The authors of the report argued that this is not simply a […]

Afghanistan

Afghans face Harsh Winter, Hunger, lack of Health Clinics: How much of it is our Fault?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The ancient Greek philosopher Bion of Borysthenes said that boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest. The United States government hasn’t placed sanctions on Afghanistan as a joke, but it certainly has done so in a blunt way, and Afghans are on the verge […]

Epidemics

Is America a Nation Coming Apart?

Tom Engelhardt

By Tom Engelhardt | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Let me start 2022 by heading back — way, way back — for a moment. It’s easy to forget just how long this world has been a dangerous place for human beings. I thought about this recently when I stumbled upon a little memoir my Aunt Hilda […]