Mental Health

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The CDC now estimates that there have been 1,045,389 excess deaths since January 1, 2020, because of COVID-19. PBS estimates that roughly 1,100,000 Americans have died in all US wars in history. That is, the death toll from COVID-19 is just about as great as the toll of all our […]

Education

Crisis in the Schools: A Return to a Normal That Was Never Good Enough

Belle Chesler

( 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 […]

Conspiracy Theories

Why our Democracy is Ailing: Another Grim winter for our Unmasked, Unvaccinated, Disputatious, Confrontational, Conspiratorial, and disturbed Country

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Whether the pandemic that’s swept the world started from a bat or not, as 2021 ends, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all far battier than we were when it began. In my neighborhood at least, as this year draws to a close, that old Lone Ranger line, “Who was […]

Bangladesh

Bangladesh Cyclone: Mental Health Distress Shows Devastation of Climate Emergency

The Conversation

By Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson | – Over the past decade, there has been growing recognition of climate-induced loss and damage – such as the destruction of homes or buildings after a flood. However, economic losses and damages have received far more attention than their non-economic counterparts. These non-economic losses and damages cannot be measured in monetary […]

Authoritarianism

Brazilian Senate Panel urges Pres. Bolsonaro be Charged with Crimes against Humanity for killing 150K by worsening Pandemic

The Conversation

By Matt Williams | – A Brazilian congressional panel has recommended that President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” over his alleged bungling of the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The near-1,200 page report, formally presented on Oct. 20, 2021, holds Bolsonaro culpable for worsening a crisis that has to date killed […]

Climate Crisis

Top 5 Health Dangers of Climate Emergency that are far more Pressing than Covid Pandemic (- 230 Top Medical Journals)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Some 230 medical journals carried an editorial on Sunday, “Call for Emergency Action to Limit Global Temperature Increases, Restore Biodiversity, and Protect Health.” In my view, the editorial buried the lead by putting this sentence two-thirds of the way down and by not giving it its own paragraph: “Rises above […]

Mental Health

Moral Injury and Forever Wars: The after-action Military Suicides Americans don’t Want to Hear About

Tomdispatch

By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This summer, it seemed as if we Americans couldn’t wait to return to our traditional July 4th festivities. Haven’t we all been looking for something to celebrate? The church chimes in my community rang out battle hymns for about a week. The utility poles in my neighborhood […]

Anti-Vaccination

It is Time to Call Republican Rejection of Vaccines and Masks what it is: Selfish

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Washington Post reports that the rate of coronavirus infections is twice as high in Trump-voting counties as in Biden-voting ones. And ABC News reports that the US now has the highest average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the world.. Only about 57% of Americans ages 12 and […]

Health Care

Why we need to stop Warehousing the Mentally Ill in Jail: Only Private Prison Corps. Profit

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – By essentially rejecting the provisions of the U.S.Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, a very well designed 1963 Kennedy era program entitled, “Action for Mental Health” and other attempts to trim mental health budgets and services, many states and localities have opted to spend the same dollars […]