Health

By Prof. Wolfgang Preiser, Cathrine Scheepers, Jinal Bhiman, Marietjie Venter, and Tulio de Oliveira | – Since early in the COVID pandemic, the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2. This was a valuable tool to understand better how the virus spread. In late 2020, the network detected a […]

Archaeology

Pandemic History: The Great Plague of Justinian in the 500s AD was a Black Death that Shaped the Century before Islam

contributors

Research News of the University of Cambridge | – ‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th– 8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries. The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded […]

Climate Crisis

Mars Attacks Earth! And we’re the Martians in this Picture

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Who knew that Martians, inside monstrous tripodal machines taller than many buildings, actually ululated, that they made eerily haunting “ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” sounds? Well, let me tell you that they do — or rather did when they were devastating London. I know that because I recently reread H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel […]

Epidemics

COVID-19 killed more Americans in 2021 than 2020, and the Republican Party Death Cult is mostly to Blame

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The number of dead from COVID-19 in the U.S. in 2021, as of yesterday, November 21, surpassed the deadly toll of 2020. Some 771,013 Americans have died of the novel coronavirus as of this writing, according to Johns Hopkins. The CDC estimates that 385,343 people died of COVID-19 in 2020. […]

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 […]

Corruption

All Trump’s Cover-Ups: From Syria Airstrike on Civilians to US COVID Genocide

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US Founding Fathers had a cynical side. They did not think people in government could be trusted to do the right thing. They thought people often do what they can get away with. The point of James Madison’s checks and balances was not just to guard against tyranny but […]

Climate Crisis

Extreme Heat causes Heart Attacks, Miscarriages, Malnutrition, requiring Urgent steps to Curb CO2

The Conversation

By Abdu Mohiddin, Christopher Jack, Evans Kituyi, Kristie Ebi, Matthew Chersich, and Stanley Luchters | – The African continent is heating up more, and faster, than other regions in the world according to the recently released State of Climate in Africa Report. By 2030, the report says up to 118 million extremely poor people will […]

Donald Trump

In Irrational COVID Policy, is there any Difference between Republicans and Iran’s Ayatollahs?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – David Axe at the Daily Beast reports on what he says is very bad news for the US red states whose Republican governors are depending on herd immunity to get us past the COVID-19 pandemic. Some Iranian provinces have, since its beginning, reported more cases of the coronavirus than they […]

Anti-Vaccination

Your unvaccinated friend is roughly 20 times more likely to give you COVID

The Conversation

By Christopher Baker and Andrew Robinson | – As lockdowns ease in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, and people return to work and socialising, many of us will be mixing more with others, even though a section of the community is still unvaccinated. Many vaccinated people are concerned about the prospect of mixing […]