Health

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden addressed the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, laying out his vision of the global challenges facing the United States and the world. Biden, as expected, used his speech to announce a pivot by the United States away from its 20-year “war on […]

Epidemics

Public Citizen: It Turns out Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine depends Heavily on Publicly-Financed Research

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Public Citizen recently uncovered “an agreement that the European Commission reached with Pfizer and BioNTech last November to purchase 100 million doses of the companies’ mRNA vaccine, which was developed with the support of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-vaccine-s-funding-came-from-berlin-not-washington”> government funding and U.S. taxpayer-financed technology. In the 104-page contract, Public Citizen […]

Epidemics

Israel was a leader in the COVID vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there?

The Conversation

By Michael Head | – Israel has been one of the focal points of the pandemic in 2021 owing to its rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. By late February, authorities had administered at least one dose to 50% of the population, with much of Israel’s immunisation programme using Pfizer vaccines. Society then in effect reopened […]

Epidemics

America’s Lost Causes: Misty-eyed Nostalgia for Bounty Hunters, Slave-Holding and Wife-beating

H. Scott Prosterman

We have a conflagration of “Lost Causes” in America. Some people in the South still revere the Confederate leaders who betrayed the United States during the Civil War. Now much of the South is wrapped up in another “Lost Cause” a series of destructive myths – the fiction that the election was stolen from Donald […]

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 […]

Afghanistan

Perfect Storm: Hunger stalks 14 mn Afghans, 2 mn Children, from Taliban, War, climate-driven Drought, and Covid

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) announced a few days ago that 14 million people in Afghanistan are at risk of acute food insecurity in a matter of weeks. That is about a third of the population. It is up from 11 million last spring, when the WFP and […]

Anti-Vaccination

Demented DeSantis denounces “Hysteria” over Florida Hospitals Filling up with Covid-19 Victims, rejects Masks, Vaccine Mandates

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – Just like the noble from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who read so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become the knight-errant Don Quixote to revive chivalry and serve his nation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis similarly has lost his mind and portrayed himself […]

Anti-Vaccination

Republican Governors have gone too Far in Banning Local Mask, Vaccine Mandates

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – With the Delta variant of Covid 19 now producing escalating case counts and hospitalizations, talk among pundits has turned to the possibility of a federally imposed vaccination mandate. Many of these discussions and debates have revolved around familiar albeit simplistic dichotomies, such as voluntary choice versus government […]

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 […]