Health

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Yes, once upon a time I regularly absorbed science fiction and imagined futures of wonder, but mainly of horror. What else could you think, if you read H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds under the covers by flashlight while your parents thought you were asleep? Of course, that novel was a […]

Africa

The Wealthy Countries are getting Past the Pandemic, but the Poor are in Catastrophe, which is a looming Catastrophe for the Wealthy

Tomdispatch

By Rajan Menon | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Fifteen months ago, the SARS-CoV-2 virus unleashed Covid-19. Since then, it’s killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide (and possibly many more). Finally, a return to normalcy seems likely for a distinct minority of the world’s people, those living mainly in the United States, Canada, the […]

Donald Trump

Twilight of the Pandemic? Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism or . . .

John Feffer

(Tomdispatch.com ) – I went to a birthday party recently. The celebrants greeted each other with hugs on the patio. After an outdoor barbeque dinner, we stood shoulder to shoulder around the island in the kitchen, eating cake from small paper plates. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, […]

Epidemics

A People’s Vaccine Against a Mutating Virus and Neoliberal Rule

Nicolas J. S. Davies

( Nicolas J. S. Davies) – A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) […]

Epidemics

Why was there such Resistance to the (correct) theory of Aerosol Transmission of Covid-19?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Droplets or aerosols? This was the issue that gripped pandemic politics for months. The scope of the disease and the appalling number of lives at stake constituted one reason for the intensity of the conflict. Equally important was the fact that this was and remains at least […]

Epidemics

Lest we Forget: Trump’s and Billionaires’ Covid Profiteering, Debasing Science and Death on the scale of the Civil War

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Now that we’re all unmasking and the economy seems set to roar into the 2020s, what will we remember about how disastrously, how malignantly, the Trump administration behaved as the pandemic took hold? And will anyone be held to account for it? The instinct to forget pandemics, […]

Climate Crisis

One in three heat deaths since 1991 linked to climate crisis – here’s how else warming affects our health

The Conversation

By Chloe Brimicombe and Hannah Cloke | – Since 1991, 37% of lives lost due to extreme heat globally can be attributed to climate change on average. That’s according to a new study which gathered data from 732 locations across 43 countries and calculated how often local temperatures exceeded what is ideal for human health. […]

Education

Covid-19, our Public Schools and the Real-Time Lessons of Civic Democracy

Belle Chesler

By Belle Chesler | ( Tomdispatch.com) – It seems appropriate that the 2020-2021 school year in Portland, Oregon, began amid toxic smoke from the catastrophic wildfires that blanketed many parts of the state for almost two weeks. The night before the first day of school, the smoke alarm in my bedroom went off. Looking back, […]