Health

By Cyrus Sinai and Rob Fetter | – There’s hope that some industrialised countries will achieve near-universal vaccination against COVID-19 in the coming months. Yet the effort to vaccinate even the most essential workers in developing countries has only just begun. By current estimates, achieving herd immunity (to current strains) will require at least 75% […]

Epidemics

Israel’s Discriminatory Vaccine Push Underscores Need for Action on behalf of Palestinians

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch Statement – Item 7 General Debate ( Human Rights Watch ) – As millions of Israelis slowly return to normalcy, with the majority of citizens vaccinated, millions of Palestinians just a short distance away in the occupied territory return to lockdown, with the prospect of mass vaccination nowhere in sight. The Israeli […]

Democratic Party

Why we Must pass The Medicare for All Act

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – March 17, 2021, was a very bright day in the history of single-payer health insurance and public health in the USA. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D, WA) and Debbie Dingell, (D., MI) introduced the modern MEDICARE FOR ALL ACT of 2021 (H.R. 1976) in Congress. M4A 2021 is new […]

Epidemics

The Sports Pages of Death: Life in a Wounded and Wounding Land

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s one of the things I now do every morning. I go to the online Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and check out the figures there — global coronavirus cases and deaths, U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths. And I do so the way that, not so long ago, I would have opened […]

Displaced and Refugees

Yemenis face Famine of the Century and Mass Starvation unless President Biden pressures Saudis to Stop Port Blockade

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The head of the UN World Food Program, David Beasley said at a news conference this week covered by al-`Arabi al-Jadid (The New Arab) that five million out of 28 million Yemenis are in severe danger of starvation and 16 million are food-insecure. Food insecurity is a state of being […]

Epidemics

Biden’s Neoliberal American Rescue Health Plan: Covid-19 Showed us Why we Need Single Payer

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) — President Biden, the Democratic Party and America’s neoliberal vision of world order is rooted in an economic philosophy of privatization and financialization. To assure privatization goals of the 1% oligarchs, distinguished economist Michael Hudson writes that this is achieved by “conquering the brains of a country by shaping […]

Epidemics

Rich Nations are Getting Vaccines, Poor Countries Not: Which is a Big Danger to Rich Countries

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Our commercial media have followed the ups and downs of the vaccine roll out in the United States even as much less attention is devoted to the experience of poor nations. Pundits and TV anchors periodically acknowledge that lethal viruses don’t respect borders but seldom discuss the […]

Epidemics

Typical Republican: The Racism and Anti-Science behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s Lifting of Covid Restrictions

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this week lifted the Texas mask mandate and allowed businesses freely to open. Roughly half the deaths and severe illness owing to Covid-19 are among minorities, including African-Americans and Latinos, even though those two groups make up less than a third of Americans. State Sen. Borris […]