Health

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have […]

Epidemics

Covid-19 Demonstrated How This Country Fails Its Most Vulnerable: A Field Guide to Our Threadbare Social Safety Net

Rajan Menon

( Tomdispatch.com) – Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before. Between […]

Epidemics

President Biden Honors 500K Dead. He didn’t say so, but they didn’t have to Die

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden on Monday honored the deaths of 500,000 Americans from COVID-19. It is a very large number, and commentator Sanjay Gupta at CNN had tears in his eyes because, he said, “they didn’t have to die.” President Biden clearly cares about these deaths. He commemorated their lives and their […]

Epidemics

President Biden wants More Vaccine Doses Sooner: Why it is Physically Impossible before Summer

ProPublica

By Isaac Arnsdorf and Ryan Gabrielson | – ( ProPublica ) – President Joe Biden has ordered enough vaccines to immunize every American against COVID-19, and his administration says it’s using the full force of the federal government to get the doses by July. There’s a reason he can’t promise them sooner. Vaccine supply chains […]

Epidemics

Israeli Ministry of Health Study finds Pfizer Vaccine stops 89.4% of Virus transmission, Raising Hopes of Return to Normalcy: Der Spiegel

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s national health system, an artefact of its past as a country founded by socialists, has allowed the country of 9 million to vaccinate almost half of its citizens already, the most progress made by any country in the world. This accomplishment (which unfortunately excludes the five million stateless Palestinians […]

Epidemics

WHO Busts Wuhan Myths: Pandemic started with wild Animal, not Lab, and Wet Market wasn’t Ground Zero

The Conversation

By Dominic Dwyer | – As I write, I am in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after returning from Wuhan, China. There, I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Much has been said of the politics surrounding the mission to investigate the viral […]

Epidemics

Whose Rights Matter in Pandemic America? Not Those of Poor Americans, That’s For Sure

Liz Theoharis

By Liz Theoharis | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In June 1990, future South African President Nelson Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress only months after being released from 27 years in a South African apartheid prison. He reminded the political leadership of the United States that “to deny people their human rights is […]

Epidemics

Israel stops Palestinians of Gaza from getting 2K doses of Russian Coronavirus Vaccine

Juan Cole

Update. On Wednesday Feb. 17, Israel finally permitted 1,000 doses into Gaza, despite an earlier temptation to play politics with the pandemic. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to AFP Arabic, Palestinian Minister of Health Dr. Mai Al-Kilah announced Monday that Israeli authorities halted a shipment of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine sent to […]