Health

How Trump broke America: Economy plummets historic 33%, Covid Deaths at 1500/ day, and 40 mn could lose Homes

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s refusal last winter to pull out all the stops to mount an effective national coronavirus response has broken the legs of America. On Wednesday, over 1500 coronavirus deaths were reported nationwide, a tally not seen since May. Over 150,000 Americans have died of the disease, and the prospect is […]

Epidemics

The Virus That’s Really Killing Americans? Greed and Corporate Profiteering

Jim Hightower

( Otherwords.org ) – Health care giants are taking COVID-19 relief money while cutting jobs and paying CEOs millions. By Jim Hightower | July 29, 2020 The holy mantra of health professionals was coined about 2,500 years ago by the Greek physician Hippocrates: “Do no harm.” Of course, that was before corporate healthcare took charge […]

Epidemics

The New Isolationism and the Distrustful Citizen: Covid-19 and the end of Geopolitics

John Feffer

( Tomdispatch.com) – I don’t trust you. Don’t take it personally. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a friend or a stranger. I don’t care about your identity or your politics, where you work or if you work, whether you wear a mask or carry a gun. I don’t trust you because you are, for the […]

Epidemics

Is the Coronavirus deflating the Far Right?

The Conversation

By Georgios Samaras | – In recent years, far-right political parties in Europe have capitalised on crises to build their support bases. Many have made it to positions of power as a result of these efforts. The financial crisis of 2008, the refugee crisis that began in 2014 and the ongoing debate around climate change […]

Authoritarianism

The Worst Possible Leader in a Pandemic: Trump’s Authoritarianism is all about Him

Jill Richardson

( Otherwords.org ) – The Trump administration is apparently undertaking its latest effort to make 2020 more of a Kafkaesque nightmare than it already is. Yes, we’ve got murder hornets and a swarm of flying ants that can be seen from space over in Ireland, but maybe the scariest plague of the year is the […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey: how President Erdoğan is using coronavirus to clamp down further on dissent

The Conversation

By Balki Begumhan Bayhan | – Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has always made use of crises to consolidate its power. The coronavirus has been no exception. The regime has cracked down on opposition and attempted to undermine its effectiveness, while endeavouring to legitimise the rule of the […]

Epidemics

Essential Work suddenly Valued during Pandemic: Why does it Pay so Little, Cost so Much?

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In two weeks, my partner and I were supposed to leave San Francisco for Reno, Nevada, where we’d be spending the next three months focused on the 2020 presidential election. As we did in 2018, we’d be working with UNITE-HERE, the hospitality industry union, only this time on the campaign to […]

Health Care

Can we afford Medicare for All? The Truth is, we can’t afford not to have it

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida — In the US, 30 million people have no health insurance, and the per capita cost of health care is far higher than it is in other countries. On top of this, the recent COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have caused the greatest losses in health insurance enrollment in U.S. history: 5.4 […]

Epidemics

Taxpayers are Funding Coronavirus Vaccines, but Big Pharma will Profit

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The business press is full of stories about the race for a Covid—19 vaccine. The corporations that succeed in cracking the biological mystery stand to make billions, and the success of the vaccine will likely “open up” the economy. What receives less attention, however, is the question […]