Subjects Archives: Health

One key factor in spreading suspicion that the coronavirus might have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is media’s early and ongoing politicization of the World Health Organization’s investigation into the pandemic’s origins. Much of this politicization weaponizes Orientalist tropes about China being especially, perhaps genetically, untrustworthy—the sort of people who would unleash COVID-19 on the world.

Salt Lake City has ranked first for worst air quality in the world twice in the past two weeks. While poor air quality is not a new problem for Utah, the climate crisis is exacerbating the problem due to the devastating increase in wildfires caused in large part by climate change-fueled severe droughts throughout the region in the warmer months.

Instead of a health system striving to provide universal healthcare, a fragmented, profit-driven market ‘non-system’ has emerged. The 1980s’ neo-liberal counter-revolution against the historic 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration is responsible.

In recent years, the United States and its allies have unleashed a devastating blockade against Venezuela in hopes of triggering regime change.

Despite the announcements from the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that “everything is under control”, Turkey is experiencing one of the deepest crises in recent years. A conversation with Hasan Durkal.

According to this conceptual genealogy sketched by literary theorist Justin Clemens, two important homophonic variants of “Pandemick” emerged in the aftermath of the English Civil Wars.

Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua all demonstrate what a society can do when it embraces a centralized system, people over profit, and solidarity. Not only are citizens protected, but the will to fight against threats like COVID-19 is all the stronger when nations are united behind a popular and radical project.

It’s devastating. It’s scary. Because we don’t know what’s going on with this fish.’ – JOAQLIN ESTUS

Decades of public health cuts have quietly taken a huge human toll, now even more pronounced with the pandemic. Austerity programmes, by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, have forced countries to cut public spending, including health provisioning.

The perfect storm of COVID-19 and climate change, and the resulting economic damage, will most likely trigger much more social and political instability. Although substantially increased international cooperation can still avert this nightmarish scenario, the current state of global politics provides few grounds for optimism.

Cuba only needs around 30 million syringes to vaccinate its entire population–that is a million dollars. This is a tiny sum for the countries, either together or even individually, which oppose the blockade of Cuba.

In complete contrast to its founding ideals, the WHO is now captured by wealthy countries and corporations at the cost of millions of poor globally.

Survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan have a “profound role” to play in catastrophes such as the coronavirus pandemic, a leading American psychohistorian renowned for his studies of people under stress told Kyodo News in a recent interview.

One and a half years since the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil, it is possible to better evaluate some of its effects. The most visible immediate aspect of the pandemic has certainly been the sudden suspension of in-person activities and the temporary closure of schools and universities.

Diverse international groups along with the U.S. State Department have taken notice of Rodrigo Duterte’s record of killings and wanton defiance of universal norms of justice. Duterte’s regime might claim to honor the right to life, liberty, and security of persons guaranteed by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other Covenants; but its practice consistently defiles those norms. Mass media and internet platforms cannot keep up with the regime’s punitive outrages.

The current complex of COVID-induced crises fits hand-in-glove with the system’s “normal” operation. Stability has been the delusional realm of a small sliver of the Global North, awash in post-World War Two imperialism and the repeated reinvention (and re-imposition) of various plantation systems of cheap and racialized labor.

The United Nations Food Systems Summit has become one of the most controversial events of this year due to corporate take over. Civil society activists came together during the pre-summit to register their protest.

“It’s striking how similar the techniques [are] that Fox News uses to frighten people about the U.S. vaccination campaign and those that The New York Times, Reuters and others use to scare people about Chinese vaccines.” — Jim Naureckas, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

In the last dozen years after the 2008 world food price spike, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has become an inclusive forum for civil society and corporate interests to debate how best to advance food security. Unsurprisingly, CFS has long addressed food systems.

Georgina Orellano, secretary-general of the Association of Women Sex Workers of Argentina (AMMAR), says that “the pandemic has highlighted the inequality” in society and deepened the problems faced by sex workers. Sex work, which is not recognized in Argentina, has become more precarious, she says.