Subjects Archives: Health

This pandemic has affirmed that public healthcare needs cannot be adequately met under a profit-based system.

The infamous Tuskegee syphilis study on Black men is but the best known of the plethora of medical experiments on Black and Brown people in and out of prisons, and other vulnerable populations.

COVID-19 – A socialist response

Senior care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility. 

One year ago, as both the Trump administration in the U.S. and the Johnson government in the UK responded fitfully to the growing pandemic, the international media were looking for whipping boys: other countries whose response to the virus was even worse.

Reports by Reveal (10/21/20) and PBS NewsHour (10/20/21) called for a boycott of “conflict beef” from Nicaragua. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal claims to be “fair and comprehensive” and PBS to be “trusted,” but their misleading and inaccurate reports could have drastic consequences for Nicaragua, at a time when the country is already struggling […]

Nearly three million people have reportedly been killed by the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) and upwards of 128 million people have been infected by the virus, many with long-lasting health repercussions.

After over a year of suffering, death, and profound transformations of everyday life, International Women’s Day 2021 is an opportunity to take stock of the COVID-19 crisis so far and craft visions for a future centred on the value of social reproduction.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez notes the impressive work of the third group of medical professionals from the Henry Reeve Contingent returning from Mexico, after joining the COVID-19 battle there.

Brazil has suffered the world’s second-worst number of COVID-19 death rates, with Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 policy being described as “homicidally negligent”.

In the West, Cuba has set an example of efficiency and shown that another way is possible in the fight against the pandemic. The numbers speak for themselves; we only need to compare Cuba with other countries or even big cities with similar populations to get a very clear picture of the difference in results.

Industrial agriculture, habitat destruction, global commodity chains and the travel network have set up this perfect storm of conditions, not just for COVID, but also for future pandemics.

Developing country governments are being wrongly advised to use their modest fiscal resources to pay down accumulated debt instead of strengthening pandemic relief and recovery. Thus, debt phobia risks deepening and extending COVID-19 recessions by prioritizing buybacks.

Vaccine grabs, the refusal to relax patents to enable mass production, and the use of vaccines for diplomacy run the risk that poorer nations may not be protected against Covid-19 quickly enough. This will prolong the pandemic, even for the richer nations.

Mumia Abu-Jamal must be hospitalized. He has tested positive for COVID-19 and isbeingwarehoused in a completely inadequate prison infirmary. Given his age, 67, his liver disease, and his blood-pressure challenges, Mumia’s life is seriously in danger.

Murder is an emotive word. In law, it requires premeditation. Death must be deemed to be unlawful. How could “murder” apply to failures of a pandemic response? Perhaps it can’t, and never will, but it is worth considering.

At the end of December 2019, the world was notified about the existence of a new coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in China. This virus, SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19), rapidly spread and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020.

For a period of time after this article was originally published (February 18, 2021) it was scrubbed from Google’s search index. When the author, Lambert Strether, realized the piece had been “censored,” it was published a second time on March 1, 2021 with an analysis of the purging. Subsequently, the article magically reappeared in the search […]

In a statement marking the “return” of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed that the Biden Administration is placing democracy and human rights at the centre of American foreign policy. 

Every day, entrepreneurs in Brazil cut down more of the Amazon to produce cheap soybeans for animals in Europe and America. Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia tear up their forests to produce cheap coffee and palm oil for the world.