Subjects Archives: Health

Blaming health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York State Board of Elections announced last week that the state would simply cancel its Democratic presidential primary, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden to be proclaimed the victor without a vote. The response from the country’s two most prominent newspapers? Meh.

THE government’s latest injunction–Stay alert, Control the virus, Save lives–has come under instant criticism as providing ineffective advice.

Given the dramatic rise in unemployment, cuts in hours, and sharp decline in gig economy work, it isn’t surprising that hunger is becoming more common, particularly among families with children. Nearly half the U.S. couldn’t withstand a $400 emergency, and most households that have taken hits are seeing bigger income losses than that.

This coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the exclusion of whole subsets of the most vulnerable in our society, exemplifying the toxic mix of racism, sexism, imperialism, and capitalism that the U.S. blends so well.

The virus risks plunging Bangladesh into social, economic, and political turmoil—not to mention the public health crisis.

Iran has delivered a devastating blow to the ego of the Trump administration, puncturing it beyond repair, by its announcement Sunday that mosques will start reopening in low-risk areas of the country from May 5. 

Sub-Saharan Africa is facing its greatest crisis in generations. The continent thus far has been less affected by the pandemic than other parts of the world. But the impact of the global economic crisis is already enormous.

Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief their true nature. This is perhaps no more evident than when we compare Bolivia and Venezuela.

CNN should note that accepting a 60–70% infection rate means accepting a million deaths or more, assuming a fatality rate of 0.5%—which may be a conservative estimate.

The article seeks to re-emphasise that as capitalism exploits society and nature for its own expanded reproduction, it cannot but revolutionise the productive forces, in terms of science and technology. On the other hand, however, it also creates fetters to the realisation of the ­potential that it creates, by making it a slave to the logic of profit.

As experts try to model the true number of coronavirus deaths, and some random ‘surveillance’ studies have suggested that–at least in some badly hit areas–the number of confirmed coronavirus cases might be many multiples of the official count, the FT has published its latest attempt at trying to ‘model’ the true coronavirus death toll.

More than 1,450 men and women in white lab coats from Cuba’s Henry Reeve Contingent have traveled to 22 nations in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East to battle the pandemic.

The election in Ireland in early February marked a clear acceleration of the country’s ongoing left turn over recent years. Then came the virus.

“You really are the men and women who do everything eh, you people!” That was the reaction of an 88-year-old patient when she received a phone call from one of our Medicine for the People (MPLP) volunteer workers or staff in mid-March.

The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine in 2014 that led to western sanctions against Moscow, which in turn galvanised the latter’s ‘pivot to Asia’. 

We live in the age of the pandemic. We live in an age of environmental destruction and climate change. None of these are natural disasters–they all result from the way society and production is currently organised.

The Communists were determined to eradicate disease. In the 1930s, Mao joined the Chinese Communist Party’s Public Health Commission; in 1934, when he was in the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao placed public health at the top of the list for party work.

The wave of far-right anti-lockdown protests show how capitalist politics can create monsters. Worse might be on the way.

SSER-IDEAS Online Lecture Series — COVID-19 Pandemic: Policy Failures and Their Impact on the Lives of People

But do these assumptions hold up to the test? To find out, we must first take a quick look at some recent history.