Subjects Archives: Health

The information-aware and many in the medical industry are nervously watching the news about coronavirus spread and mortality rates. What we know so far isn’t pretty.

t the end of January, at a time when the coronavirus outbreak that began in China was dominating international headlines, The White House announced it was forming a new task force to address the growing crisis, one headed by the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar.

Having our own media allows us to tell the stories that the millionaire press barons don’t want to engage with and it gives us a space to debate and explore issues without the toxic influence of climate deniers.

In December 2019, several people began to develop infections in Wuhan (People’s Republic of China); early signs indicated that the virus had emerged out of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but there is no certainty about that verdict.

“A new phase in humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, where the ocean is not only crucial but is being fundamentally changed”

Under the shadow of the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), countries are obliged to guarantee the right to health. The 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.

The virus’s final penetrance worldwide will depend on the difference between the rate of infection and the rate of removing infections—by recovery or death. If the infection rate far exceeds removal, then the penetrance may approach the whole of humanity, although there will likely accrue large geographic differences.

In December, Ontario’s Auditor-General, Bonnie Lysyk, issued a report that offers the province’s right wing Tory government an opportunity to attack disabled people living in poverty.

The U.S.-backed administration of Jeanine Añez is arresting prominent members of the press and even doctors in what it calls a “dismantling of the propaganda apparatus of the dictatorial regime of Evo Morales.”

Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef—one of the great wonders of this planet—while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and ocean acidification, it will be gone in a matter of decades in the absence of a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions.

Thomas Sankara’s passion was Africa’s advancement; his experimental field was Burkina Faso. What President Sankara wanted to see in Africa, he strategized, mobilized and implemented in Burkina Faso. He would then present his successes to African leaders, while encouraging them to surpass his achievements.

U.S. life expectancy is on the decline, falling from 2014 to 2017—the first years of decline in life expectancy in over twenty years.

New fires are expected to ignite, while strong winds are predicted to fan the hundreds of blazes that are already burning. Hundreds of thousands of people were urged yesterday to evacuate the most-at-risk areas.

Christopher Caudwell, who died at age 29 fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, wrote: “Either the devil has come amongst us having great power, or there is a causal explanation for a disease common to economics, science, and art.” That disease, he recognized, was the self-alienation of humanity under capitalism

In the face of climate crisis megafires and an air quality health crisis, 40,000 people rallied and marched in Sydney to demand action on Wednesday night. The city is choking, and New South Wales is on fire. In Randwick on Tuesday, the air pollution was 11 times higher than “hazardous”.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In recent years and in the face of unprecedented changes in the climate system, some previously unknown and risky solutions have been proposed to put a halt to the chain of climate disasters, or at least to slow down the speed of their onslaught.

Three rightwing Latin American governments have forced out Cuban doctors at work in their countries. What they and the US government object to is the revolutionary vision and revolutionary praxis that they represent.

Blood has become big business in the United States and there is no shortage of corporations ready to exploit America’s most vulnerable populations in order to get a piece of the pie.

For the past ten years, I have been identifying and reporting the inevitable preventable harm created by the adoption of neoliberal politics, the planned demolition of the UK welfare state and the influence of Unum Insurance since 1992 with successive British government(s).

If there ever was an argument in support of Medicare for All it’s this: despite spending more on health care than any other country, the United States has seen increasing mortality and falling life expectancy for people ages 25 to 64, who should be in the prime of their lives.