Tag Archives | coronavirus

As millions of Americans stand on the brink of economic annihilation, the money keeps flowing to Wall Street thanks to carefully contrived mechanisms to maintain a dying financial system afloat.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, the big pharmaceutical companies did little investment in vaccines for global diseases and viruses.

Over the past week, 14,697 new cases of Coronavirus infection were reported inside of state and federal prisons—the highest level since the pandemic began.

It wasn’t that long ago that the country celebrated frontline workers by banging pots in the evening to thank them for the risks they took doing their jobs during the pandemic.

A second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping across the world with countries reporting record daily case numbers and the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that the death toll could be much higher than during the first wave earlier this year.

Top meteorologist: only a complete transformation of our industrial, energy and transport systems can stop climate change.

The death rate from these new infections may be lower than in the first wave last March-April, but hospitalizations are reaching new peaks in the U.S. and parts of Europe.

After a Spring in which Sweden had one of the worst Covid death rates in Europe, some latched on to their low summer case numbers to argue for a herd immunity approach. But as cases again rise dramatically, Madeleine Johansson challenges the Swedish herd immunity myth.

Less than one week after being sworn in as successor to Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra, impeached in what amounted to a parliamentary coup, the former president of the Congress, Manuel Merino, was forced to resign Sunday.

Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead! A wicked but very male Witch of the East seemed to be crushed under a houseful of angry voters, though this house, unlike Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, was definitely not from Kansas!

The super-rich increased their combined fortunes by 27.5% during the worst of the market turmoil from April through July.

The past year has brought into sharp relief the significant differences between China and the rest of the world.

The tragedy being the suffering Latin America has borne, the optimism being in the recognition that this is not the region’s natural or inevitable destiny, but has been imposed on it through its subjugation to the capitalist system, and is therefore capable of being changed.

In 1965, as India and Pakistan slipped into another war, Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the great Urdu poets of his generation, wrote a poem called Ai Sharif Insano (‘O Nobel Souls’).

China’s rise reflects a bourgeoning global movement away from U.S. imperialism and toward self-determination.

A seam of cruelty runs through U.S. policy, which by its sanctions regime prevents Venezuela from open trade of its oil to import key medical equipment to help break the chain of the virus and heal those infected by it.

With phrases like “protect the vulnerable” & “underlying conditions” currently all around us, disability activist Ruth Flood looks at the horrendous treatment of disabled people under capitalism.

Ahead of the Chilean national plebiscite, scheduled for October 25, we answer some of the key questions regarding the upcoming popular referendum.

Sweden has a relatively low level of urbanisation, is away from continental Europe and has a population prepared to apply social distancing with some discipline, the cumulative COVID death rate in Sweden is not far short of Italy and Spain, and is way higher than its Nordic neighbours, Denmark, Finland and Norway, which did impose early and much stricter lockdowns.

The development in 1909, by the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch of a technique for taking Nitrogen out of the atmosphere to produce ammonia (NH3) allowed for the production of synthetic fertilisers (and explosives) on an industrial scale.