Tag Archives | coronavirus

COVID-19 is now raging uncontrolled throughout the United States. New variants that are more easily transmitted have entered the country from the U.K., Brazil and South Africa. Vaccine is scarce.

As FAIR (12/9/20) has reported, the New York Times has pushed for reopening public schools over teachers union concerns in New York City.

As known COVID-19 infections exceed 100 million internationally, with more than two million lives lost, rich countries are now quarrelling publicly over access to limited vaccine supplies. With ‘vaccine nationalism’ widespread, multilateral arrangements have not been able to address current challenges well.

Imagine a parallel world where the U.S. brought Covid under control in two months, while China still struggled with it, a year and hundreds of thousands of deaths later.

Someday the world will be free of the coronavirus. Then, we will glance backward at these years of misery inflicted by virions with spike proteins that have struck down millions of people and held social life in its grip.

Rather than attack the government for its poor handling of the COVID crisis, corporate media have opted for a return to a favorite pastime of theirs: union bashing.

Dr. Eduardo Martínez, president of the BioCubaFarma state pharmaceutical enterprise group, reports that work is advancing to expand production capacity of Cuba’s candidate vaccine Soberana 02.

The 13th national congress of Vietnam’s ruling communist party, which began in Hanoi on Monday is an event of exceptional significance for the country’s internal politics and future trajectory of development, regional politics and the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.

While it is not clear how many people have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the United States (is it under 400,000 still? Over 500,000 yet?), it is clearer than ever that we are experiencing a continent-wide public health catastrophe. Perhaps this is unsurprising.

Although most East Asian economies have successfully contained the pandemic without nationwide ‘stay in shelter lockdowns’, many governments have seen such measures as necessary. But lockdowns are blunt measures, with inevitable adverse consequences, especially for businesses and employment.

Several reports on China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic came out late last year, based on what U.S. outlets like CNN, the New York Times and ProPublica claimed to be leaked Chinese documents. Although these reports implied that China was responsible for how bad the pandemic has been because of its downplaying of numbers and censoring of critical information, these narratives are themselves misleading in several ways.

In the sticky conversations around rationing life-saving treatments and vaccines during the Covid pandemic, corporate media have elevated some experts without disclosing their troubling views on disability, aging and the value of human life. Meanwhile, media outlets have largely sidelined the voices of disabled activists and others who could speak on behalf of those most affected by the pandemic.

A jokester once characterized Yale University as a hedge fund with a campus attached to it. One might say something similar of the country in which Yale is based.

In December 2019, China’s Wuhan city witnessed an abnormal rise of what was initially thought to be cases of pneumonia, as identified by the Wuhan Municipality Health Commission. However, upon further investigation by Chinese officials, a novel coronavirus was identified. By then the city’s health system was already dealing with dozens of cases of coronavirus.

The incoming Biden administration is under tremendous pressure to demonstrate better U.S. economic management. Trade negotiations normally take years to conclude, if at all. Unsurprisingly, lobbyists are already urging the next U.S. administration to quickly embrace and deliver a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The evidence clearly is that the Covid-crisis has upended the fiscal conservatism that has been the hallmark of the neoliberal era since the 1980s.

Vietnam’s death toll from COVID-19 has stood at 35 since last September, and none of those hospitalized due to this disease risks death, the Ministry of Health reported on Sunday.

While China contained COVID-19 and preserved its economy, the U.S. spins lies while hundreds of thousands of its people die for lack of even a semblance of a national health system.

Goodbye 2020, but unfortunately, not good riddance, as we all have to live with its legacy. It has been a disastrous year for much of the world for various reasons, Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis. The crisis has exposed previously unacknowledged realities, including frailties and vulnerabilities.

The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.