As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All as a final goal.
Tag Archives | pandemic
The difference between the U.S. and China’s response to COVID-19 is staggering
In Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, he reports on interviews he did in February and March with U.S. President Donald Trump about the coronavirus.
CBC owes the people of Palestine an apology
Over 2,000 people have written to the CBC to condemn its deletion of the word “Palestine” and its subsequent apology for uttering it. Still, the broadcaster insists the word falls outside its standards.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the dual nature of science
Over two decades ago, Professor Richard Levins, one of the founders of Science for the People, described this phenomenon as the “dual nature” of science.(1) On one hand, scientific investigations discover truths about material reality that are independent of ideology or politics.
U.S. sanctions Russian Research Institute that developed COVID-19 Vaccine
The U.S. Commerce Department blacklisted a Russian research institute that helped create the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine.
A guide to flattening the curve of economic chaos
Well-thought-out policies can reverse the results of incompetence; the onus is on the Centre to spend now
The protracted crisis of capitalism
THERE is a commonly-held view that the current crisis in capitalism, which has resulted in a massive output contraction and increase in unemployment, is because of the pandemic; and that once the pandemic gets over, things will go back to “normal”.
Chart of the day
The number of continued claims for unemployment compensation, while below its peak, rose from the previous week and was more than 29 million American workers—a figure that includes workers receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
Six complexities of these pandemic times
Social media, in March 2020, was awash with rumours. Swans and dolphins could be seen in totally deserted Venetian canals. A group of elephants marched into a village in Yunnan (China), drank corn wine, and went to sleep in a tea garden.
COVID-19, Marxism, and the metabolic rift
The danger doesn’t only come from the symptoms of a virus: it comes from our distorted relationship with the natural world.
What went wrong with the first COVID-19 shutdown?
In the spring, we shut down our lives and our economy in hopes of reducing the spread of COVID-19 enough to be able to manage it through widespread testing and contact tracing. In spite of that shutdown, today the virus is raging virtually uncontrolled. We didn’t stick with it until the job was done.
Russia officially produces first batch of COVID-19 vaccine
“Russia’s health workers and teachers will be the first ones to receive the vaccine in the country,” Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said.
A matter of life and death: What war and the pandemic have in common
Patrick Cockburn examines the threads between the pandemic and the media’s coverage of age of endless war.
It is late, but it is early morning if we insist a little
Nothing happens in Beirut and Lebanon that is transparent; plots of all kinds unravel against the ordinary hopes of the population.
Bolivia’s perfect storm: Pandemic, economic crisis, repressive coup regime
The rising toll of diseased and deceased from the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Bolivia particularly hard, in a continent that is now in the lead in global contagion rates.
Why a growing force in Brazil is charging that President Jair Bolsonaro has committed crimes against humanity
Jhuliana Rodrigues works as a nurse technician at the Hospital São Vicente in Jundiaí, Brazil. “It is very difficult,” she says of her job these days. Brazil has just passed 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, with 3 million Brazilians infected with the virus.
Chart of the day
The American economy gained 1.8 million jobs last month, even as the coronavirus surged in many parts of the country and newly reintroduced restrictions caused some businesses to close for a second time.
Do not reach for the sky just to surrender
The novel coronavirus continues its march through the world, with 18 million confirmed cases and at least 685,000 deaths. Of these, the United States of America, Brazil, and India are the worst-hit, harbouring about half of the world’s cases.
A review of Andreas Malm’s Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
What can a virus tell us about climate breakdown, in its causation and in humanity’s response?
How Trump managed to lead the World with the worst response to COVID-19 pandemic
Six months ago, on January 30, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Ten days before this, the Chinese government had said—to great alarm—that the coronavirus could be transmitted from human to human.
