Coronavirus

Corona Crisis Creates Opportunities For Decarceration Nationwide

March 29, 2020 Amani Sawari, SawariMi.org. Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Decarceration, Prison

We are only as safe from an epidemic as our most vulnerable are. At this time communities across the country are aware of the risks of not practicing the five habits that help to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. We have been encouraged to self-quarantine and many have been “locked down” for weeks. Some people have have expressed solidarity with people in prison as a result. Now that many have become more sensitive to the effects of isolation because of forced quarantine, let’s think about how are (not) people in prison being protected. Understanding that prison health is apart of public health I want to outline the ways that prisoners are not effectively able to protect themselves.

Can COVID-19 Take Down NATO?

March 29, 2020 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, NATO, Wars and Militarism

DEFENDER Europe 20 , NATO’s latest anti-Russian war games, began in February and was scheduled to continue into June. The games would have been the largest rehearsal for transferring US troops from the US to Europe since the mid-1990s. However, on March 13, the German army announced that it would not participate and withdrew its troops for fear of spreading the coronavirus. The equipment for the US armored brigades was to be unloaded at ports in Belgium, Holland and Germany or from warehouses in Belgium and Germany. The plan was that 1500 German troops would transport it across Germany in convoys and by rail to training grounds in Germany and Poland in 50 days, but Germany’s withdrawal stopped the supply line.

New York Nurses Are Living A Heartbreaking Nightmare

March 29, 2020 By Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, Labor Notes. Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health Care, New York City (NYC)

Last Sunday I worked in the Montefiore Medical Center Moses Division Emergency Department and I want to share with you the real-life story—and most certainly not the worst story. To back up... I had some concerning symptoms that started the previous Sunday at about 10 a.m. but escalated severely by Tuesday night. I was “approved” for COVID testing only because I had these symptoms and, perhaps, due to my age. I had the test on Thursday. I was told to call when I arrived, and then wait in my car for someone to call me in. The test was only supposed to take a few minutes. But when I arrived and called, I got a recording that said the office had moved. I made more calls, waited, called again. Almost two hours passed before someone finally tested me.

Revolutionary Change And COVID-19

March 28, 2020 Margaret Kimberley, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Ideology

The genie has escaped from the bottle, revealing the deep injustices and cruelties that are embedded in US capitalism and its warped relationship to the peoples it rules, and the world. The coronavirus pandemic has upended the economy and the lives of millions of people. In so doing it has exposed the wreckage of a country living under the rule of billionaires and the military industrial complex. The health care system is controlled by corporations and therefore cannot meet human needs. The United States gave up its large scale manufacturing to China, the country which it both demonizes as the source of infection but also begs to produce more ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. The response is what one would expect from a politically backward nation like the United States.

Healthcare Workers Are At War With The Pandemic And The Economic System

March 28, 2020 Mike Pappas, Leftvoice.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, Workers

A NYC physician gave this speech about the war against the coronavirus and the ongoing war against for-profit health care, Trump and capitalism itself. The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying capitalism’s complete inability to foster overall health and well being. We don’t just need a new healthcare system, but a new economic system altogether. With over 390K confirmed cases and more than 17K deaths at the time of this writing, the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc across the globe, with Italy surpassing China in deaths and Iran in shambles, a situation made worse by the U.S. government’s absolutely genocidal sanctions. In the U.S., there have been over 46K confirmed cases and 583 deaths. This number of confirmed cases is clearly a gross underestimate as the U.S. was delayed in testing and has only tested a small proportion of the population.

Promising Coronavirus Treatment Granted Exclusive Status To Gilead Sciences By FDA

March 28, 2020 By Ashley Curtin, Nationofchange.org Educate! Big Pharma, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health Care

A potential treatment for the coronavirus was granted exclusive status to Gilead Sciences by the Food and Drug Administration on Monday. Remdesivir, a drug it is developing to treat the illness, is now “orphan” status, which allows the pharmaceutical company to profit exclusively off the drug. The designation of this drug, which is “generally reserved for drugs that treat rare illnesses affecting fewer than 200,000 Americans,” was eligible for “orphan” status in this case since the rapidly spreading virus had yet to “spread beyond that limit,” Common Dreams reported. On Monday, 40,000 Americans were stricken with the coronavirus when the FDA granted Gilead Sciences exclusive claim. By Tuesday afternoon, confirmed cases in the United States jumped to 51,000.

What Would A General Strike Even Look Like?

March 28, 2020 By Hannah Gold, Thecut.com Resist! Class Struggle, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Strikes

This week, as the coronavirus pandemic rapidly spread across the country and the president suggested that people should soon start returning to work in a desperate bid to stabilize the economy, the hashtag #GeneralStrike — calling on workers everywhere to walk off the job — began trending on Twitter. Writer and activist Naomi Klein tweeted that she was joining #GeneralStrike2020, and activist Bree Newsome Bass said that she supports “a general strike for all these workers who are deemed ‘essential’ but still aren’t earning livable wages while working in unsafe conditions.” The possibility of a general strike seems more real than it ever has in America as labor conditions have become more dire than they’ve ever been in recent memory.

Eight Countries Under Unilateral Sanctions Ask UN Chief For Help

March 28, 2020 Edith M. Lederer, Apnews.com Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Sanctions, United Nations

United Nations — Eight countries under unilateral sanctions, mainly from the United States and European Union, urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday to request the immediate and complete lifting of those measures to enable the nations to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. In a joint letter obtained by The Associated Press, the ambassadors from China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria and Venezuela urged the U.N. chief to “reject the politicization of such a pandemic.” The ambassadors, who said they were under instructions from their foreign ministers, did not name any countries responsible for what they called “illegal, coercive measures of economic pressure.” But the United States has imposed sanctions on all of the nations except China and the European Union has imposed sanctions on all but Cuba.

The Coronavirus And The Urgent Need To Redefine National Security

March 28, 2020 By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch.org Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, National Security

For far too long, the United States has been wastefully spending its precious budgetary resources on a nineteenth-century military strategy and a strategic arms policy that has brought no advantages to the American people. For the past three decades, our national security policies have been ineffectual and irrelevant to the genuine threats we face today. These threats do not emanate from Russia or China. Rather, they stem from an underfunded and highly vulnerable public health system, a cyber world that is out of control, and a crumbling infrastructure. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a grade of D-plus to the nation’s infrastructure, with the lowest grades going to roads, bridges, mass transit, and water management systems.

Venezuela’s Coronavirus Response Might Surprise You

March 27, 2020 Leonardo Flores, Codepink.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Latin America, Venezuela

Within a few hours of being launched, over 800 Venezuelans in the U.S. registered for an emergency flight from Miami to Caracas through a website run by the Venezuelan government. This flight, offered at no cost, was proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when he learned that 200 Venezuelans were stuck in the United States following his government’s decision to stop commercial flights as a preventative coronavirus measure.

The Cost Of This Pandemic Must Not Bankrupt The People

March 27, 2020 By Vijay Prashad and Manuel Bertoldi, Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Resist! Bankruptcy, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Pandemic

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has spread to almost every country on the planet earth. The virus will take many lives, disrupt communities and institutions, and leave behind trauma and a devastated world economy. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that by the end of 2020, global income will collapse by between $1 trillion and $2 trillion; the latter figure is a worst-case scenario, with falling oil prices making the problem even more acute for oil-exporting countries. Already over-inflated stock markets are now seeing deep drops. Central banks are using all their monetary resources to shore up the financial markets and to try to bail out as many sectors of the economy as possible.

It Is Not China, But The Western World That Should Be Defined As The “Real Sick Man”

March 27, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! China, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal insulted China, calling it “the Real Sick Man of Asia”. China retaliated, and then the U.S. counter-retaliated. Emotions have been running high, journalists got deported. Suddenly, various Chinese officials expressed publicly what many in both China and Russia have been, for weeks, articulating in sotto voce: that it was perhaps the U.S. military establishment, which brought the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) to Wuhan, in order to harm China and bring the world back, through complex backroads, under the West’s control. Suddenly, the world feels very uncomfortable. The way it is governed is clearly perverse. People do not always know why, they just feel frightened, prickly and insecure. Actually, they always have, during the last few decades, but this is somehow becoming “too much”.

The Coronavirus Crisis Led To A Record-Breaking Spike In Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims

March 27, 2020 By Aaron Sojourner and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Epi.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Unemployment, Workers

A greater share of Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the week ending March 21 than in any prior week in American history, according to our analysis of news reports. Many states reported initial claims growth of over 1,000%. Our model predicts that 3.4 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance this past week, although we believe that number could be as low as 3 million or could be substantially higher. This will dwarf every other week in history, as can be seen by comparing the projection against the trend in initial claims back to 1967. For scale, consider that 3.4 million Americans moving from employment to unemployment would raise the number of the unemployed from 5.7 million to 9.1 million.

Norway’s Workers Insisted They Shouldn’t Pay For Coronavirus — And They Won

March 27, 2020 Ellen Engelstand, Jacobinmag.com Resist! Class Struggle, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Norway, Workers

At the start of the coronavirus epidemic, Norway’s government said it would help businesses by making it easier for them to get rid of workers. But trade unions and left-wing parties fiercely denied that these measures were “inevitable” — and they won a bailout to serve working people, not just their employers. Like most of Europe, Norway has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. After several weeks of dragging its feet, on March 13, the government moved into action, following its neighbor Denmark in closing schools, kindergartens, and then the border. It made a list of those exercising “critical functions in society,” like nurses, transit workers, cleaners, and people working in grocery stores, who can still work and have daycare for their kids. Like most of Europe, Norway has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. After several weeks of dragging its feet, on March 13, the government moved into action, following its neighbor Denmark in closing schools, kindergartens, and then the border. It made a list of those exercising “critical functions in society,” like nurses, transit workers, cleaners, and people working in grocery stores, who can still work and have daycare for their kids.

Coronavirus Catalyzes Growing Wave Of Grassroots Action

March 27, 2020 Robert Raymond, Geo.coop Strategize! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Solidarity

Isolation, quarantine, and social distancing may be an effective strategy when dealing with a global pandemic like the Coronavirus. But, unfortunately, in a global economy that has been plagued by 40 years of neoliberalism, the social bonds that help to create strong, resilient communities have been so badly eroded that the strategy of social distancing, while necessary, is having many unanticipated consequences. In the face of these challenges, there is a groundswell of grassroots action in towns and cities across the U.S. and world. Although often hidden beneath the surface, these grassroots responses are growing rapidly in scope and scale. They are often formed spontaneously by individuals and groups who recognize the immediate needs of those around them and choose to act.

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