COVID-19

When You Suffer For Your Sanity And Struggle To Get Free

September 27, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Community, COVID-19, mental health

In 1930, Clément Fraisse (1901–1980), a shepherd from France’s Lozère region, was confined in a nearby psychiatric hospital after he tried to burn down his parents’ farmhouse. For two years, he was held in a dark, narrow cell. Using a spoon, and later the handle of his chamber pot, Fraisse carved symmetrical images into the rough, wooden walls that surrounded him. Despite the inhumane conditions in these psychiatric hospitals, Fraisse made beautiful art in the darkness of his cell. Not far from Lozère is the monastery of Saint Paul de Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where Vincent van Gogh had been confined four decades earlier (1889–1890) and where he completed around 150 paintings, including several important works (among them The Starry Night, 1889).

How Pandemic-Era Prison Life Shows The Stakes Of Abolition

September 17, 2024 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. Educate! Book Review, COVID-19, health, Pandemic, Prison abolition, Prisoner rights

A few months before COVID became a permanent part of life in the U.S., the New York City Council approved a plan to shut down the infamous jail complex known as Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller facilities. (That plan was later delayed — and city officials have since acknowledged that they likely won’t meet the plan’s legal deadline.) The vote to close Rikers Island came from years of extensive grassroots organizing by reformists and abolitionists alike. But for those left caged there in 2020, the risks posed by COVID were immediate — not just illness and death, but new forms of the isolation, neglect and violence that already shape life inside.

The United States Government Has Abandoned Us To Endless COVID

August 11, 2024 October Krausch, Truthout. Educate! COVID-19, Donald Trump, Health Care, Joe Biden, Pandemic, Public Health

This week, Nassau County, New York, passed a mask ban. Those wearing face masks will now face the possibility of up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine. Angry at the power of anti-genocide protests, lawmakers banned one of the most basic forms of disease protection just as the world is experiencing a record surge in COVID cases. While officials insist that the law will not be used against those masking for medical reasons, disabled activists protesting the move say they were intentionally coughed on during the city council meeting where the bill was passed. In a world of airborne contagious diseases, everyone has a medical reason for masking. So why doesn’t our public health policy recognize that?

Will The Pandemic Treaty Deliver Global Health Equity?

April 30, 2024 People's Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO)

The next round of Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) negotiations for the Pandemic Treaty began on April 29, following two years of discussions. With the treaty text set to be finalized at the World Health Assembly at the end of May, uncertainties persist regarding the current state of negotiations, marked by numerous unresolved issues. The main question remains: will the Treaty genuinely fulfill its promise of equity and justice, or will it merely pay lip service to these ideals? In an effort to delve deeper into these concerns, Jyotsna Singh of People’s Health Dispatch interviewed Dr. Alexandra Phelan, a global health lawyer and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Vacant Storefronts Are Killing Our Downtowns

April 15, 2024 Ilana Preuss, Next City. Create! COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, Manufacturing, Retail

One of the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is the way it has transformed office use, threatening the viability of storefront retail in downtown office buildings. Owners of such commercial properties are now often exploring converting vacant retail space into restaurants and other experiential venues. But the range of alternative options needs to be expanded – and small-scale manufacturing offers a proven, yet often overlooked, solution. The need for alternative options is apparent from the scale of the problem. In the last quarter of 2023, the national office vacancy rate hit a record-breaking 19.6%, per Moody’s Analytics.

More Sanctions On Nicaragua Will Deepen US Migration Crisis

March 13, 2024 Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza, Orinoco Tribune. Resistance Report COVID-19, Gender equality, Human Rights, Interview, Media, migration crisis, Nicaragua, Sanctions, Sandinista Revolution, Solidarity, US Sanctions, Women's Rights

For Barbara Larcom and Jill Clark-Gollub, increased US economic warfare waged against Nicaragua will only translate into a worsening of the already delicate migration problem in the US and affect supply chains in Central American and Caribbean countries that trade with Nicaragua. The two activists from the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition were interviewed by Orinoco Tribune last Wednesday, March 6. Barbara Larcom is the current chair of the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, an international alliance of organizations and individuals that support Nicaragua’s sovereignty.

Government Gag Rules Keep Vital Information From The Public

February 24, 2024 Kathryn Foxhall, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! CDC, COVID-19, Journalism, Media, Pandemic, Press Freedom

Reporting on the government institution charged with saving us from the Covid pandemic was restricted enough to leave real holes in what we knew. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—like many other organizations these days, public and private—prohibits its employees from speaking freely to reporters. At many entities, the rules mean staff members cannot have any unauthorized contact with reporters, with media inquiries often redirected to a public information office (PIO). The forced notification of the higher-ups is quite enough to silence many employees about anything that would displease the bosses.

Hawaii School Employees To Get Up To 25% In Pandemic Hazard Pay

January 25, 2024 Kevin Dayton, Portside. Create! COVID-19, Education, Hawaii, Hazard Pay, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

An arbitration decision has determined public school employees in five bargaining units of the state’s largest union are entitled to back pay of up to 25% of their total salaries for as much as two years, according to the state’s largest union. The Hawaii Government Employees Association said the decision covers up to 7,800 Department of Education employees, including school nurses, office employees, and classroom educational assistants. “Those working in the DOE were some of the most exposed among public service employees, putting their own health – as well as that of their loved ones – at substantial risk to keep services running in Hawaii’s schools,” HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira said Tuesday in a written statement.

Cuba’s Humanitarian Crisis

January 4, 2024 William M. LeoGrande, The Nation. Educate! COVID-19, Cuba, Inflation, US Sanctions

Nine years ago, on December 17, 2014, jubilation swept the through the city of Havana when Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced that they would normalize US-Cuban relations, after 55 years of hostility. Church bells rang, cars honked their horns, and people hugged each other in the streets. Today, the mood in the city is one of desperation. The economy is spiraling downward, and US policy is exacerbating the growing humanitarian crisis. President Donald Trump’s tough economic sanctions drastically reduced Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings, and President Joe Biden has left most of those sanctions in place.

An Environmental Activist’s Guide To The Great Barrington Declaration

January 4, 2024 Phil Wilson, Resilience. Strategize! Capitalism, COVID-19, Libertarian, Pandemic, Public Health

The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) is standard issue libertarian free market ideology sanded down to fit the confines of public health – this document (coauthored by three highly credentialed academics: Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford) recommended that governments do nothing to combat a once in a century pandemic destined globally to obliterate as many as 27 million lives. The fever dream enshrined in every libertarian narrative holds that “self regulating forces” exhibit a mystical benevolence only realized when governments retreat, and defer to the “natural order.”

Poverty Rose In 2022 As Inflation Surged, Pandemic Aid Terminated

September 13, 2023 Max Jones, Scheer Post. Educate! COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Pandemic, Poverty

In the aftermath of pandemic relief programs such as increased unemployment and nutrition benefits, greater rental assistance and the child tax credit — policies which the Biden administration allowed to expire in 2021 — Americans faced the largest one-year increase of poverty on record. According to a report from the Census Bureau published on Sept. 12, the sharpest increase in poverty affected children, as child poverty more than doubled from a record low of 5.2 percent to now 12.4 percent. This was indicated by the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which “factors in the impact of government assistance and geographical differences in the cost of living.”

Health Activists Reveal Big Pharma’s Covid-19 Vaccine Heist In South Africa

September 7, 2023 People's Health Dispatch. Educate! Big Pharma, COVID-19, Global South, Janssen, Pfizer, South Africa, Vaccine apartheid, Vaccines

In August this year, a coalition of civil society organizations in South Africa, which includes the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) and the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), achieved a remarkable breakthrough in the discussion surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. This milestone was reached after the Pretoria High Court issued an order instructing the Department of Health to disclose the contracts and proceedings of meetings pertaining to the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer, Janssen, the Serum Institute of India, and the public-private global health partnership Gavi.

This Is How The Next Great American General Strike Happens

September 1, 2023 Joe Maniscalco, Work-Bites. Strategize! COVID-19, General Strike, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

The next great general strike to captivate the United States will not be organized — it’ll be organic. And it could be the most transformative general strike this country has ever seen. Right now, the head of the Transport Workers Union of America is threatening to shut down the second-largest commuter railroad in the nation; striking SAG-AFTRA and WGA members want to break up Hollywood; and militants within the UAW are still keen on bringing the Big Three automakers to their knees. Add to that mix, increasingly-fed up Starbucks baristas and Amazon warehouse workers unable to organize or get a union contract.

RFK, Jr.: It’s Not Genetics, It’s Racial Capitalism

July 20, 2023 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Capitalism, COVID-19, Racism, RFK

I know that opinions about COVID-19 and the vaccines related to it are still as varied as they are passionate, at least in the US where this government did absolutely nothing under two presidents to protect people and save lives in the midst of a global pandemic. But let me just be the one to say it if you were afraid to. Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent comments about the virus are wackadoodle, but should not be dismissed outright because of his dismissal of US racialized capitalism that fueled the deadly outcome of the pandemic in the US among certain groups of people.

The Unfolding Medicaid Disaster

June 26, 2023 Andrew Perez and Nick Byron Campbell, The Lever. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Human Rights, Joe Biden, Medicaid

As states have begun clearing out their Medicaid rolls for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three quarters of the Americans who’ve lost coverage have been terminated not because they’re ineligible for the low-income health insurance program, but due to administrative reasons, such as failing to quickly respond to a piece of mail. In February, President Joe Biden bragged in his State of the Union speech that “more Americans have health insurance now than ever in history.” Biden made that comment six weeks after he set the stage to massively increase the United States’ uninsured population, when he signed legislation from Congress ending the pandemic-era requirement that states maintain Medicaid beneficiaries’ coverage in exchange for extra federal funding.

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