COVID-19

The Global South Faces A ‘Vaccine Apartheid’

February 20, 2021 Hadas Thier, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Global South, Vaccine apartheid, Vaccines

The coronavirus crisis in South Africa is far from over despite falling case numbers in recent weeks. The virus has claimed more than of 50,000 lives, and many health experts predict a devastating third wave. Complicating matters is a new coronavirus mutation known as n501, which threatens to upend South Africa’s vaccination plans. Unprecedented scientific collaboration has expedited the development of the new vaccine candidates, but patents protecting the bottom lines of the pharmaceutical companies have hampered efforts to manufacture vaccines at scale. Meanwhile, the United States and Western Europe have hoarded limited supplies through bilateral negotiations with Big Pharma. Developing nations in the Global South have been left behind.

Latin America Finds Its Own Answers To Produce COVID-19 Vaccines

February 19, 2021 Rubén Sierra, Council On Hemispheric Affairs. Create! COVID-19, Cuba, Latin America, Vaccines

In a world harmed by the severe COVID-19 pandemic, the access to vaccines is being distorted by the rules of the open market and the deep gap between rich and poor nations. As the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently said, “the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.” In a formal declaration the WHO warns that “in the majority of low and middle-income countries, vaccination has not even started which is a catastrophe as hospitals fill up.”[1] The People’s Vaccine Alliance (a coalition of organizations such as Oxfam, UNAIDS and Global Justice Now) accused the three biggest COVID-19 vaccine producers, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, of strangling the global supply of vaccines because of their intellectual-property protections.

Unprotected African Health Workers Die As Rich Countries Buy Up COVID-19 Vaccines

February 19, 2021 Kai Kupferschmidt, Science Magazine. Educate! Africa, COVID-19, Inequality, Vaccines

On 6 January, gastroenterologist Leolin Katsidzira received a troubling message from his colleague James Gita Hakim, a heart specialist and noted HIV/AIDS researcher. Hakim, chair of the department of medicine at the University of Zimbabwe, had fallen sick and had tested positive for COVID-19. He was admitted to a hospital in Harare 10 days later and moved to an intensive care unit (ICU) after his condition deteriorated. He died on 26 January. It is a crushing loss to Zimbabwean medicine, Katsidzira says. “Don’t forget: We have had a huge brain drain. So people like James are people who keep the system going,” he adds. Scientists around the world mourned Hakim as well. He was “a unique research leader, a brilliant clinical scientist and mentor, humble, welcoming and empowering,” wrote Melanie Abas, a collaborator at King’s College London.

Scheer Intelligence: The Clearest Example Of Israeli Apartheid Yet

February 19, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! COVID-19, Israeli Apartheid, Palestinians, Vaccines

As Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program got underway in recent months, reports in Western media, including the New York Times, lauded the country’s speedy inoculation efforts to vaccinate every Israeli over the age of 16. What many news reports failed to immediately note in detail, however, was that as the Middle Eastern nation was rapidly vaccinating its citizens against the deadly virus that turned the whole world upside down, it showed no signs of inoculating the approximately 5 million Palestinians whose land Israel occupies in the Gaza strip and the West Bank. After a global outcry ensued over the immorality of this decision, Israel ultimately promised to transfer 5,000 doses to the West Bank for medical staff.

Global South Urges Rich Countries To Lift Monopolies On Covid19 Medical Products

February 16, 2021 Public Services International. Create! COVID-19, Global South, Monopoly, Trade

This landmark proposal to temporarily suspend the application and enforcement of certain intellectual property obligations under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), or the “TRIPS waiver” is to facilitate the effective prevention, containment, and treatment of COVID-19. Developing countries have stressed that the “TRIPS waiver” is an essential starting point for countries to ramp up and diversify the production of therapeutics, vaccines and other medical products needed to address the global pandemic. However, a handful of countries — mostly those who have a stake in the protection of monopoly-based pharmaceutical industry — including the European Union, the United States, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada, have been blocking the waiver.

Vulture Funds To Use Pandemic To Pillage The Global Economy

February 14, 2021 Matthew Ponsford and Ruairi Casey, Tribune Magazine. Educate! COVID-19, Real Estate, Stock Market, Vulture Funds

There’s a new app with a tagline that promises that you, too, can ‘profit like a landlord from just £1 with no effort’. Proptee, set to launch this year (subject to approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority) allows anyone with, say, five grand to buy shares in a buy-to-let flat in London worth half a million. In return, you receive a slice of its tenants’ monthly rent—here about one percent—with the promise you can cash-out your investment as the value rises. ‘We’re building a stock exchange for properties that lives on your smartphone and combines the high yields and low risk of property investing with the high liquidity of a stock exchange,’ explains 24-year-old cofounder Benedek Toth.

Formerly Incarcerated Organizer On February 6 St. Louis Jail Protest

February 14, 2021 Ryan Hamby, Liberation News. Resist! COVID-19, Prison Labor, Prisoner rights, St. Louis

EXPO is an organization of formerly incarcerated individuals and other people involved with the criminal justice system. We are a voice for people adversely affected by this system. We are an offshoot of EXPO Wisconsin, which started in 2014. In just a few years, we have made tremendous strides to address issues that reduce the quality of life for people transitioning after being incarcerated. We are leading a few campaigns now. One is Unlock the Vote, which is a fight to restore voting rights for individuals convicted of a felony and who are now on probation or parole. We hope to restore these rights because people who have had a brush with law need to be able to return to society as assets, to be able to contribute in a positive way.

The Three Apartheids Of Our Times (Money, Medicine, Food)

February 12, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! China, COVID-19, Socialism, wealth inequality

In the early months after the World Health Organisation announced the coronavirus pandemic, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy wrote of her hope that the pandemic would be a ‘portal, a gateway between one world and the next’. She hoped, in other words, that the world would recognise its grave problems, exacerbated by the pandemic, and that there would be an opening towards a reorganisation of the social structures. Nothing like that is possible unless the class character of the states in the majority of the world is transformed. Mere recognition of the problem will not result in any epiphany in places such as the United States, Europe, and the larger states of the developing world such as Brazil and India.

Every New Yorker Has A Right To A Roof

February 11, 2021 Jose Lopez and Barika Williams, Gotham Gazette. Create! COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing, New York City (NYC)

Well before the beginning of the pandemic that has turned life upside down, New Yorkers already faced a devastating affordable housing and homelessness crisis. Even without the dramatic wave of unemployment brought about by a global pandemic, low-income tenants and homeless people across the city faced a grave lack of truly affordable housing and the absence of an effective citywide plan to fix it. Now, of course, the crisis has deepened, with tenants who have long lived paycheck to paycheck unable to scrape together even a modest living to pay their rent, and the danger of living on the street or in a congregate shelter multiplied by a deadly virus.

COVID-19 And Democrats’ Indifference Killed My Husband In Jail

February 10, 2021 Cassandra Greer Lee, Current Affairs. Educate! COVID-19, Democrats, Illinois, Prisoner rights

In February 2020, my husband, Nickolas Lee, was incarcerated in Cook County Jail in Chicago. The judge didn’t offer him bail. So even though he was presumed innocent, he had to await his trial in jail. When the coronavirus seeped into the facility, he was sleeping in a dormitory with 50 other men, including those with active COVID-19 symptoms. Nick and the other men had no ability to social distance. Although the sheriff’s office claimed to be “clearly leaders in the Country on dealing with the pandemic [sic],” Nick was denied even basic sanitary products, like sanitizer or a mask. He had to use his shirt to cover his nose and mouth.

Teachers Deride Fans, Rally Outside Schools

February 9, 2021 Jack Tomczuk, Philly Metro. Resist! COVID-19, Philadelphia, School reopening, Teachers

Andrea McLaughlin, a second grade teacher, is afraid to return to her school, F.S. Edmonds Elementary in Northwest Philadelphia, because she doesn’t know what she will find. She, and many other public school teachers, don’t believe in the promises the School District of Philadelphia has made in its plans to reopen this month. “This is beyond COVID,” McLaughlin said. “This is about trust, and this is about getting us what we need and our kids deserve.” McLaughlin and other staff were supposed to return to school buildings Monday for the first time since March.

Philadelphia Educators To Defy District

February 8, 2021 Douglas Lyons and Samuel Davidson, WSWS. Resist! COVID-19, Philadelphia, School reopening, Teachers

Thousands of Philadelphia public school teachers are set to defy their district’s order to return to classrooms Monday. They will instead work virtually. This week marks the third attempt by the school district of Philadelphia to reopen school buildings in the midst of the pandemic. The district has been remote-only since last March. District officials demanded that approximately 2,000 kindergarten through second-grade teachers prepare classrooms beginning February 8 so that students could return on February 22. Nine thousand students are scheduled to enter buildings first, with further grades phased in later.

St. Louis Inmates Take Over Units After Weeks Of Complaints

February 7, 2021 Doyle Murphy, River Front Times. Resist! Civil Disobedience, COVID-19, Missouri, Prisoner rights

More than 100 inmates at the St. Louis City Justice Center took over two units of the jail early this morning, shattering fourth-floor windows and setting small fires as they called out jubilantly to a crowd of supporters who gathered on the street below. The uprising began around 2:30 a.m., and detainees held control of the units for more than six hours before teams of city sheriff's deputies and police regained custody. For weeks, tensions have been high at the downtown jail. Inmates staged two protests in late December and early January to complain about COVID-19 protocols and other conditions in the facility, where the majority of the city's detainees are now housed.

US Suffers Sharpest Rise In Poverty Rate In More Than 50 Years

February 5, 2021 Alex Tanzi and Catarina Saraiva, Chicago Tribune. Educate! COVID-19, Poverty, Recession, United States

The end of 2020 brought the sharpest rise in the U.S. poverty rate since the 1960s, according to a new study. Economists Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S. continued to suffer the economic impacts of COVID-19. That percentage-point rise is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s. This means an additional 8 million people nationwide are now considered poor. Moreover, the poverty rate for Black Americans is estimated to have jumped by 5.4 percentage points, or by 2.4 million individuals.

Radiation Illnesses And COVID-19 In The Navajo Nation

February 5, 2021 Jayita Sarkar and Caitlin Meyer, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Educate! COVID-19, health, Navajo nation, Uranium mining

The COVID-19 pandemic is wiping out Indigenous elders and with them the cultural identity of Indigenous communities in the United States. But on lands that sprawl across a vast area of the American West, the Navajo (or Diné) are dealing not just with the pandemic, but also with another, related public health crisis. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 is killing Native Americans at nearly three times the rate of whites, and on the Navajo Nation itself, about 30,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus and roughly 1,000 have died. But among the Diné, the coronavirus is also spreading through a population that decades of unsafe uranium mining and contaminated groundwater has left sick and vulnerable.

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