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Epidemic

COVID-19 Stimulus Bill Funds State Dept/USAID Operations That Helped Trigger Polio Outbreak

April 24, 2020 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. , , ,
While the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill was authored in the spirit of beating back a pandemic, buried deep within its text is a stipend for the US State Department operations dedicated to carrying out foreign interventions that have contributed to the outbreak of preventable diseases like polio in Syria and Pakistan. Passed unanimously by Congress this March, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provides $250 million for the State Department to implement “economic, security, and stabilization” activities through an “Economic Support Fund” (ESF). Earmarked for activities through September 2020, the bill authorizes the State Department to fund “international organizations.” While the bill does not specify which organizations qualify for funding, many recent State Department “security and stabilization” operations have relied heavily on foreign proxies which did exactly the opposite of improving public health systems.

We Won’t Pay For This Crisis: An Emergency Program To Protect Working People

March 19, 2020 Staff, Leftvoice.org , , ,
The spread of the COVID-19 virus has caused not only a world health crisis, but may also cause a deep economic depression. The fabric of society is becoming strained to the breaking point, and social, economic, and political catastrophes are already erupting in a variety of forms. We live in a society in which our very existence is constantly dominated and constrained by the dual imperatives of profit and competition.

COVID-19 Is A Classic Example Of The Dangers Of Putting Profits Over Health

March 8, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance , , , ,
It is unusual for Popular Resistance to cover an issue two weeks in a row but the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is developing rapidly, and there is a lot of misinformation about it. In the US, we are being misinformed by false information from the corporate media. K. J. Noh writes that "Instead of voicing support or encouraging solidarity—'We are Wuhan'—and commending the extraordinary efforts and sacrifices the Chinese have taken to fight a disease that, in the words of epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, 'all of mankind is facing,' western corporate media have chosen to go all out to criticize and demonize China, sparing no effort to rekindle ugly, racist, orientalist, and dehumanizing tropes, using any perceived or imagined misstep, pretext, and shortcoming to tar China and the Chinese." We are also getting false information from the Trump administration.

China’s Virus Containment Wins Praise

February 25, 2020 Lia Zhu, China Daily. , , , ,
Confronted with an "unprecedented" outbreak of the novel coronavirus, China has done a "remarkable" job in limiting the spread of the disease, said leading experts in the US. "China has done extraordinary things to mostly contain the virus within Hubei and central China," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, to China Daily. "They recognize their responsibility to the world as well as to the people of China and have worked hard to contain this virus." Hotez said that it's "almost impossible" to contain a highly contagious virus, like the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), without a vaccine, but China has made progress.
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