Pandemic

France And Germany Join 10 EU Countries In Call For Green Recovery

April 23, 2020 By Frédéric Simon, Euractiv.com. Create! European Union (EU), Global Recession, Green New Deal, Pandemic

Paris and Berlin have added their names to a growing list of EU capitals asking for the European Green Deal to be placed at the heart of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery plan. The Green Deal “must be central to a resilient recovery after COVID-19,” EU environment ministers wrote in an opinion piece published on Climate Home News, a specialised information site. “The Green Deal provides us with a roadmap to make the right choices in responding to the economic crisis while transforming Europe into a sustainable and climate neutral economy,” the ministers wrote in the commentary piece. “We should withstand the temptations of short-term solutions in response to the present crisis that risk locking the EU in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come,” the text reads.

Open-Source Medical Supplies Battle COVID-19

April 22, 2020 Anders Lisdorf, Shareablenet. Create! COVID-19, Medical equipment, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

While health authorities focus on top-down measures to get COVID-19 supplies to hospitals in need, home-grown initiatives are enlisting regular people to create open-source equipment. Rather than wait for the impact of government efforts to persuade manufacturers to move into emergency production of ventilators and protective equipment, the sharing economy is already saving lives with home-made masks and 3D-printed ventilators. A dearth of adequate medical supplies was implicated in an increase in coronavirus mortality in Italy, compared with Germany and South Korea, where supply was adequate. Meeting a desperate need for ventilators through open-sourcing Health authorities say the immediate short-term need is to get more ventilators, which compress and decompress air for patients who are too weak to breathe on their own.

Colombia: Red Rags On Windows To Protest Amid Quarantine

April 22, 2020 Telesur English. Resist! Colombia, COVID-19, Hunger, Pandemic

Faced with the inability of President Ivan Duque administration to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, Colombians are displaying red cloths on windows to express their dissatisfaction. "They said to take out red rags if people needed help. Today the red rag seems to be the new flag in the most humble neighborhoods. Hunger is not quarantined," said cartoonist Alex Ro, as reported by local outlet Las2Orillas. The red rags placement started in some Spanish cities to notify that the inhabitants of a house had some kind of urgent need. This idea reached Colombia, a South American country where the first reports of red-rag users happened in Soacha city, in the department of Cundinamarca.

The Pandemic Is An Opportunity For Major Change

April 22, 2020 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! COVID-19, Global Recession, Pandemic, Transformation

The pandemic is many things for many people. For a lot of activists, it offers both frustration and opportunity. It’s frustrating not to be able to stage a sit-in or picket line. The opportunity, though, is the shake-up in politics and society: History shows many examples of when a convulsive historic event altered conditions in such a way as to promote positive change. That happened with the Great Depression in the United States and World War II in the U.K. Both societies took a leap forward in terms of progressive social, economic and cultural change. It’s not that anyone would wish for the shake-up, given its enormous pain and suffering. But massive history-making events don’t ask our opinion. They are what they are. The question is, what do we make of them? In Christopher Fry’s anti-war play, “A Sleep of Prisoners,” a character says, “Affairs are now soul size.”

COVID-19, Capitalism, And Socialism

April 20, 2020 Victor Wallis, Political Animal Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, Pandemic, Socialism

The COVID-19 emergency underscores longstanding truths about capitalism and socialism. Acting on the most immediate demands that it raises draws us directly into a confrontation with core issues. COVID-19 is exceptionally contagious, and those who are infected by it do not necessarily show symptoms. These two traits, in combination, guarantee rapid spread of the virus unless certain requirements have been met. Most directly, there must be ample supplies of the appropriate diagnostic tests, personal protective gear (masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, etc., especially for healthcare workers), and ventilators. At a more basic level, there must be an adequate healthcare infrastructure. This means that there must be enough hospitals and enough healthcare professionals and support staff to be able to respond effectively to emergencies.

Healthcare Workers Block Denver ‘Reopen Protest’

April 20, 2020 Nick Visser, Huffpost. Resist! Astroturfing, COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic

As tensions continue to boil over amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has placed large swaths of the nation at a standstill, a small group of health care workers blocked hundreds of protestors in Denver on Sunday afternoon, resulting in a dramatic showdown. Alyson McClaran, a photojournalist based in Denver, said the medical workers stood in the street to counter hundreds who had gathered at the Colorado capitol in an event dubbed “Operation Gridlock.” The event was meant to express frustration with Gov. Jared Polis’ (D) stay-at-home orders as coronavirus continues to infect tens of thousands of people around the country. HuffPost has not been able to identify the health care workers seen in the photographs, but video taken at the scene showed one man dressed in scrubs standing calmly in front of a line of cars as a woman holding a banner reading “Land of the Free” screamed at him.

The Self-Centered Rich Country Response To Pandemics And Crises Is Wrecking Poor Countries

April 20, 2020 Tamara Pearson, Counterpunch. Educate! COVID-19, Deportations, Pandemic, Poverty

I’m squatting on a round piece of concrete, and a 72-year-old man is sitting in the gutter, his walking stick beside him. He tells me that after being deported from the United States, he has been hiking the streets of Mexico City trying to find somewhere to stay. But all the refuges are closed due to the pandemic, including the one we’re sitting outside of, where I volunteer. He has run out of insulin for his diabetes and says he can’t walk anymore. I’m aware that he may not survive much longer. He’s the fifth person that day that I have to turn away and I can’t stand it. Back in the migrant refuge, we organize working groups and events to add structure to the empty days and try to prevent tension building up. It’s bad enough that many of the refugees here have fled violence, only to wait months for their visas, to now be stuck inside because of the quarantine, unable to work, even informally.

What Trump’s Funding Cuts To WHO Mean For World

April 19, 2020 By Adam Kamradt-Scott, Consortium News. Educate! COVID-19, Pandemic, United Nations, World Health Organization

US President Donald Trump has announced the U.S. is cutting its funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) – a decision that will have major implications for the global health response to the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. contributes more than $400 million to the WHO per year, though it is already $200 million in arrears. It is the organization’s largest donor and gives about 10 times what China does per year. Trump has accused the organization of mishandling and covering up the initial spread of Covid-19 in China, and of generally failing to take a harsher stance toward China. What will Trump’s decision to cut funding mean for the organization?

Gorbachev Speaks Out On Military Spending And The Pandemic

April 19, 2020 RT. Create! military spending, Nuclear Weapons, Pandemic, Wars and Militarism

The Covid-19 pandemic shows that governments that think of security in mostly military terms are simply wasting money, Mikhail Gorbachev has said. Defence spending must be cut globally to fund things that humanity actually needs. The former Soviet leader called on the world to move away from hard power in international affairs. He remains especially worried about the kind of military brinkmanship that lately has almost led to a shooting war in the Middle East. "What we urgently need now is a rethinking of the entire concept of security," he wrote, in an op-ed published by TIME magazine. "Even after the end of the Cold War, it has been envisioned mostly in military terms. Over the past few years, all we've been hearing is talk about weapons, missiles and airstrikes."

How China Broke The Chain Of Infection

April 18, 2020 By Vijay Prashad, Weiyan Zhu and Du Xiaojun, Independent Media Institute. Create! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health

On March 31, 2020, a group of scientists from around the world—from Oxford University to Beijing Normal University—published an important paper in Science. This paper—“An Investigation of Transmission Control Measures During the First 50 Days of the COVID-19 Epidemic in China”—proposes that if the Chinese government had not initiated the lockdown of Wuhan and the national emergency response, then there would have been 744,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases outside Wuhan. “Control measures taken in China,” the authors argue, “potentially hold lesso[n]s for other countries around the world.” In the World Health Organization’s February report after a visit to China, the team members wrote, “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”

Act Now To Stop The US War On Venezuela

April 16, 2020 Popular Resistance. Resist! Pandemic, Sanctions, US Imperialism, Venezuela

As the United States government escalates coercive economic warfare (sanctions) on Venezuela and sends warships to its shores, people in the United States, in solidarity with Venezuelans, are taking action to stop this insanity. Venezuelan activists sent a video message to us. Here are actions you can take - post a photo of yourself holding a sign and tag it with #FightCovidNotVenezuela; sign the open letter to the US government and the United Nations; attend the webinar, "An Inside View of Resistance to US Imperialism in Venezuela and How to Build International Solidarity," on April 22; and, organize for the International Week of Actions against Imperialism.

Swiss Doctor Dispels Myths About COVID-19

April 15, 2020 Dr. Paul Robert Vogt, CoopTV. Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Pandemic, Switzerland

The facts presented come from scientific papers, which have undergone a peer review and have been published in the best medical journals. Many of these facts were known before the end of February. If you had taken note of these medical facts and had been able to separate ideology, politics, and medicine, Switzerland would most likely be in a better position today: we would not have the second most COVID-19-positive people worldwide and one per capita significantly smaller number of people who lost their lives in the context of this pandemic. In addition, it is very likely that we would have no partial, incomplete lockdown of our economy and no controversial discussions about how we can "get out of here".

Socialist Healthcare Workers Tell Us How To Fight The Pandemic

April 15, 2020 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Create! COVID-19, Health Care, Nationalization, Pandemic

Capitalism has birthed a nightmare. Nearly two million people around the world have already fallen ill as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals like ours have been completely overwhelmed by the rush of patients. The bodies of the dead are being held in refrigerated trucks. Those who can’t be identified are buried in mass graves. Unemployment may already be as high as 13 percent in the U.S. It was entirely preventable. For over a month, Trump downplayed the threat of a worldwide pandemic. Even as his advisors warned that as many as 1.2 million lives could be lost in the U.S. alone, time and again he claimed we were safe from harm. His denial left us totally unprepared to deal with the explosion of COVID-19 cases that came just days later.

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