Public Health

Most States Have Cut Back Public Health Powers Amid Pandemic

September 15, 2021 Lauren Weber And Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Associated Press. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Law, Public Health

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers that state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases. A Kaiser Health News review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the COVID-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.

Learn From The East – A Major Lesson Of The Pandemic.

August 23, 2021 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. Educate! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health

The world is now in the throes of another wave of Covid-19, with another surge in infections, sickness and deaths, this time due to the more infectious and apparently more lethal Delta variant. Are there lessons to be learned from the previous waves of Covid-19 that might help us now? There are, and they were evident long ago, but in the West, they have been largely ignored. Up to now, for example, the US has suffered over 617,000 deaths; China in contrast has suffered fewer than 5,000 deaths in a population four times as large as the US. Could there not be some lessons that might serve us in the West now and in the future? In the US and throughout the West, the response to China’s success has all too often been to ignore or deny it.

The Vaccine Must Be A Common Good For Humanity

April 3, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Create! COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health, Vaccine apartheid

Nearly three million people have reportedly been killed by the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) and upwards of 128 million people have been infected by the virus, many with long-lasting health repercussions. Thus far, roughly 1.5% of the world’s population of 7.7 billion have been vaccinated, but 80% of them are from only ten countries. In February, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research warned about the ‘medical apartheid’ that has shaped the vaccine roll-out. Since 1950, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has celebrated Global Health Day on 7 April. Each year, the WHO choses a different theme for the day, with last year’s being ‘Support Nurses and Midwives’. This year, the theme is ‘Building a fairer, healthier world’, which goes to the heart of medical apartheid.

All Health Is Public Health

March 28, 2021 Tinashe Goronga, Dana Brown and Siddhartha Mehta, Progressive International. Create! Decolonization, Health Care, Privatization, Public Health

For decades, we have been sold a myth of private health. It is a myth that our health is largely a product of individual choices and personal responsibilities. It is a myth that our healthcare is a service which private corporations can provide, and for which we must pay to survive. But the Covid-19 pandemic has blown up this myth. Our personal health cannot be separated from the health of our neighbors or our planet. Nor can it be separated from the structural factors and policy decisions that have determined our health outcomes long before we are born.

Iowa Is What Happens When Government Does Nothing

December 5, 2020 Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Iowa, Public Health

Iowa City, IA — Nick Klein knew the man wasn’t going to make it through the night. So the 31-year-old nurse at the University of Iowa ICU put on his gown, his gloves, his mask, and his face shield. He went into the patient’s room, held a phone to his ear, and tried hard not to cry while he listened to the man’s loved ones take turns saying goodbye. When they were finished, Klein put on some music, a muted melody like you might hear in an elevator. He pulled up a chair and took the man’s hand. For two hours that summer night, there were no sounds but soft piano and the gentle beep beep beep of the monitors.

To Solve The COVID19 Crisis, Biden Must Put People Over Profits

December 2, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Truthout. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Joe Biden, Public Health

As infectious disease experts had warned over the summer, the fall brought another rise in COVID-19 cases in the United States. It is a third surge in what is still the first wave as the number of daily new cases only flattened slightly in the spring before rising again in June. As of the writing of this article, the number of daily new cases is averaging 177,000 and close to 2,000 people are dying each day. The COVID-19 pandemic has reached a crisis level in multiple states. In El Paso, Texas, hospitals have run out of beds even though the city’s convention center was converted into a hospital, and some patients are being transported nearly 600 miles away to Austin.

States With Few Coronavirus Restrictions Are Spreading The Virus

December 1, 2020 David Armstrong, ProPublica. Educate! COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health

For months after Washington state imposed one of the earliest and strictest COVID-19 lockdowns in March, Jim Gilliard didn’t stray far from his modular home near Waitts Lake, 45 miles north of Spokane. The retiree was at high risk from the coronavirus, both because of his age, 70, and his medical condition. Several years ago, he had a defibrillator implanted. So he mainly ventured out during the pandemic to shop for food. There wasn’t much else to do anyway. Gatherings in his county were limited to no more than 10 people, there was a mask mandate, movie theaters were closed and many nightclubs and concert venues were shuttered because of a state ban on all live entertainment, indoors and out.

Public Health Council Unanimously Passes Motion Opposing Biomass Plant

November 30, 2020 Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, Popular Resistance. Resist! Biomass, Dirty energy, Massachusetts, Public Health

The Public Health Council of Springfield on Saturday, November 21, sent a letter to the chairs of the House-Senate Climate Change Conference requesting that there be no incentives written into the legislation under consideration promoting the building of biomass as a source of electricity. According to the letter signed by the Public Health Council Environmental Health Chair Dr. Jeffrey Scavron, “The Public Health Council urges you to do all you can to not allow the construction of a Biomass Furnace in our city.

The AMA Officially Recognized Racism As A Public-Health Threat

November 20, 2020 Bill Bostock and Anna Medaris Miller, Business Insider. Educate! COVID-19, health disparities, Public Health, Systemic Racism

The American Medical Association has officially defined racism as a public health threat that has created substantial health inequality. Racism, both systemic and structural, has historically perpetuated health inequality and cut short the lives of many Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in the US and around the world. Over the last year, a number of county and state authorities have also labelled racism a public health threat. Among them are county councils in San Bernardino, California, and Montgomery, Maryland, as well as authorities in Michigan, Nevada, Cleveland, Denver, and Indianapolis.

The Enraging Deja Vu Of A Third Coronavirus Wave

November 14, 2020 Caroline Chen, ProPublica. Educate! COVID-19, Healthcare workers, Pandemic, Public Health

As a health reporter covering the pandemic, I’ve experienced too many moments of deja vu. This summer, as the virus swept through the South, news footage of overwhelmed hospitals in Houston turning away ambulances recalled similar scenes from March and April in New York City. Now, we’re in the so-called third wave of the pandemic, with the virus slamming into Midwestern states, and this week, Dr. Gregory Schmidt, associate chief medical officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, said his colleagues are converting 16 hospital beds into new ICU beds in anticipation of an influx of COVID-19 patients.

Hurricane Eta: Nicaragua Prioritizes Saving And Improving Lives

November 5, 2020 Nan McCurdy, The Alliance for Global Justice. Create! Government aid, Hurricane, Nicaragua, Public Health

How is it that there were only two lives lost during a level 4 Hurricane that affected Nicaragua beginning Nov. 2 on the Caribbean Coast? Nicaragua is constantly preparing and training people to save lives in disasters: thousands of people have participated in simulations for hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and more, and this happens a number of times during the year in every municipality. Nicaragua is among the first countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with the best disaster risk management, according to a study conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in August 2020.

Tribes Defend Themselves Against A Pandemic

October 4, 2020 Kalen Goodluck, High Country News. Resist! COVID-19, Indigenous Sovereignty, Public Health, State Government

As COVID-19 numbers soared across the country this spring, tribal nations began closing their reservation boundaries to non-residents. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux erected checkpoints on roads entering their reservations in order to protect their citizens, even as the state of South Dakota refused to require masks or mandate social distance. By early May, South Dakota Gov. Kirsti Noem, R, explicitly told the tribes to remove their checkpoints or face the consequences. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier declined, saying that doing so would “seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation.”

Navajo Nation And White Mountain Apache Tribe Chase Down A Virus

August 30, 2020 Kalen Goodluck, High Country News. Create! COVID-19, Indigenous Peoples, Navajo nation, Public Health

On a mild morning in April at Arizona’s Whiteriver Indian Hospital, Dr. Ryan Close tested nasal swabs from two members of an eight-person household on the Fort Apache Reservation northwest of Phoenix. About half of the family had a runny nose and cough and had lost their sense of taste and smell — all symptoms of COVID-19 — and, by late morning, the two tests had come back positive. Close’s contact-tracing work began. For Close and his team, each day begins like this: with a list of new COVID-19 cases — new sources that may have spread the virus.

Reopening Schools: We Don’t Have To Descend Into COVID Hell

August 16, 2020 Steve Miller, Rosemary Lee and E.B. Shaw, HamptonThink.org. Create! COVID-19, Education, Public Health, School reopening

With Corona virus cases spiking across the country, America is on the verge of forcing millions of people into extreme danger. Suddenly, everyone from CEOs, the President, state governors, and the corporate media are calling for schools to open “to save the economy”. No country has tried to open schools with the virus spreading like here in the US. We are currently in a massive wave of surging cases in 40 states. There are not enough tests or testing. How do you open schools if you can’t test and trace? There’s no way that you can keep a school safe from coronavirus if the virus is raging out of control in the community where the school is located.

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