These are excerpts of July 2021 articles. For a quick sense of information and faster summary just read the red marked texted.

My primary source is the extremely well researched RFK jr.’s “Children Health Defense” organization. The CHD is suffering some severe censorship on social media because they are exposing government/corporate media inconsistencies, distortions and censored facts about the Covid pandemic!

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2020-04-30 Ecocide and the Coronavirus: How the Capitalist Mode of Production Makes Pandemics Inevitable    Since its earliest days, the capitalist mode of production has been fundamentally incompatible with a sustainable relationship to nature. In recent decades, however, it has become all too apparent that capitalism’s war on nature threatens not just nature itself but much of humankind. There now exist two potential catastrophic scenarios for humanity. The first, global warming, began to be widely accepted by scientists in the 1980s. Less than three decades later we began to witness extreme weather events produced by climate change — hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, flooding — that threaten the lives of millions each year. We can now add a second existential threat created by capitalist ecocide: worldwide pandemic.

Infectious diseases and even plagues have existed throughout all of human history, of course. But the extension of the capitalist mode of production around the globe has created the conditions for the most deadly pathogens to reach every corner of the world in a matter of weeks.https://www.leftvoice.org/ecocide-and-the-coronavirus-how-the-capitalist-mode-of-production-makes-pandemics-inevitable

2020-04-29 Undocumented Workers Need a Bailout, Too  Beyond performing essential labor, we are humans — and, in a pandemic, that should be enough to deserve help. COVID-19 has devoured the country’s health care system and led to what’s been called the “deepest global recession in history.” As an attempt to provide some relief to struggling Americans and businesses, Congress recently passed a $2 trillion stimulus and bailout package.

But the deal they negotiated gave a cold shoulder to the backbone of our economy: 11 million people and their families currently living in desperation. The stimulus bill, in short, simply left out undocumented people.

In 2018, a typical year, undocumented immigrants contributed around $20 billion in federal taxes, plus nearly $12 billion in state and local taxes. But because people need a valid Social Security Number to benefit from federal financial assistance, they’re getting completely left out of the stimulus their own tax dollars paid for.

Undocumented immigrants can forget about, for example, collecting the $1,200 stimulus checks promised to every U.S. household. Even worse, as more undocumented construction, housekeeping, and service workers find themselves unemployed, they won’t be able to file for unemployment benefits, which were expanded and extended under the stimulus.

Making matters worse, immigrant workers often work the front line jobs most exposed to the virus — while lacking health care or any meaningful social safety net.   https://fpif.org/undocumented-workers-need-a-bailout-too/

2020-04-28 COVID-19 is a political crisis fueled by the ruling class  Take a look at a map of where America’s wealth inequality is most pronounced and then overlay the data from the COVID19 death toll. You will see the pandemic’s path through the America so many in Washington ignored for decades as they tilted the economy to favor the one percent.

Crucial to the corporatist continuity is the deliberate undercount of the dead bodies and the promotion of an image of managerial competence of a government to deliver us from a virus they ignored and then spread by fumbling their response.  The push to reopen without universal testing and contract tracing is coming from 21st century Malthusians, who — as their team captain in the White House has said —want to just let the virus “rip” through society. 

This, David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush explained was moving “toward the policy” of “let’s take the punch” and reopen accepting ‘that there may be hundreds of thousands, or some double hundreds of thousands, of Americans killed. They’re going to be mostly poor and minorities, mostly not going to be Trump voters. Let’s take that punch and push through and try to get to herd immunity as fast as possible.”

You will do your patriotic part, as did your slave and indentured servant ancestors before you. With selfless zeal you will ensure that the ruling class can remain safely ensconced in their home bunker and run the world remotely — for it is your destiny to serve, and they love you for it.  https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/covid-19-is-a-political-crisis-fueled-by-the-ruling-class/

2020-04-28 ‘Oligarchs don’t care about democracy’: Pulitzer winner warns COVID-19 will ‘trigger a decline unlike anything seen since the Great Depression’  Empires fall a little bit at a time and then all at once. Over the last two decades, America has proven itself to be well along on that journey. The coronavirus pandemic has simply pushed our nation further along that downward spiral.

Ultimately, the pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated — for those still somehow in denial about the decades-long reality of America as a decaying empire — deep political, social, economic, cultural and other societal problems.  https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-oligarchs-dont-care-about-democracy-pulitzer-winner-chris-hedges-warns-covid-19-will-trigger-a-decline-unlike-anything-seen-since-the-great-depression/

2020-04-28 The coronavirus pandemic has revealed how fragile everyday life is  In many ways, our shared sense of what is normal and probable is conditioned by both capitalism and our social histories. But these expectations, according to Stengers, prevent other possibilities, other realities from appearing, or from appearing sensible.  More than ever, it becomes an urgent imperative that world-building and decision-making “take place somehow in the presence of those who will bear their consequences,” as philosopher Donna Haraway puts it.

The advent of COVID-19 is a particular disruption, but one that points out to so many other disruptions at work in our lives: global inequality, the climate emergency, rampant species extinction and resource depletion.  By exposing the fragility of the normal world, the pandemic also offers us an opportunity to make lives less precarious and social institutions more robust and thinking more free to consider not the probable world — but the possibility of building the worlds we hope to come.  https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-coronavirus-pandemic-has-revealed-how-fragile-everyday-life-is/

2020-04-27 The Coronavirus Chronology From Hell The world leadership trophy and The winner’s prize in the virus-killer race.

Historically, in hyper-crises, local and global systems can change fundamentally. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit first China and then the rest of the globe, the question of whether the American imperial era might be faltering was already on the table, amid that country’s endless wars and with the world’s most capricious leader. When humanity emerges from this devastating crisis of disease, dislocation, and impoverishment, not to mention the fracturing of a global economic system created by Washington but increasingly powered by Beijing on a climate-stressed planet, the question will be: Has the Chinese dragon pushed the American eagle down to a secondary position?

To assess that question objectively in this unsettled moment, it’s necessary to examine on a day-to-day basis how the two contemporary superpowers handled the Covid-19 crisis, and ask the question: Who has proved better at combating the deadliest disease of modern times, President Donald Trump or President Xi Jinping? It’s chastening to note that whereas China under Xi has suppressed the latest coronavirus at the human cost of three lives per million population, the U.S. under Trump is still struggling to overpower it, having already sacrificed 145 of every million Americans. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/27/coronavirus-chronology-hell

2020-04-26 Working people are forced to sacrifice for the common good. Why aren’t the titans of capitalism?    In the name of protecting the common good, Governors across the country have ordered people to stay at home, and all non-essential worksites shuttered. But aside from some states adopting short-term bans on evictions and foreclosures, no leaders have gone further in ordering the financial economy to “stop working” and set aside the primacy of their business interests for the common good by forgiving rents and waiving mortgage interest while deferring mortgage principal payments. 

Forty large corporations, many of whom are controlled by Wall Street private equity funds, have bought up more than two million units of rental housing in the United States. So, far all have been silent on the issue of rent forgiveness. Most picked up their properties, often at fire sale prices and with the help of federal government assistance, after the 2008 housing crisis. Unless these powerful firms are ordered to put public health and family well-being before corporate profits, they are likely to again swoop in and extend their control of America’s housing stock even further as millions of families and smaller landlords lose their homes and businesses.   https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/working-people-are-forced-to-sacrifice-for-the-common-good-why-arent-the-titans-of-capitalism/  

2020-04-27 A New Global Order? How Coronavirus Will Change the World Forever   Indeed, without a people-propelled form of change, the status quo seems to constantly reinvent itself, restoring its dominance, cultural hegemony and undemocratic claim to power.  Undeniably, the global crisis invited by the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic embodies within it the opportunity of fundamental change (towards greater equality or greater authoritarianism), or no change at all.

It is us, the people, and our true authentic voices – the ‘organic intellectuals’, not the celebrity philosophers – who have the right and the moral legitimacy to rise up to reclaim our democracy and redefine a new discourse on a global, not ethnocentric, form of justice.  It is either that we exercise this option, or the current ‘interregnum’ will fizzle out into yet another missed opportunity. https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-coronavirus-will-change-the-world-forever/266991/

2020-04-27 ‘Just calm down,’ says Pelosi, when asked if she made tactical error in Covid-19 relief fight with McConnell   Asked by CNN‘s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” if she had made a “tactical mistake” by allowing an “interim” piece of coronavirus relief package—known as COVID 3.5—to pass last week without much stronger support for state and local governments, Pelosi deflected on the premise.

On the interim package, widely criticized as a capitulation to McConnell and a forfeiture of key political leverage, Pelosi told the American people, “Judge it for what it does, don’t criticize it for what it doesn’t—because we have a plan for that.”  While McConnell was pilloried last week for suggesting that states should be sent to bankruptcy as opposed to receiving funds, Democrats have said a large aid package to state and local governments will be a key part of their CARES 2 legislation.

In a  letter to Pelosi and Senate Minority Chuck Schumer at the end of last week, nearly 50 progressive advocacy groups said that as Republicans attempt to exploit the coronavirus crisis to “further enrich their already-wealthy donors, and undermine democracy,” Democrats “must put forth and fight for a relief package that puts people first.”  “We need Democrats to be bold and fearless in fighting for our families and our communities, advancing solutions that are commensurate with the scale of the crisis we face and helping us build toward a better future for ​our people, our economy and our democracy,” the groups wrote.  https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/just-calm-down-says-pelosi-when-asked-if-she-made-tactical-error-in-covid-19-relief-fight-with-mcconnell/

2020-04-24 There’s an irreparable flaw at the heart of capitalism that COVID-19 has exposed  Consider this absurdity: The U.S. government’s policy in the face of the current capitalist crash is to “return the economy to the pre-coronavirus normal.” What? In that “normal” system, private capitalists maximized profits by not producing the tests, masks, ventilators, beds, etc., needed when coronavirus hit. Profit-driven capitalism proved extremely inefficient in its response to the virus. Wealth already lost from the coronavirus far exceeds what it would have cost to prepare properly. In capitalism, a small minority—employers—makes all the key decisions (what, how, where to produce and how to use the proceeds) governing production and distribution of most goods and services. The majority—employees and their families—must live with the results of employers’ decisions but are excluded from making them. Why return to such an undemocratic “normal”? Why fix capitalism yet again, given its structural disposition to cyclical crashes and repeated costly need to be fixed?

Are we experiencing capitalism’s historic decline? Is that the message as people increasingly find capitalism to be unnecessary at best and unbearable at worst? Worker cooperatives present themselves as a better alternative way to organize enterprises: factories, offices, and stores, private and public. As democratic economic institutions, worker coops are a better fit with and a much better support for democratic political institutions. For the 21st century, the most popular slogan on socialists’ banners will likely be “Democratize the Enterprise.”  https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/theres-an-irreparable-flaw-at-the-heart-of-capitalism-that-covid-19-has-exposed/

2020-04-24 Did the COVID-19 virus originate from a lab or nature? Examining the evidence for different hypotheses of the novel coronavirus’ origins In summary, the hypothesis that the virus escaped from a lab is supported largely by circumstantial evidence and is not supported by scientific studies and publicly available information. In the case of the hypothesis that the outbreak began with zoonotic infection, at the moment genomic analyses are consistent with a natural origin for the virus and support the idea that the outbreak began zoonotically. Unlike the manmade virus and lab escape hypotheses, there is no compelling evidence against the hypothesis for natural zoonosis. As Stevens concluded, the hypothesis for natural zoonosis is the one that fits all available evidence, is most parsimonious, and best satisfies the concept of Occam’s Razor—that the simplest solution is most likely the right one.  https://healthfeedback.org/did-the-covid-19-virus-originate-from-a-lab-or-nature-examining-the-evidence-for-different-hypotheses-of-the-novel-coronavirus-origins/

2020-04-23 Capitalism Is Failing Its Coronavirus Stress Test—Only Workers Can Turn Things Around  Labor unions today have the political opportunity and moral responsibility to help organize a movement of the whole working class, organized and unorganized alike, to fight for the safety and welfare protections that we all deserve.  https://www.portside.org/2020-04-23/capitalism-failing-its-coronavirus-stress-test-only-workers-can-turn-things-around

2020-04-22 The Corporate Food System Is Making the Coronavirus Crisis Worse  COVID-19 is so dangerous to food security because the global supply chain was insecure to begin with. Could we remake it?  Everyone, of course, is aware that hunger is closely tracking the virus as its wreaks havoc in both the global North and global South. Indeed, one can say that, unlike in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S., in South Asia, the food calamity preceded the actual invasion by the virus.  With people dying along the way, a constant refrain in this vast human wave was the desperate cry: “If coronavirus doesn’t kill us, hunger will!”

But the food question has been a key dimension of the pandemic in two other ways. One is the connection of the virus with the destabilization of wildlife. The other is the way the measures to contain the spread of the virus have underlined the extreme vulnerability of the global food supply chain.  Since “millions of people around the world depend on international trade for their food security and livelihoods,” governments had to refrain from taking measures that would “disrupt the food supply chain.”

Indeed, belonging to an essential industry, farm workers and workers in the downstream food processing and food retail sectors are in the frontlines of the struggle to contain COVID-19. But many of them are deprived of the most basic protective gear, like facemasks, and work in crowded conditions that make a mockery of social distance rules.

But the global supply chain is not only threatened by problems at the production and processing ends, but by transportation bottlenecks, especially at key hubs.

Probably the most important measure that we propose is to move food production away from the fragile, corporate-controlled globalized food supply chain based on narrow considerations such as the reduction of unit cost to more sustainable smallholder-based localized systems. While, in the short term, global supply chains must be kept running to ensure people do not starve, the strategic goal must be to replace them, and some measures can already be taken even as the pandemic is at its height.

There are solid reasons for reversing the trend towards the globalization of food production and moving towards more food self-sufficiency. However, the rationale goes beyond just ensuring food self- sufficiency to fostering values and practices that enhance community, social solidarity, and democracy.     https://fpif.org/the-corporate-food-system-is-making-the-coronavirus-crisis-worse/

2020-04-22 U.S. Response to COVID-19 Equals Genocide for Blacks, but “Progressive” Leaders Offer Nothing But Words   The settler colonial history of the United States is rife with examples of outright genocide committed against Black Americans. During the period of chattel bondage, Black people were routinely tortured and murdered with impunity. So-called emancipation brought a wave of Jim Crow violence that kept Black Americans in a state of ceaseless terror. The fifty years since the end of the so-called Civil Rights period have been characterized by a deep, nation-wide denial of the ongoing genocide that the U.S. imperial state continues to impose on Black life. COVID-19 has only exacerbated the genocide of Black Americans and so-called “progressive” leaders in the Democratic Party have offered nothing but words in response.

Of course, this is by design. Black misleaders such as Kamala Harris and Cory Booker joined forces with Elizabeth “capitalist to my bones” Warren to denounce racial disparities not out of care for Black America but for their own self-serving interests.  The Democratic Party has already pushed through a multi-trillion-dollar bailout to the largest corporations and banks and no amount of statements or harsh words for Trump from Democrats in Congress will reverse it.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-response-covid-19-equals-genocide-blacks-progressive-leaders-offer-nothing-words

2020-04-20 Coronavirus poll: Most Americans reject anti-lockdown protests    The survey, conducted April 17 to April 19, found that a full 60 percent of the public opposes the largely pro-Trump protesters whose calls for governors to “liberate” their states by lifting lockdown measures have attracted intense media attention in recent days — and whose message the president amplified Friday in a series of all-caps “LIBERATE” tweets about three swing states: Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia.  Only 22 percent of Americans say they support the protesters. Despite Trump’s messaging, even Republicans oppose the protests 47 percent to 36 percent. Asked whether they agree or disagree with Trump’s “LIBERATE” tweets, only a quarter of Americans say they agree.  https://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-news-you-gov-coronavirus-poll-most-americans-reject-antilockdown-protests-124259347.html

2020-04-18 Trump Hijacks Dr. Deborah Birx’s Coronavirus Presentation  https://news.yahoo.com/trump-hijacks-dr-deborah-birx-230128081.html?

2020-04-18 Trump suggests China won’t be punished if coronavirus was ‘a mistake’   https://news.yahoo.com/trump-suggests-china-wont-be-punished-if-coronavirus-was-a-mistake-224719121.html

2020-04-18 Nurses on the Front Lines/Captain Bligh   “As far as the equipment that we need, they keep talking about a shortage. We are not sure how short they are. They are doing battlefield triage making nurses wear the wrong equipment or bring bandanas to work. And they say this is in order to save. Well when an employer tells us to save it’s all economical. I know they want the public to think they’re just trying to conserve supplies so there’ll be enough for how long this thing lasts. But it’s not. It’s money. We know that, because we see the equipment in some of the hospitals. It’s under lock and key, and they tell us we can’t have it.”    https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/nurses-on-the-front-lines-captain-bligh/

2020-04-18 The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President  “[Donald Trump’s] destructiveness, if it were purely criminal, purely intentional that is, then it would go only so far. But the reason why it is critical to distinguish between what is pathological versus normal and healthy is that [pathology] ends up being far more efficient….  He ends up being almost exclusively destructive and never productive because pathology is so efficient it brings about damage and death. And it is far more effective than anything we can consciously, rationally plan.”  https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/nurses-on-the-front-lines-captain-bligh/

2020-04-17 Episode 376 – Lies, Damned Lies and Coronavirus Statistics  https://www.corbettreport.com/coronastats/

2020-04-17 Flu Misinformation and Coronavirus Fears: My Letter to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Last week, your CNN producer, Matthew Reynard, notified me that CNN is featuring me in a documentary about “vaccine misinformation”. As usual, Mr. Reynard did not point out a single factual assertion by me that was incorrect (I carefully source all of my statements about vaccines to government databases or peer-reviewed publications). CNN uses the term “vaccine misinformation” as a euphemism for any statement that departs from the Government / Pharma orthodoxy that all vaccines are safe, necessary, and effective for all people.

I have always admired you, Sanjay. Your obvious talents aside, you seem to be genuinely compassionate and to value integrity. Earlier in your career, you showed a courageous willingness to challenge Big Pharma’s vaccine orthodoxies. However, I respectfully point out that CNN and particularly you, Sanjay, are today among the most prolific broadcasters of “vaccine misinformation”. Over the last several years, I cannot recall seeing a single substantial CNN segment on vaccines that did not include easily verified factual misstatements. CNN’s recent special, “Pandemic”, was a showcase of erroneous assertions about the flu vaccine. Since I don’t like to think that you deliberately mislead the public—particularly about critical public health choices—I have taken the time to point out some of your most frequent errors.

1. CNN assertion: In your annual flu shot promotions, you routinely parrot CDC’s estimates of overall flu deaths which have ranged in recent years from 36,000 for the 1990-1991 flu season to 80,000 for the 2017-2018 flu season.

Fact: The HHS’s mortality and morbidity data—available on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website—show that CDC’s (and CNN’s) annual estimates are off by orders of magnitude.

2. CNN assertion: CNN routinely promotes the flu shot for everyone older than 6 months, proclaiming that the best way to protect against serious cases of the ailment “is to get a flu shot”.

Fact: In reality, there is absolutely no scientific basis for the CDC’s assertion that the influenza vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the flu.

(3) CNN assertion:You and CNN frequently parrot CDC’s claim that a flu shot reduces the chances that an individual will transmit the flu to others. Pandemic repeated this assertion. CNN offers this supposed benefit as the justification for school vaccine mandates.

Fact: However, in their 2010 systematic meta review of the literature, the Cochrane researchers found “no evidence that vaccines prevent viral transmission or complications”.

(4) CNN assertion: CNN frequently repeats CDC’s advice that children should get the flu shot, which you assure CNN’s audience has been proven safe.

Fact: A 2012 Cochrane review looking at studies of influenza vaccination in healthy children found no safety studies in children under age two, and declared that safety studies were “urgently required”.

5. CNN assertion: CNN also promotes CDC’s recommendation that all pregnant women get a flu shot.

Fact: CDC recommends the flu shot for pregnant women despite the fact that the FDA—the agency charged with assessing vaccine safety—has refused to license the flu shot during pregnancy due to grave safety concerns. (Sanjay; I encourage you to confront FDA and make inquiries about this inter-agency conflict.) Every influenza vaccine package insert contains warnings about the lack of safety studies in pregnant women and nursing mothers.

6. CNN assertion: CNN urges seniors to get their flu shots. CDC credits the vaccine with a dramatic reduction in influenza-related deaths among the elderly.

Fact: The scientific community has thoroughly debunked CDC’s claims that the flu shot reduces death among seniors.

7. CNN assertion: You frequently inform the CNN audience that “the flu vaccine is safe, and significant side effects are very rare.”

Fact: Actual injury rates are impossible to determine since flu shots are exempt from pre-and-post-marketing placebo studies required of other medicines, and because HHS’s post-marketing surveillance system, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System [VAERS], captures “fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries” according to a 2010 HHS-funded study. Nevertheless, some alarming metrics ought to give you pause when you offer these assurances to millions of viewers; Flu vaccines account for nearly ¼ of payouts for injuries by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund (VICA). The Vaccine Court has paid out nearly $1 billion for injuries and deaths caused by flu shots.

8. CNN assertion: On March 5, 2020, you and Anderson Cooper did a “Town Hall” segment, “Corona Facts and Fears”, in which you fervently urged listeners to get the flu shot as the best way to keep healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.  According to Anderson, “If you are concerned about coronavirus, you should get a flu shot”.

Fact: However, the only study we have been able to find assessing flu shots and coronavirus is a January 2020 US Pentagon study that found that the flu shot INCREASES the risks from coronavirus by 36%. “Receiving influenza vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon known as “virus interference…’vaccine derived’ virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus…”

9. CNN assertion: Sanjay, I’ve watched your video assuring the public that getting the flu shot cannot increase one’s chances of getting the flu.

Fact: While that assertion has some meager support from a very small number of studies, the overwhelming weight of published science suggests that getting an annual flu shot can actually increase your risk of both flu and flu-like illnesses.

10. CNN assertion: One final observation about a different vaccine; In CNN’s regular promotion of measles vaccines, CNN and Sanjay frequently claim that natural measles mortalities are 1-2 in 1000. Those estimates seem calculated to frighten people into taking a measles shot and to drive MMR mandates.

Fact: CDC’s 1963 mortality and morbidity data show that prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine, improvements in nutrition and hygeine had already driven US measles mortality in U.S. to 400 per year, a population ratio of 1/500,000 and a death-case ratio of 1 in 10,000—about the same risk of dying from a lightning strike. Most of those mortalities were among malnourished children, many of whom suffered from intellectual disabilities. The best evidence suggests that measles mortalities would have continued to drop with the introduction of food stamps, W.I.C, and other childhood nutritional programs passed during the War on Poverty after 1964 to relieve hunger in impoverished communities.

 Conclusion

In their 2010 meta-analysis, the Cochrane researchers accused the CDC of deliberately misrepresenting the science in order to support their universal influenza vaccination recommendation. Nevertheless, CNN continually broadcasts CDC pronouncements as gospel and, ironically, ridicules those of us who actually read the science as “purveyors of ‘vaccine misinformation’”. 

Multiple comprehensive federal investigations and whistleblower declarations have documented the corrupt relationship between the CDC’s Vaccine Branch and the four vaccine makers: Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, and GSK. These include a 2000 report by the US Congress Government Oversight Committee , a 2009 report by the Federal HHS Inspector General, a 2014 letter by David Wright, Director of HHS Office of Research Integrity, and a 2011 letter to Carmen S. Villar, chief of staff for Tom Frieden, from an organization of CDC scientists calling itself “SPIDER”.

In 2014, CDC’s senior vaccine safety scientist, Dr. William Thompson, a 17-year CDC veteran, who continues to work for CDC, confessed in a series of depositions, and public and private statements, that his CDC  bosses in CDC’s Immunization Branch had systematically ordered him and other researchers to destroy data and falsify study outcomes to hide CDC research linking vaccines to the exploding epidemic of childhood chronic diseases including autism. Doesn’t the abundant evidence of corruption at the Federal health agencies amplify CNN’s obligation to treat government pronouncements with skepticism? https://freepress.org/article/flu-misinformation-and-coronavirus-fears-my-letter-cnn%E2%80%99s-dr-sanjay-gupta

2020-04-17 Covid-19 is rapidly becoming America’s leading cause of death  Covid-19 is on pace to be the largest single killer of Americans this week, given the normal number of deaths in an April week.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/16/coronavirus-leading-cause-death/?

2020-04-17 Trump breaks with his own guidelines to back conservative anti-quarantine protesters  The president’s social media posts come amid growing frustration among some conservative groups over state mitigation measures.  President Donald Trump culminated a swerving, week-long power struggle against the nation’s governors with an apparent endorsement of protesters who have defied leaders of coronavirus-stricken states, public health experts and the most senior members of his own administration.

The president’s suggestion that Americans should disobey state orders directly contradicts his own past statements acknowledging governors’ authority to announce restrictions to combat the disease’s spread.  https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/17/trump-states-stay-at-home-orders-192386

2020-04-15 Coronavirus and the Crisis of African American Human Rights    White “America” pretends once again to be surprised by the emerging facts that African Americans are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the coronavirus assault. But why should anyone be surprised?  African Americans make up a disproportionate number of the 87 million people in the U.S. who are under-insured or lack health insurance, who occupy the lowest paid jobs, jobs today deemed “essential.” It is in our communities where the toxic waste dumps are located, the petroleum processing companies, the hog farms, garbage dumps, the buildings with lead paint and asbestos, and the highways pumping out millions of tons of pollution every day.

And it is in our communities that, before gentrification, over the last 40 years, governments under the pressure of neoliberal austerity cut budgets and services. It was in our communities, both urban and rural, where the hospitals and clinics were closed, the sewer and sanitation deteriorated and something as basic to life as water was commodified, contaminated and often cut off.

Trump didn’t create these conditions. “The obsessive focus on Trump the person, allows for the ongoing structural violence embedded in the DNA of racialized capitalism to hide in plain sight.”  https://www.blackagendareport.com/coronavirus-and-crisis-african-american-human-rights

2020-04-15 Mnuchin Knew Two Weeks Ago That Financial Predators Could Grab Emergency Coronavirus Checks    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was told directly in a phone call on April 1 that the $1,200 CARES Act payments to individuals were not protected from private debt collection. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, informed Mnuchin that the payments could be garnished by private debt collectors or used by banks to offset existing debts that an individual had with their financial institution.

The payments are going out this week, two weeks after Mnuchin was first informed about the issue. And under the CARES Act, the Treasury Department has the ability to write rules protecting that payment from being taken by financial actors. But Treasury has done nothing of the sort. https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-mnuchin-knew-banks-coronavirus-checks/

2020-04-15 America’s Frontline Doctors Media Bias Fact Check Overall, we rate America’s Frontline Doctors a quackery level pseudoscience website based on promoting false or misleading information regarding Coronavirus that does not align with the scientific consensus. We also rate them Low for factual reporting due to a lack of transparency and using known pseudoscience sources to draw their conclusions. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/americas-frontline-doctors/

2020-04-15 KPFA – COVID-19 capitalism: why the US healthcare sector cut 43,000 jobs in March; the Treasury Dept green-lights banks taking relief checks for debt collection  https://kpfa.org/?s=Coronavirus+COVID-19+Capitalism

2020-04-15 COVID-19 as a Weapon. The Crushing of the Disposable Working Class – by Design    “Many Americans will not have jobs to return to after the coronavirus pandemic ends…” 

“We’re going to see the progressive Amazonification of our economy as Amazon’s one of the only businesses out there that’s hiring more and more. “One thing I’ve been saying is that we’re going to see something like 10 years of change in 10 weeks, because businesses are being put in a position where it makes sense to speed up a lot of the automation that they were considering investing in.”  “The fact is right now this virus is the perfect environment for companies to get rid of people, bring in robots and machines, and figure out how they can operate more efficiently.”

And while the Amazonification of our economy ploughs full steam ahead, independent shops and services are pounded into dust, while public services are shut down, opening the door for further privatization. While prepping the citizenry for coming and required “certifications”, the deliberate and violent contraction of the economy continues. The decimation of small enterprise with monetary wealth directed, again, upward. McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart (“essential services”) remain open while small business is forced to remain closed.

“Universal basic income is going to become the topic, not just here in the United States, but Spain’s adopting a version of a minimum income. Legislatures around Europe are all very, very much focused on this.”   March 18 2020: Over 500 academics and public figures called on governments to implement universal basic income via an open letter: “It is time for governments to enact emergency universal basic income, ensuring that everyone in their jurisdiction has enough money to buy the food and other essentials they need to survive.”  https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-crushing-disposable-working-class/5709688

2020-04-16 COVID-19: Confucius is Winning the Coronavirus War As the Raging Twenties unleash a radical reconfiguration of the planet, coronavirus (literally “crowned poison”) has for all practical purposes served a poisoned chalice of fear and panic to myriad, mostly Western, latitudes. 

 I offer, as a working hypothesis, that the Asia triad of Confucius, Buddha and Lao Tzu has been absolutely essential in shaping the perception and serene response of hundreds of millions of people across various Asian nations to Covid-19. Compare this with the prevalent fear, panic and hysteria mostly fed by the corporate media across the West.      

Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise; immediate massive testing; extensive contact tracing; and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports. 

Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.  https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/16/covid-19-confucius-is-winning-the-coronavirus-war/

2020-04-16 COVID-19: Neither Trump nor Cuomo: Healthcare Workers on How to Fight the Pandemic  We need a single, free and public healthcare system in which decision making is done by those most qualified to do so, its employees, says Dr. Mike Pappas. That goes beyond Medicare for All.

For over a month, President Donald Trump downplayed the threat of a worldwide pandemic. Even as his advisers 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.

As late as March 24, Trump was calling for U.S. businesses to be reopened by Easter, demonstrating his absolute contempt for the health and safety of workers. Trump’s only concern, from the beginning, was that profits continue to flow into the coffers of U.S. corporations. That’s what he meant when he said, “The cure can’t be worse than the problem.” He wouldn’t jeopardize capitalist profits by shutting down businesses, even if it meant hundreds of thousands of working-class people, or more, would die.

As a result of his criminal negligence, that is exactly what is happening now. It is working people in the poorest neighborhoods who are suffering most. Sixty-two percent of Covid-19 deaths in New York City are Black and Latino people.

COVID-19: Neither Trump nor Cuomo: Healthcare Workers on How to Fight the Pandemic

2020-04-15 U.S. Government’s $3.7 Million Grant to Wuhan Lab at Center of Coronavirus Outbreak – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Following the 2002-2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, NIH funded a collaboration by Chinese scientists, US military virologists from the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick and National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists from NIAID to prevent future coronavirus outbreaks by studying the evolution of virulent strains from bats in human tissues. Those efforts included “gain of function” research which is “accelerated viral evolution” to create COVID Pandemic superbugs, enhanced bat borne COVID mutants more lethal and more transmissible than wild COVID. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/u-s-governments-3-7-million-grant-to-wuhan-lab-at-center-of-coronavirus-outbreak/

2020-04-15 Indictment of Trump and a Warning: 90% of US Coronavirus Deaths Could Have Been Prevented With Swifter Action  Eight Republican governors still have not issued statewide stay-at-home orders as deaths in the U.S. top 26,000.  New research published Wednesday revealed that the vast majority, as much as 90%, of U.S. deaths from the coronavirus outbreak could have been avoided if strict social distancing measures were imposed just two weeks earlier—the latest damning rebuke of President Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis and a warning to those still skeptical of the restrictions. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/indictment-trump-and-warning-90-us-coronavirus-deaths-could-have-been-prevented

2020-04-15 Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic?  With cities in Venezuela under lockdown and the country struggling to address a looming public health crisis and yet another economic shock, it is clear that the Trump administration sees a new opportunity to exercise “maximum pressure” to try to achieve regime change.  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/15/threatening-military-intervention-venezuela-during-pandemic

2020-04-15 ‘Appalling Betrayal of Global Solidarity’: Trump Condemned for Halting US Funding to World Health Organization Amid Pandemic   “President Trump’s decision to defund WHO is simply this—a crime against humanity.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/appalling-betrayal-global-solidarity-trump-condemned-halting-us-funding-world-health

2020-04-15 ‘Catastrophic for Democracy’: Experts Warn Trump Assault on Postal Service Threatens November Elections  “All the plans we have for a safe and legitimate general election in November depend heavily upon the ability to expand vote-by-mail. Yet those plans would be completely upended if the United States Postal Service collapses.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/catastrophic-democracy-experts-warn-trump-assault-postal-service-threatens-november

2020-04-15 ‘Disgusting’: Treasury Slows Delivery of 70 Million Covid-19 Stimulus Checks to Put Trump’s Name on Them  “Donald Trump is further delaying cash payments to millions of Americans struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table to feed his ego.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/disgusting-treasury-slows-delivery-70-million-covid-19-stimulus-checks-put-trumps

2020-04-15 Trump’s OSHA Rebuked for ‘Sitting on Its Ass’ as Covid-19 Infections and Deaths Surge Among Frontline Workers  “More than 9,000 U.S. healthcare workers have been infected with Covid-19 and 27 have died. The biggest workplace catastrophe ever to hit the nation’s healthcare workers.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/trumps-osha-rebuked-sitting-its-ass-covid-19-infections-and-deaths-surge-among

2020-04-15 Trump Accused of ‘Actively and Knowingly’ Spreading Coronavirus to Central America Through Deportations  Trump seen as “global health threat” as Guatemalan health minister claims 75% of people on a recent deportation flight from the U.S. tested positive for the virus.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/trump-accused-actively-and-knowingly-spreading-coronavirus-central-america-through

2020-04-15 Unsanitized: Mnuchin Knew Two Weeks Ago That Financial Predators Could Grab Emergency Coronavirus Checks under the CARES Act, the Treasury Department has the ability to write rules protecting that payment from being taken by financial actors. But Treasury has done nothing of the sort https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-mnuchin-knew-banks-coronavirus-checks/

2020-04-15 100+ Lawmakers Demand Moratorium on Utility Shutoffs to Ensure Access to Services ‘Essential to Survive’ During Coronavirus Crisis “There is absolutely no excuse left for Congress to exclude basic human needs from the next coronavirus stimulus package, or in general,” said Food & Water Action’s Rianna Eckel.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/100-lawmakers-demand-moratorium-utility-shutoffs-ensure-access-services-essential

2020-04-15 Despite CDC Warning of ‘Significant Risk’ of Lifting Stay-in-Place Orders, Right-Wingers Launch Anti-Lockdown Movement “These selfish and out-of-touch fringe groups are throwing a temper tantrum at the expense of public safety and health.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/despite-cdc-warning-significant-risk-lifting-stay-place-orders-right-wingers-launch

2020-04-15 Biden Winks at the Insurance Industry  By offering to expand Medicare to 60-year-olds, the candidate also telegraphs to insurers that his help is on the way. Coronavirus, according to estimates, will cost insurance companies tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in additional expenses.

That’s basically a worst-case scenario for Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, and the like, which had, until recently, been enjoying record profits. Now, these added costs threaten to rain on that parade. It’s part of the reason why reports have indicated that premiums are set to skyrocket next year, by up to 40 percent. Insurance companies are getting whacked, and they’re going to let businesses and consumers absorb some of that hit.

What does Joe Biden’s proposal do for them? People aged 60 to 65 are the single-highest-risk group left in the private insurance pool, because of their relative old age, which means they cost the most to cover. Getting those people off the rolls of the private insurers, and shoveling them into the hands of the government, would lower costs significantly. Under Biden’s proposal, the insurance companies would offload this profit-threatening liability onto taxpayers, via Medicare.   https://prospect.org/politics/biden-winks-at-the-insurance-industry/

2020-04-15 Nancy Pelosi Needs to Get Her Act Together The Constitution requires revenue measures to originate in the House. So why do Mitch McConnell and the Republican-controlled Senate get to control the agenda on successive economic-relief measures, with the Democratic House tacking on modest improvements only afterward?

It turns out that Pelosi doesn’t want to have to call the House into session, partly because of legitimate concerns of risks to members’ health. But nor does she want to permit remote voting, for fear of setting a precedent once the pandemic is over members not showing up because it’s more convenient to vote remote.  It’s not rocket science to devise a system for secure remote voting—the same thing Democrats are demanding for the November election, but with far fewer people. Nor is it rocket science to strictly limit the emergency rules, say for 90 days.

The list of demands put forth by Pelosi and Schumer in their current negotiations with McConnell is also too feeble.  Congress also needs to drastically increase the oversight of the Fed, including statutory requirements to disclose names of beneficiaries of Wall Street bailouts, as well as the terms, which the Fed is keeping confidential. And Congress needs to legislate an oversight panel for the bailouts, fully independent of Trump.

https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/nancy-pelosi-needs-to-get-her-act-together/

2020-04-14 Capitalism is in a ditch, full of sticky mud. The ruling class is starting to panic  The peak of the pandemic is when the virus is still infecting new people, each and every day, but the new cases begin to level off. So, while still more people get infected than ever before, each passing day, the rate of increase begins to slow down and level off. But, still the number of infected and the number of people dying of the disease continues to increase, not decrease. That’s what’s called “the peak” and that peak, according to experts, is still a month away, if not more.

As we approach the peak and at or near it, the odds of catching the virus increases and remains very high for some time after the peak, which means for at least another couple of months. Meanwhile, the pressure to “open the country” increases, as not only the economy, but the economic system itself, is threatened with collapse and social chaos.

Already, tens of thousands go wait in line to get food at food banks, where they’re beginning to run out of food. There are cracks appearing also in the food supply chain, as grocery stores are finding it harder to get food delivered to their stores, while farmers are dumping milk, breaking eggs and destroying their crops.

Warehouse and shipping and delivery workers are also getting infected. So are farm workers picking fruits and vegetables and workers at meat packing plants and at grocery stores, where they have to work shoulder to shoulder with other workers without sufficient protective gear.

This is an unmitigated disaster, made especially dire and grim by the nature of the economic system and the adopted policies of the recent decades for increasing profits. Capitalism is finding itself in, as the saying would go, “deep shit”. Corporate CEO’s are getting anxious and begin pressuring politicians to lift the restrictions. Among them is none other than Donald Trump, himself, who owns many hotels and golf courses, not considered “essential” and not producing revenue. Profits are being squeezed. Capitalism is in a ditch, full of sticky mud. The ruling class is starting to panic.

Here is what we can expect: pressure will be put on workers to “go back to work”, just when the chances to get the virus is at its highest, threatening the lives of many more people, especially among the more vulnerable. But, on the other hand, capitalists need workers to stay alive to get themselves richer and actually, to even survive. It’s no exaggeration or accusation and not in a jest, to say that capitalists are parasites of the society, who live off workers and like other parasites, need the workers for their own survival, if not enrichment. That’s the contradiction they’re finding themselves in.

Interestingly enough, what’s caused this catastrophe and mayhem is another parasite. That’s exactly what the Coronavirus is. It can’t live on its own; it needs the body of its hosts to survive and thrive. All parasites share this contradiction: they need their hosts to live, but they will also grow to the detriment of the host, to the point of destroying the host, even though it means its own destruction, as well.

If the capitalist class that’s running the country could temporarily switch the system to socialism, for just a few months, for just enough time to get out of the ditch, they would. But, they can’t. The pressure to restart the engines of capitalism and resume capital accumulation is too great. As Marx explained, capitalists’ urge for capital accumulation is stronger than the need for restraint for their own good. Capital accumulation becomes the sole objective and obsession, the only thing that matters, even if it means the destruction of the world, along with the parasites.

It’s a sad existence that leads only to death and misery. It’s incumbent upon the working class to build a new world. https://www.facebook.com/sako.sefiani/posts/10156212264002824 

2020-04-14 Coronavirus Illustrates Our Failure to Create a Fair Society  African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to die because we bear the pre-existing condition known as race.  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/14/coronavirus-illustrates-our-failure-create-fair-society

2020-04-14 Your Coronavirus Check Is Coming. Your Bank Can Grab It.  Regulators have given banks the green light to use stimulus funds to pay off debts that individuals owe them.  https://prospect.org/coronavirus/banks-can-grab-stimulus-check-pay-debts/

2020-04-14 COVID-19: The Ultimate Stress Test True to form, the president was quick to personalize the pandemic. He declared himself a “wartime president,” despite the lack of any evident strategy to vanquish this particular foe. His response when governors of hard-hit states began pleading for urgent help from the federal government: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.”  The governors, he groused, were “complainers… Inevitably, he had a Limbaugh-like conspiracy theory ready: fear-mongering Democrats were exploiting the Covid crisis to bash him. The virus, he said during a campaign rally — yes, he was still holding them in late February — was their “new hoax.” Fox News and the president’s base duly ran with this theme. 

Despite the warning of epidemiologists that the virus’s transmission rate would skyrocket unless Americans were scrupulous about “social distancing,” Trump tarried (and to this day can’t keep his distance from anyone at his news conference.

Nor, despite an evident shortage of medical supplies and equipment, did he act decisively. The 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) gives him the authority to order private companies to produce essential medical supplies and equipment, including ventilators, and then distribute them in ways that would prevent hard-hit states from outbidding each other.  He rejected widespread calls to use the Act. 

Continuing to downplay the Covid-19 threat, he declared during a March 31  Fox News “virtual town hall” on the coronavirus that he would love to have the economy up and running two weeks later on Easter Sunday with “packed churches all over the country.”   https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/14/covid-19-the-ultimate-stress-test/

2020-04-14 Our Uniquely American Virus  America’s ability to contain the coronavirus has been compromised by decades of neoliberal ideology. And it is literally killing us.  https://prospect.org/coronavirus/our-uniquely-american-virus/  

2020-04-14 Trump PR Stunt Falls Flat, as White House Video Exposes His Failure to Prepare for Pandemic   But, as CBS News correspondent Paula Reid pointed out to Trump after the video ended, there was a huge gap in the timeline: It mentioned absolutely no action by him in February and there was, as the Times had noted, a period of “six long weeks” after the travel restrictions until he “finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing.”

In fact, the only entry on the video timeline for February — the month Trump held mass campaign rallies and described criticism of his handling of the virus from Democrats as “their new hoax” — was February 6: “CDC Ships First Testing Kits.” The fact that those test kits were defective, a massive failure at a critical moment, seems like an odd thing to brag about.

Well into March, Trump was downplaying the new coronavirus as no more threatening than the flu.https://theintercept.com/2020/04/14/trump-pr-stunt-falls-flat-white-house-video-exposes-failure-prepare-pandemic/

2020-04-14 What South Carolina’s Absentee Voting System Shows the U.S.A look at how the state can disenfranchise voters who mail in ballots, which will become more critical as vote-by-mail expands. There is always higher voter turnout in general elections than in primaries, and if the virus is still active, there could be record numbers of vote-by-mail demands. That likely means far higher error rates in a critical election.

When it comes to federal laws to expand access to the ballot beyond physical polling sites, the limitations of every state’s current voting procedures will have to be considered and perhaps remedied, as well as the different ways a voter can continue to be disenfranchised.

“The goal for every member of Congress, every state legislature, and every election official should be simple: ensure that anyone who has the right to vote can exercise that right as simply and safely as possible,” said Matthew Harwood, of the Brennan Center for Justice. “Vote by mail is just one option among many to accomplish that goal.” [MEK  Suggestions: Every registered voter gets a mail-in ballot 30 days before election. Ballot envelope is signed by voter. No witness signature necessary.  If signature missing or doesn’t match, voter will be contacted to correct problem.]  https://prospect.org/politics/what-south-carolinas-absentee-voting-system-shows-the-us/

2020-04-14 San Francisco Sends 40 Percent of Jail Inmates Home   Chesa Boudin, the leftish district attorney for San Francisco, claims to have reduced the jail population by nearly 40 percent since the onslaught of the epidemic. “That has created the conditions for the jail medical team to implement some level of social distancing, to isolate people who show symptoms, and to find ways to meet the medical needs of folks who have other medical conditions besides Covid-19,” said Boudin, whose 75 year-old father, David Gilbert, is serving time for the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery in New York. https://www.blackagendareport.com/san-francisco-sends-40-percent-jail-inmates-home

2020-04-13 Over 370,000 People Have Survived COVID-19. Here’s What We Know About Recovery Most people who get the coronavirus recover. More than 372,000 such cases have been documented worldwide. “Eventually, if all goes well, your immune system will completely destroy all of the virus in your system,” Tom Duszynski, director of epidemiology education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, wrote in The Conversation. “A person who was infected with and survived a virus with no long-term health effects or disabilities has ‘recovered’.” Still, many uncertainties remain: It’s not yet clear how many people have recovered, how the illness will affect them in the long run, or how long they will be immune.

Due to limited testing availability in some countries, including the US, the most severe cases are prioritised for official diagnoses. People who have mild symptoms, or none at all, are less likely to get tested – if they even seek testing in the first place. That means that many mild infections are not included in the count of total cases or recoveries.

There hasn’t been much time to research recovered patients and publish the findings. Experts do have a sense of the effects that severe pneumonia can have on the body, though. If a patient develops acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), that can scar their lung tissue.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview on The Daily Show that he was “willing to bet anything that people who recover are really protected against re-infection.” He also said earlier this week that because the virus doesn’t seem to be mutating much, people who recover will likely be immune should the US see a second wave of spread in the fall.

Scientists still aren’t sure when a person with the virus stops being contagious to others, but a team of German researchers found that coronavirus patients “shed” high amounts of virus early on in their infection. (The research is not peer-reviewed yet, however.) In mild cases, the amount of the virus the gets shed decreased significantly after day five. https://www.sciencealert.com/over-370-000-people-have-survived-covid-19-here-s-what-we-know-about-recovery

2020-04-13 China is reportedly giving ‘extra scrutiny’ to any research on the coronavirus’ origins  https://news.yahoo.com/china-reportedly-giving-extra-scrutiny-120801182.html

2020-04-13 How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/how-false-hope-spread-about-hydroxychloroquine-its-consequences/

2020-04-13 It’s Midnight in Washington – Make This Stunning Ad Go Viral https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/12/1936752/-It-s-Midnight-in-Washington-Make-This-Stunning-Ad-Go-Viral

2020-04-13 Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna Unveil Essential Workers Bill of Rights https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/elizabeth-warren-and-ro-khanna-unveil-essential-workers-bill-of-rights

2020-04-13 Could COVID-19 Bring Down the US Empire? China eradicated the virus from Hubei province by deploying 40,000 medical staff to the province and doing comprehensive contact tracing and testing, and this is the model other wealthy countries that have had limited success against COVID-19 have tried to follow. In Wuhan, tests were coming back in four to seven hours, providing the basis for efficient and effective isolation and contact tracing of each case. Germany has done better than other large countries in Europe, with more than 118,000 cases but only 2,607 deaths as of April 9, and is now treating patients airlifted from France, Italy and Spain.

Other countries that tested at least 0.5 percent of their populations before getting overwhelmed have kept deaths even lower (deaths as of April 9): Australia (51); Austria (295); Bahrain (5); Canada (503); Estonia (24); Iceland (6); Latvia (3); Malta (2); Norway (108); Singapore (6); Slovenia (43); South Korea (204); Switzerland (948) and the UAE (14).  Vietnam, Taiwan, Cuba, Venezuela have all been relatively successful in limiting the spread of the COVID-19 in different ways, but because they reacted promptly.

After a very late start, US medical labs were quickly overwhelmed with COVID-19 testing. By April 1, results were taking up to 10 days to come back from labs, and Quest Diagnostics had a backlog of 160,000 unprocessed tests. This is forcing doctors and hospitals to treat every patient with symptoms as if they have the virus, putting even greater demands on medical staff and equipment. The US’s deficient lab testing makes it impossible to set up a system of isolation and contact tracing that can identify asymptomatic carriers and stop the spread of the virus.

The United States is also failing miserably to provide any model of how to successfully combat COVID-19. The US already has more coronavirus deaths than China, a country with four times the US population, and the future for Americans is terrifying, with the Trump administration talking about the death of 100,000 Americans as a “good scenario.” The terribly botched US response to the pandemic is undermining already weak global confidence in US leadership.  https://www.newsclick.in/US-Empire-COVID-19-Pandemic

2020-04-13 Unsanitized: Meet The Corporate Bailout’s First Policeman    The Trump administration has taken a weed whacker to already modest oversight in the CARES Act, firing the lead inspector general in one oversight entity and hiring his personal lawyer for another. The Congressional Oversight Commission, a five-member panel tasked with monitoring how the corporate bailout is spent—including the $4.5 trillion Federal Reserve money cannon—is purely a legislative entity, and Donald Trump cannot get rid of its members. It also doesn’t have subpoena power and must rely on other tools to do its work.

To date, only one member of the commission has been chosen: Bharat Ramamurti, a top economic adviser to Elizabeth Warren since she joined the Senate, who ran economic policy for the Warren campaign and last week decamped to the Roosevelt Institute. Chuck Schumer picked Ramamurti for the commission, and we don’t yet know whether he’ll be in the majority or minority of it; each party leader in the House and Senate chooses one member, and Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell must agree on the final member, the commission chair.https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-meet-the-corporate-bailout-first-policeman/

2020-04-13 200+ Prisoners Released in Philadelphia After Weeks of Protest Calling for Decarceration https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/13/headlines/200_prisoners_released_in_philadelphia_after_weeks_of_protest_calling_for_decarceration

2020-04-13 Coronavirus Has Broken America’s Food Supply  In the early days of the shutdown, pictures circulated of barren shelves at supermarkets (much of it wrongfully blamed on binge purchasing rather). All over the country, America’s producers have begun destroying excess, perishable crops that they can’t bring to market.

In nonviral times, much of the food being produced on farms would be sent to schools and restaurants. But with those locations shut down almost categorically nationwide, there’s no infrastructure in place to simply redirect the food to grocery stores and food banks, especially with short-shelf-life items like vegetables, meat, and dairy. Those two tracks—commercial and consumer food supply chains—remain fiercely separated.

Setting up a large-scale delivery procedure conveying excess food to needy food banks takes time, money, and manpower, all of which are already in short supply at financially strained farms. The federal government could step in, guarantee payments to farmers, and provision for such a transfer, but they’ve shown no interest in doing so.   https://prospect.org/coronavirus/supply-chain-broken-american-food-supply/ 

2020-04-13 Moratoriums Won’t Save Us from the COVID-19 Depression  Only one entity has the financial and organizational resources to mitigate the damage and forestall a total societal collapse reminiscent of the Soviet Union in 1991: the federal government.  Unfortunately, few politicians of either party have indicated that they understand the existential scale of this threat, much less internalized the fact that what they do or do not do will determine whether the United States continues.  The unemployment rate is already worse than the Great Depression. 

A “national moratorium” on evictions and foreclosures is equally insane. For the time being, the sheriff doesn’t show up to throw you and your family out onto the COVID-19-infected streets. But what happens later? At some point, a moratorium expires. Lenders become impatient. Congress lifts the moratorium; then debtors come after you. Now you don’t just owe one or two months of back rent or mortgage, you owe 6 or 10 or 15. If you can’t pay one or two months, how are you going to pay ten? There will be late fees, accrued interest, and again, you’ll be making less than you did before this all happened—so you will have to pay back inflated 2020 debt with your deflated 2021 salary. Ain’t going to happen.

Kicking the can down the road with suspended debt collection and eviction moratoriums and putting off utilities shut-offs is a guaranteed ineffective, massively counterproductive wallop of magical thinking that pretends that everything not only is about to be fine, but that everyone is going to win the lottery and be able to use their newfound winnings to pay off their coronavirus debts. It’s ridiculous and stupid and unworthy of discussion by serious people.

There is a better way. Rather than throw tens of millions of Americans into piles of debt that they will never be able to pay, continue to pay their salaries so they can continue to pay their bills. Individuals keep their homes and their sanity; businesses remain intact.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/13/moratoriums-wont-save-us-from-the-covid-19-depression/

2020-04-12 Most College Students Won’t Get A Stimulus Check  https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/04/12/stimulus-checks-college-high-school-students/?

2020-04-12 Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America  First, we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly. That means social distancing has to continue and the people on the front lines have to get the supplies and equipment they need. President Trump needs to use his full powers under the Defense Production Act to fight the disease with every tool at our disposal.

Second, there needs to be widespread, easily available and prompt testing — and a contact tracing strategy that protects privacy.

hird, we have to make sure that our hospitals and health care system are ready for flare-ups of the disease that may occur when economic activity expands again. Reopening the right way will still not be completely safe. Public health officials will need to conduct effective disease surveillance. Hospitals need to have the staff and equipment necessary to handle any local outbreaks, and we need an improved federal system to get help to these places as needed.

Make no mistake: An effective plan to beat the virus is the ultimate answer to how we get our economy back on track. So we should stop thinking of the health and economic responses as separate. They are not.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/opinion/joe-biden-coronavirus-reopen-america.html

2020-04-11 REVEALED: U.S. government gave $3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated

• The US National Institutes of Health, a government agency, awarded a $3.7million research grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
• The lab is the center of several conspiracy theories that suggest it is the original source of the coronavirus outbreak 
• The institute experimented on bats from the source of the coronavirus  
• They were captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan
• Sequencing of the Covid-19 genome has traced it to bats to Yunnan’s caves
• The U.S. government funded research on coronavirus transmission in the lab over the past decade https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html

2020-04-11 Assange’s Extradition: Incarceration in the Time of Covid-19 Threatens His Life In the COVID-19 emergency, the prosecution of Julian Assange is aggressing further https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/11/assanges-extradition-incarceration-time-covid-19-threatens-his-life

2020-04-11 China muzzled its Bat Woman: Beijing authorities hushed up the findings of a scientist who unlocked the genetic make-up of the coronavirus within days of the outbreak – which is vital for tests and vaccines   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210951/Beijing-authorities-hushed-findings-Chinese-scientist.html   https://news.yahoo.com/scientist-adventurer-chinas-bat-woman-104920076.html

2020-04-10 Belabored Podcast #195: Delivering Us from Coronavirus, with Dania Rajendra   director of Athena, a coalition of labor and social justice organizations fighting the concentrated power of Amazon.   Amazon is poised to become an even bigger part of many people’s lives during lockdown, but its workers aren’t celebrating. we consider farmworkers who, you guessed it, are picking the food we eat without proper protections against COVID-19, and look at the ways capitalism created the healthcare crisis we face.   https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/belabored-podcast-195-delivering-us-from-coronavirus-with-dania-rajendra

2020-04-10 As Small Businesses in US Face Coronavirus Doomsday, Big Insurers Say: We Can’t Save You. We Won’t Save You.  “We may not have a Main Street left if we don’t take immediate action.” According to a recent report in the Denver Post, after the SARS outbreak in 2003, many insurers stipulated in their policies that business losses due to a public health crisis would no longer be covered.   “We’re a month in and no one that needs the money has seen the money—our hourly workers, small businesses who operate with a month’s cash on hand—none of those people are getting any of the money.”

Meanwhile, as much a $4.5 trillion will go toward a taxpayer-backed fund from which large corporations can draw for relief, with little to no oversight from Congress.

“Why is the money being distributed to big corporations?” Mayer said. “If we want this economy to continue to function in any capacity we’re going to have to give people money to pay for what they need, or else this is going to get really bad, really fast… There should be more grants, less loans, and way more oversight over how this money is distributed.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/10/small-businesses-us-face-coronavirus-doomsday-big-insurers-say-we-cant-save-you-we

2020-04-10 Perspectives on the Pandemic Part 2| Professor Knut Wittkowski https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5sKNCSsX4&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2yvXBbIwh-qEzo_igB4wArqiUOXjXCWG-470KPTfbtx0f1TC7OPfm9ulI

2020-04-10 COVID-19: Coronavirus and Civilization    The United States and its European satellites are in effect waging war against the Free World – that is, countries free of U.S. domination, in order to perpetuate an imaginary global regime along the lines of neoliberalism: rule of finance approved by manipulated elections.

Nevertheless, unipolar globalization is in the process of disintegration. All the slander against China cannot change the facts. While U.S. propagandists blast their rising rival, most of the world sees that China handled the epidemic with more professional know-how than the West. The United States control of international agencies is being threatened by growing Chinese influence – in particular, the World Health Organization.

This is the greatest threat to Big Pharma: a multipolar world. Bill Gates and U.S. pharmaceutical companies will have no monopoly of vaccine development to combat Covid-19. A dramatic shift from neoliberal globalization to multipolar national sovereignty will restore genuine competition – not only in production of vaccines but in social organization.

Let Western countries look to their own problems and find solutions. Let other countries develop according to models that suit their history, philosophy and popular demands. It is obvious that the vaunted U.S. “free market democracy” is not a model that should be imposed on every country on earth, nor even on the United States itself.

Mixed economies can take various forms. Some could evolve toward something that could be called socialism, others not. Let every small country be as independent as Iceland. Let the world explore different paths. Let a hundred flowers bloom!   https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/10/covid-19-coronavirus-and-civilization/  

2020-04-10 ‘Unforgettable’ Footage of Endless Line of Cars at Food Banks a Stark Illustration of Coronavirus Crisis in US  “It is outrageous that in the richest country in the history of the world, people are going hungry,” said Bernie Sanders, who called for more urgent relief from Congress.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/10/unforgettable-footage-endless-line-cars-food-banks-stark-illustration-coronavirus

2020-04-09 Resistance Growing to Covid-Capitalism  The superpower that has killed millions in its quest for global supremacy has utterly failed the most basic test of legitimacy at home: the ability to protect its own population. Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus — cares for nothing but reproducing itself. The U.S. “public” health sector is revealed as a hollowed-out shell, crippled and shrunken by decades of unrelenting privatization at the hands of the oligarch-serving political duopoly. In effect, the Lords of Capital have been devouring the nation’s protective membrane, leaving the population defenseless against, not only microbes, but every disease of the poor — plus opiates and the lethal social pathologies that spawn spectacular and uniquely American mass shootings at schools, churches and shopping malls, and the daily slaughter of Black and brown youth on the streets.

The unions that purport to fight for the workers, and Blacks, who are overwhelming working class and the most left-leaning ethnicity in the nation, have both been reduced by the duopoly to annexes of the Democratic Party, a fatal embrace.  Democrats have become bulwarks of an austerity Race to the Bottom that has thrown the working class and its most marginalized components overboard to drown in a sea of declining living standards and disappearing “real” jobs and social supports – and without a national health care system. Covid-19 has made clear the lunacy of this deal with the devil, and that “nobody will save us, but us.”     https://www.blackagendareport.com/resistance-growing-covid-capitalism

2020-04-09 Resistance Growing to Covid-Capitalism  Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus — cares for nothing but reproducing itself.

“We have to ensure that we never return to the society that enabled this pandemic to emerge.”

The superpower that has killed millions in its quest for global supremacy has utterly failed the most basic test of legitimacy at home: the ability to protect its own population. Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus — cares for nothing but reproducing itself. The U.S. “public” health sector is revealed as a hollowed-out shell, crippled and shrunken by decades of unrelenting privatization at the hands of the oligarch-serving political duopoly.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/resistance-growing-covid-capitalism

2020-04-09 Half a Billion People Could Be Pushed Into Poverty By Coronavirus, Warns Oxfam  https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/04/09/half-billion-people-could-be-pushed-poverty-coronavirus-warns-oxfam

2020-04-09 Noam Chomsky: ‘Coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented’    “This coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented; the information was there to prevent it. In fact, it was well-known. In October 2019, just before the outbreak, there was a large-scale simulation in the United States – possible pandemic of this kind,” he said, referring to an exercise – titled Event 201 – hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Nothing was done. The crisis was then made worse by the treachery of the political systems that didn’t pay attention to the information that they were aware of.

“On December 31, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown origins. A week later, some Chinese scientists identified a coronavirus. Furthermore, they sequenced it and provided information to the world. By then, virologists and others who were bothering to read WHO reports knew that there was a coronavirus and knew that had to deal with it. Did they do anything? Well yes, some did.

“China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore began to do something, and they have sort of pretty much seemed to have contained at least the first surge of the crisis.”https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/noam-chomsky-coronavirus-pandemic-could-have-been-prevented

2020-04-08 Moral Leaders Demand Coronavirus Relief for Most Vulnerable Although the third coronavirus relief package provides some cash payments to workers, increased unemployment benefits, and support to small businesses, Barber and Theoharis noted “it also includes a $500 billion fund to bail out corporations , and Trump has already vowed to defy the oversight that Democrats in the Senate and House worked to require.”

“Americans who are desperate for aid from their government could not get it without paying a 25% surcharge to the rich and powerful,” they added. “In a word, this is evil.” 

”[The] $2 trillion bill that Congress passed treated corporations like people and people like things—with no provisions for a permanent living wage, paid sick leave for all, or health insurance for the uninsured. It leaves out the majority of homeless, undocumented immigrants, the disabled, and anyone too poor to have to file taxes. It only places a four-month moratorium on eviction filings. It does not include rent freezes nor large-scale debt forgiveness.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/moral-leaders-demand-coronavirus-relief-most-vulnerable

2020-04-08 Could COVID-19 Kill Capitalism? Imagine COVID-19, by bankrupting capitalist states unable to balance the need to keep the global working class viable and squeezable and the need to squeeze them NOW, leading to the collapse of the whole system.  Imagine the incapacity of the bourgeois state (throughout at least Europe and the U.S.) to provide the minimal social services expected by the people, forcing them to establish (or resist to the death) public health and social welfare measures that contribute, long-term, to the fall of the capitalist system. In these dark claustrophobic times, let us think positively.   https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/08/could-covid-19-kill-capitalism/  

2020-04-07 COVID-19: Wall Street Wins Again More than $4 trillion of the estimate government coronavirus aid of $6.2 trillion is predicated on using $454 billion of CARES Act money to back Federal Reserve-based corporate loans. The Fed has the magical power to leverage, or multiply, money it receives from the Treasury up to 10 times over. In the end, according to the president, that could mean $4.5 trillion in support for big banks and corporate entities versus something like $1.4 trillion for regular Americans, small businesses, hospitals, and local and state governments. That 3.5 to 1 ratio signals that, as in 2008, the Treasury and the Fed are focused on big banks and large corporations, not every day Americans.  https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/07/covid-19-wall-street-wins-again/

2020-04-06 Amid Pandemic, Congress Suspends Evictions—But Not for All https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/04/amid-pandemic-congress-suspends-evictions-but-not-for-all/

2020-04-06 “The Coronavirus pandemic is Magnifying the Cruelty of US Foreign Policy”: The Decade of Transformation: Remaking International Relations  No country can fully recover from COVID-19 or the economic collapse unless these crises are resolved for the whole world. Both the economy and pandemic are global and interconnected as are the looming crises of climate chaos and nuclear war. Rather than showing solidarity with other nations in the midst of the crises, the US is escalating economic sanctions and threatening war while undermining a global response to climate and increasing the risks of nuclear war.

Black Alliance for Peace points out: “The brutality and criminality of the colonial/capitalist system of state violence is reflected most graphically by the illegal and immoral policy of sanctions imposed on 39 nations by the U.S. and its Western allies.” Venezuela, Iran and other nations are being denied the ability to import medicines and medical equipment to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 23, the UN General Secretary António Guterres called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world” saying nations should “focus together on the true fight of our lives – the #COVID19 pandemic.” Fifty-three countries immediately agreed. Instead of heeding this call, the US has threatened Iran and Venezuela with military attacks and continued the war with Yemen while eliminating the majority of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. These actions were wrong before the pandemic, but in the midst of the pandemic, they are obscene.   https://www.globalresearch.ca/decade-transformation-remaking-international-relations/5708786

2020-04-06 The Coronavirus Makes Me Wish We Already Had a President Bernie Sanders    Frankly, it’s devastating to watch all this unfold. So long dismissed as pie-in-the-sky, the policies Sanders advocates for are being proved essential as the sky is falling. But still, we’re unlikely to see them enacted, no matter how many lives they might save, because they remain at odds with the systems run by powerful people desperate to hold on to their standing.https://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/2227-the-coronavirus-makes-me-wish-we-already-had-a-president-bernie-sanders-

2020-04-06 Authoritarian Leaders Rejected the Danger of a COVID-19 Pandemic Because It Challenged Their Image   In the current coronavirus pandemic authoritarian-oriented leaders, whether communist or capitalist, initially portrayed the virus as an insignificant danger. Once they could no longer ignore the mounting number of infections and deaths, they turned to deflect criticism to condemning the behavior of others. Their major concern was not protecting the welfare of their people but protecting their image as a leader whose control was above being challenged by men or nature. Bad news resulting from natural events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic are particularly troublesome to them.

The leaders of the two largest authoritarian nations, Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi, both initially downplayed the coronavirus pandemic and then accused others for their nation’s derelict response. And, the leaders of two of the largest democracies, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and our own President Donald Trump followed the same behavior of first ignoring the coronavirus problem and then blaming others.

Even within China’s tightly controlling mainstream and social media, word of a deathly virus was spreading too fast for the censors to shut down. Once Xi had to admit that there was a such a virus, he began to find someone to blame.

Russia’s President Putin reacted in a similar fashion of initially downplaying the coronavirus. Through his control of the media, very few coronavirus infections were reported.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was elected to office just 2 years ago on a very conservative anti-government platform. In the case of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, he denied its danger. He calls the coronavirus a “little flu” that largely threatens the old and vulnerable.  He blasted as criminals the governors and mayors of Brazil’s largest states and cities for imposing lockdowns to slow the coronavirus outbreak. They’re destroying Brazil.”

President Trump is not an authoritarian, although he has admired the power they have within their own country. He had initially denied the coronavirus as dangerous and expected it to be over soon.   Trump blamed Barack Obama for his own administration’s inability to adequately test enough Americans for the coronavirus outbreak, claiming “I don’t take responsibility at all.”  He accused Democrats of “working the Impeachment Hoax. They didn’t have a clue! Now they are fear mongering.”

These authoritarian-oriented leaders either control the media or have ideological media allies that endorse their policies, so that the public gets to hear directly from the leader what he wants them to believe.   https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/06/authoritarian-leaders-rejected-the-danger-of-a-covid-19-pandemic-because-it-challenged-their-image/

2020-04-06 A Department of Actual Defense in a Time of Coronavirus  A Department of Actual Defense, as opposed to a Department of War renamed Defense, would be looking very hard at the twin dangers of nuclear and climate apocalypse, and the accompanying spin-offs like coronavirus.  The disastrous response that we are seeing from the U.S. and other governments to the current disaster should put to rest once and for all the notion that people will automatically become better and wiser once things get bad enough.  Those proclaiming empire over and capitalism dead should get a grip on themselves. Capitalism is thriving, as is empire. A culture that has spent decades preparing to act badly when the COVID-19 hits the fan cannot be made to be acting wisely simply by declaring it so.  But acting disastrously is not inevitable. It’s a choice, albeit a difficult one to change quickly.

I mean looking at these threats in order to actually defend against them.  The biggest dangers include:  poor health, and poor diets and lifestyles that contribute to poor health,  particular diseases and ecosystem destruction that contributes to them,  poverty and financial insecurity that lead to poor health and to the inability to take necessary steps against a disease like coronavirus,  suicide, and the unhappy lives and mental illness and access to guns that contribute,  accidents, and the transportation and workplace policies that contribute,    https://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/2229-a-department-of-actual-defense-in-a-time-of-coronavirus

2020-04-04 Most people recover from Covid-19. Here’s why it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how many Knowing the number of recovered cases could help provide an accurate measure of the total number of people that have been infected, said Dr. Bala Hota, a professor of infectious diseases and the associate medical officer for Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“Knowing the real number of infected people in the population would be very useful to have better models of when disease will peak and decline, and also when we can begin to return people to work,” Hota said.Recovery data also could indicate how easily people can build immunity against the virus.”Previously infected people will be able to be excluded as susceptible individuals in modeling, which would impact the prediction of how many cases will occur in the near future,” Hota said. “At an individual level, if people can know if they were asymptomatically or mildly infected and recovered, they can know that they are immune and can safely return to work once the shelter at home is eliminated.” https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/health/recovery-coronavirus-tracking-data-explainer/index.html

2020-04-04 Is an ‘immunity certificate’ the way to get out of coronavirus lockdown? There’s no evidence to date that people who recover from Covid-19 can get re-infected with the novel coronavirus https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/health/recovery-coronavirus-tracking-data-explainer/index.html

2020-04-04 74 journalism professors sign letter calling Fox News’ coronavirus coverage a ‘danger to public health’  https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/74-journalism-professors-sign-letter-calling-fox-news-coronavirus-coverage-a-danger-to-public-health

2020-04-04   Jared Kushner’s Role In Coronavirus Response Draws Scrutiny, Criticism https://www.npr.org/2020/04/04/826922646/jared-kushners-role-in-coronavirus-response-draws-scrutiny-criticism?

2020-04-02 Coronavirus Pandemic: U.S. National Park staff revolts, says shut them down https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-u-s-national-park-staff-revolts-says-shut-them-down

2020-04-02 VIDEO: COVID-19 Hits Detention https://www.raicestexas.org/2020/04/02/video-covid-19-hits-detention-livestream/

2020-04-01 As Coronavirus Spreads, Poll Shows Nearly 60% in US Believe Political System Designed Solely to Serve Rich and Powerful https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/01/coronavirus-spreads-poll-shows-nearly-60-us-believe-political-system-designed-solely

2020-04-01 As Coronavirus Surges, ‘Medicare for All’ Support Hits 9-Month High  https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/01/medicare-for-all-coronavirus-pandemic/

2020-04-01 “I’m Detained at Rikers Island and I’m Sick With Coronavirus”  With around ten thousand people packed into its cells, New York’s Rikers Island prison is today a hotbed of contagion. There have been 103 inmates and eighty staff who have officially tested positive for COVID-19 in New York’s jails already — and, given the delays in test results, the real count is likely far higher. Given the risk to human life, recent days have seen mounting calls for prisoners to be released.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/im-detained-rikers-island-and-im-sick-coronavirus

2020-03-30 Will Coronavirus Kill Off the News Business Just When America Realized We Actually Need It?    Even as most newsrooms push for a new business model around digital subscriptions, the old model — heavily dependent on advertising — had helped keep U.S. journalism barely afloat…until now. With nearly half the nation on near-total lockdown and the rest reeling, most of the businesses that buy ads in local papers, especially in smaller towns or for youth-oriented alt-weeklies — like restaurants, nightclubs or boutiques — are closed and have nothing to advertise. Scores of layoffs are already happening.  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/30/will-coronavirus-kill-news-business-just-when-america-realized-we-actually-need-it

2020-04-01 Where Are All the Woke Capitalists Now?  The COVID-19 crisis clearly shows that the neoliberal experiment has failed to prepare the world for crisis.  But, it demonstrates that the experiment is not any good for normal times either. Where Are All the Woke Capitalists Now?  Woke capitalism, that strange phenomena where corporations start adopting progressive political causes, was all the rage at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos last January. Politicians from around the globe rubbed shoulders with business moguls and high-minded celebrities. They spruiked the importance of ‘stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable World.’

How things have changed! After the sudden human and financial devastation brought on by COVID-19, what had been touted by the Davos crowd as a ‘better capitalismis laughable. Corporations would back progressive political causes out of genuine concern for others, we were told. They would take over where government left off in the provision of public goods, we were promised. So where are these corporations now when we need them?  Like fair weather friends, big business is doing little to make any significant difference.  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/01/where-are-all-woke-capitalists-now

2020-04-01 Anti-Vaccine Group ‘Children’s Health Defense’ Smells A Coronavirus Conspiracy Children’s Health Defense says governments and corporations are using the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) to advance a “global immunization agenda.” The anti-vaccine group claims that our leaders just needed the right pandemic as a pretext to goad us into getting vaccines. This is a clever story. It’s also false.

If you think the new coronavirus pandemic is an unexpected tragedy public health officials are hoping to end swiftly, you’re mistaken, says anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense (CHD). Sure, the US government is eager to bring the virus to heel, fearing the global economy could collapse with so many people stuck at home. But never mind such inconvenient facts, the group argues, because the rich and powerful are dragging out the pandemic to advance the “global immunization agenda”—all so “Big Pharma” can profit:

For those who follow the global immunization agenda … the announcement of a new pandemic didn’t come as a surprise. “Pandemic preparedness” has been well-funded and a buzz word for a long time … The latest simulation for preparedness was Event 201, a rehearsal of a coronavirus pandemic organized on October 18, 2019 in New York by Johns Hopkins University, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum.

… What better than viral terror to influence public opinion and health policies on vaccine battles raging on both sides of the Atlantic?

This version of events takes factual information and contorts it into a nonsensical narrative that collapses under scrutiny. The bigger problem, however, is that spinning a sensible policy like pandemic preparedness into evidence of a worldwide conspiracy misleads politicians and the public into making decisions that amplify the risk posed by pandemics.

The school has denied that conference participants predicted the current crisis or modeled its impacts on public health, as the three-hour event video will confirm. But here’s the CliffNotes version if you want to spend your shelter-in-place time watching Netflix: 15 experts said it was imperative to develop treatments for a novel coronavirus and a plan to quickly move resources around the globe to mitigate a pandemic.

These concerns were well founded since researchers are now rushing to develop or identify drugs that can combat the virus and health care providers are  facing shortages of vital medical supplies. The more important point is that the conference was designed to prevent the very sort of “viral terror” CHD believes could be used to manipulate parents into vaccinating their kids. 

[MEK Note: I think we have all noticed how totally unprepared the U.S. and most other nations were concerning the Covid-19 pandemic. The Conference certainly did a very poor job in this area. But like CHD says, maybe that was not the purpose] https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/04/01/anti-vaccine-group-childrens-health-defense-smells-coronavirus-conspiracy-14681

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World