2021-11-09 Partisan Gap in Covid Deaths Growing Thanks to Right-Wing Vaccine Disinformation The fact that heavily Trump counties had over three times more Covid-19 deaths in October than heavily Biden counties shows that “anti-science aggression on the right has had deadly consequences,” said one epidemiologist. The partisan gap in Covid-19 deaths worsens as support for Trump increases: “Counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote have an even higher average Covid death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60%,” the Times reported. “As a result,” the newspaper noted, “Covid deaths have been concentrated in counties outside of major metropolitan areas. Many of these are in red states, while others are in red parts of blue or purple states, like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia, and even California.”
2021-11-00 Reclaiming the Narrative: Immigrant Workers and Precarity THE TERM “ESSENTIAL workers” has been broadly applied during the COVID-19 pandemic, designating not only healthcare providers but also frontline workers in the food, construction, and home-based care sectors. These are all occupations characterized by low-wage and insecure employment with little possibility of job promotion. Importantly, they are all also occupations sustained by immigrant labor. Indeed, as Ruth Milkman points out in Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat, both the unauthorized “illegal aliens” who are the focus of contemporary political controversy and the larger population of foreign-born workers with legal status are concentrated in occupations and industries at the bottom of the labor market that are “poorly paid, physically demanding, menial, and often dangerous.”
2021-10-22 Bolsonaro faces ‘crimes against humanity’ charge over COVID-19 mishandling The near-1,200 page report, formally presented on Oct. 20, 2021, holds Bolsonaro culpable for worsening a crisis that has to date killed some 600,000 Brazilians, outlining how his failed policies allowed the virus to spread among the population. The president denies any wrongdoing. An earlier draft had called for Bolsonaro to be indicted for homicide and genocide as well, given how the ravages of the coronavirus have disproportionately hit Brazil’s Indigenous groups. But those charges were dropped from the final report.
2021-10-18 Colin Powell dies from complications of COVID-19 (MEK Note: Only rare that Vaccinated deaths are reported) Lt. Gen. Colin Powell has died from complications of COVID-19 at the age of 84, the Daily Mail is reporting. Powell, however, was a rare example of someone dying from the COVID-19 coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated. On Facebook, Powell’s family issued the following statement: “General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from COVID-19.”
2021-10-15 Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning wonder drug – but not for COVID-19 Ivermectin is an over 30-year-old wonder drug that treats life- and sight-threatening parasitic infections. Its lasting influence on global health has been so profound that two of the key researchers in its discovery and development won the Nobel Prize in 2015. Although ivermectin has been a game-changer for people with certain infectious diseases, it isn’t going to save patients from COVID-19 infection. In fact, it could cost them their lives. Early experiments by William Campbell and his team from Merck discovered that the drug also worked against a human parasite that causes an infection called river blindness. Infectious disease researchers frequently attempt to repurpose antimicrobials and other medications to treat infections. Drug repurposing is attractive because the approval process can happen more quickly and at a lower cost since nearly all of the basic research has already been completed. At the time of this writing, two large randomized clinical trials both showed no significant benefit from the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Reputable national and international health care organizations, including the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, unanimously recommend against the use of ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 unless in the context of a clinical trial. Ivermectin, when used correctly, has prevented millions of potentially fatal and debilitating infectious diseases. It’s meant to be prescribed only to treat infections caused by parasites.
2021-10-05 Africa’s COVID-19 Vaccine and the Scandal of the Centuries African nations might have produced a patent free vaccine that would have benefitted the whole world. Instead they purchased patented vaccines which enriched pharmaceutical corporations outside of the continent. A modest team leading the way quietly in Ede, Nigeria, at the little-discussed, African Centre for Excellence in Genomics and Infectious Diseases (ACEGID). This is how and where, by September 2020, a Covid-19 vaccine passed preclinical trials , with over 90% effectiveness against the first and second variants of the novel coronavirus in animals. The only glitch was that African governments would not provide the 250 million USD needed to run clinical trials. Not only a massive loss for Africa, the refusal to support the research is a loss for the globe’s majority. Instead of funding research and production of an African vaccine, African governments, through the African Union (AU), pooled resources to obtain financing of 2 billion USD – about four times more than what was needed for ACEGID clinical trials – to buy vaccines from multinational corporations (MNCs). Added to this is the crucial fact that unlike the Oxford scientists behind the AstraZeneca vaccine they would not have patented the vaccine. This would have made it accessible to impoverished and rich countries alike.
2021-10-00 Hindu Exceptionalism and COVID-19 We reflected on the juxtaposition of the “compression of time,” enacted through Modi’s four-hour notice that India would be placed under lockdown, and the “elongation of time” experienced by Kashmiris, who endure numerous military lockdowns. Modi’s lockdown order was an expression of authoritarian power: he upended the lives of countless people (particularly the most vulnerable, the poor and migrants) simply because he could. In contrast to the compression of time between edict and implementation, we emphasized that time under military occupation is lived as static time in which one day resembles the previous one and prefigures the day after, extending into a futureless, hopeless tomorrow. In the present article, we turn to Modi and his rightwing Hindu allies’ diligent promotion of Hindu exceptionalism as a framework for everyday governance.
2021-11-00 The Rising Price of Insanity THERE WAS NEVER anything like it: In the midst of a mounting public health disaster, a phalanx of state governors deliberately and maliciously sabotaging the elementary measures required to protect the population. Driven by a toxic mix of greed, political opportunism and pure ideology, “opening the economy” in states from Florida and Texas to South Dakota outweighs the terrifying realities of overwhelmed hospital Intensive Care Units as well as burnout-and-COVID-depleted medical staffs. Insanity!
2021-07-00 COVID-19 Vaccine Apartheid: No One Is Safe from Big Pharma The arrival of effective vaccines has dramatically reduced death and hospitalization rates in countries able to carry out mass vaccination campaigns, providing hope that the pandemic that has infected at least 180 million people and killed at least 3.9 million (these figures are probably gross underestimates) can be brought under control. But that will not happen while much of the world’s population remains unvaccinated. In unvaccinated areas, Covid-19 will spread and mutate, causing sickness and deaths and producing new lethal variants that will spread to more fully vaccinated countries. We see this now, as more transmissible and resistant variants have emerged, especially: the alpha variant (formerly known as the UK, or Kent, variant); the beta (South African) variant; the gamma (P1, or Brazilian) variant; the delta (Indian) variant.
2021-06-18 Rethinking Commuting Regional planners and transit agencies must figure out whether working from home or the allure of urban social life will prove stronger in post-pandemic America. The great post-COVID-19 sort-out of the transportation needs and demands of workers and employers has forced a long-overdue re-evaluation of everything from bus and subway schedules to congestion pricing. Most essential workers in certain retail sectors, transportation, health care, and the like have had to be on-site. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of Americans who teleworked or worked from home peaked at 35 percent last May. Since then, the percentages have steadily declined through the first quarter of 2021. Nonetheless, the commuting debate in the post-pandemic era zeroes in on the WFH habits that have dented public-transit ridership. Smaller-city, suburban, and rural bus transit systems did not experience as sharp a decline in ridership as some of the largest urban transit systems. The debate over free or reduced fares boils down to a simple question: Can a transit system afford to offer them without new subsidies? Los Angeles has embarked on the country’s most ambitious pilot to provide free fares to low-income riders and students,
2021-05-28 COVID-19: Fauci Backed Strengthening of Viruses Despite Admitting Risk of Pandemic, Australian Newspaper Reports Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote in an academic paper nine years ago that he supported “gain-of-function” research on viruses despite admitting a “remote” possibility that such “important work” could lead to a global pandemic if such a fortified virus escaped from a lab, The Australian newspaper reported on Friday. The newspaper’s revelation comes as President Joe Biden announced this week an investigation into whether the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)’s lab in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic first broke out. Fauci, who had dismissed that possibility and insisted the virus had natural transmission from another species to humans, on May 11 reversed himself, saying at a conference that he was “not convinced” of the coronavirus’ natural origins and said authorities needed to learn “exactly what happened.” Fauci has denied allegations that his NIH helped fund gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab. He told a U.S. Senate hearing this month that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the WIV.” But The Australian reported: “Papers published as late as last year in American peer-reviewed academic journals that include WIV researchers – including its prominent virologist Shi Zhengli – disclose that work on coronaviruses had been funded by at least three NIH grants.” in December 2017 Fauci unilaterally reversed an Obama administration 2014 ban on such experiments precisely because of the danger that a leak could cause a pandemic.
2020-05-10 COVID-19: 2020 Year of the Virus Alexander Mercouris weighs both sides of the debate between lockdown and herd immunity and examines claims that Covid-19 is over-hyped and is really just like the flu. Firstly, it is important to distinguish between the virus itself – the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 – and the illness – Covid-19 – which the virus causes. Unfortunately this important distinction is rarely made or explained, so that many people in my experience do not understand it, and are not aware of it. Contrary to repeated claims, Covid-19 is not flu, and its symptoms do not resemble flu. Several people I know claim to have contracted it. They describe headaches and fevers, a continuous and prolonged dry cough, loss of the senses of smell and taste, a sensation of severe tightness of the chest, and a shortage of breath, which can last for days. In every case the illness lasted longer than 14 days. In every case moreover the British National Health Service assessed the illness as “mild”, and not deserving of treatment, and the subjects were not even tested. In severe cases (not directly described to me) there is acute respiratory collapse, with the lungs unable to provide oxygen to the blood, causing danger to life. In some cases this can happen without the person affected noticing that they are no longer breathing properly, and are becoming dangerously short of oxygen.
It is now clear that alongside these classic symptoms of Covid-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can also cause damage to the brain and to the central nervous system.
2021-04-30 COVID-19: Vaccine Just out of Reach for Palestinians We were able to keep the coronavirus at bay for five months in Gaza, the densely populated Palestinian strip of land surrounded by Israel that I call home. But the Coronavirus doesn’t respect walls or artificial borders. While preparations were made for the pandemic to inevitably breach a blockade so few Palestinians can, we waited for it to come for us. And it did. In one of the most sealed off places in the world, we knew the virus now insidiously spreading in our community could be catastrophic. In the early days the realities of over two million Palestinians, trapped between a wall and sea in Gaza, became suddenly shared with millions more around the world who were unable to leave their houses and going short on basic supplies. You can’t social distance when you live in a crowded refugee camp, or share a small house with a big family. You can’t wash your hands for 20 seconds when you don’t have enough running water. In Gaza, it’s hard to take measures to protect ourselves from a pandemic when we are already struggling to survive. Covid-19 poses significantly higher risks to older people with weaker immune systems and to individuals with underlying health conditions. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly contagious. Carriers are at greatest risk of spreading the infection some days after they become infected but before they become ill, and also – and most especially – in the first days of illness, when the main symptom is a dry cough. t seems that in around 95 percent of cases the virus is spread when water droplets carrying the virus are coughed or sneezed out by a carrier, and then breathed in by a passerby.
2021-03-17 Racial Capitalism and COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting nonwhite racialized workers in the core and periphery. Yet, many social scientific analyses of the global political economy, at least in the pre-COVID era, are race neutral or willfully indifferent to the persistent racial pattern of global inequalities. Even if they do address the legacies of colonialism, they ignore the ongoing racial logics of oppression embedded therein. How can we understand the unremitting super exploitation of Black and other nonwhite racialized labor in the core and the periphery? Dominant approaches to capitalism are not enough. It is urgent that we anchor our analyses in the concept of racial capitalism, which helps us better understand the forces driving the global political economy. Racial capitalism refers to the mutually constitutive entanglements of racialized and colonial exploitation within the process of capital accumulation. According to this framework, capitalism, as we know it today, would not have been possible if not for imperialism, colonialism, racial slavery, expropriation, and super exploitation. Capital accumulation would not be possible today if not for these ongoing logics.
2021-03-08 COVID-19: Head of WHO Calls for Patent Waivers to Halt Pandemic Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday urged global powers to “pull out all the stops” to defeat the coronavirus pandemic including by waiving Big Pharma’s vaccine patents to ensure equitable access to the drugs. “Sharing doses, boosting manufacturing by removing barriers, and ensuring that we use data effectively to target left-behind communities is key to ending this crisis,” he wrote in an op-ed published at The Guardian. He lamented that “the vast majority” of the 225 million administered Covid-19 vaccine doses “have been in a handful of rich and vaccine-producing countries, while most low- and middle-income countries watch and wait.” Such a “me-first” approach, he said, is ultimately “self-defeating.” That’s because “as long as the virus is spreading anywhere, it has more opportunities to mutate and potentially undermine the efficacy of vaccines everywhere,” wrote Tedros. “We could end up back at square one.”
2021-03-00 Health Care Inequalities, Racism and Death The deeply racist way Blacks are still treated in medicine and by the medical system is rooted in the structural discrimination based on 401 years of national oppression. Black professionals, including medical doctors and nurses, continue to face treatments that are inferior to white men and women. COVID-19 has exposed the devastating realities of longstanding structural inequities experienced by Black and brown people. They are more likely than whites to be infected and more likely to die.
2021-02-25 Workers Making COVID Test Kits Exposed to COVID At Access Bio in New Jersey, mostly Latina immigrant temp workers lacking protections on the job face hazardous conditions. “Either we die of COVID or we die of hunger,” says Karen Romero, who has been driving workers to the biomedical plant for over ten years. “We all got COVID,” Romero says, her voice muffled by two masks covering her mouth. Workers across the country are on the front lines of the pandemic, sacrificing their lives for the safety of others while lacking the most elemental labor protections. For temp workers, with fewer protections than full-time employees, the hazards are even more acute. And the fact that workers at Access Bio are producing test kits to keep other people around the world safe from COVID adds a cruel irony.
2021-01-25 Why COVID-19 Has Run Amok in Los Angeles The jam-packed living arrangements of frontline workers in an unaffordable housing market are partly to blame. L.A. wasn’t Cleveland or Detroit; even as it deindustrialized, it also generated thousands upon thousands of low-paying service, retail and nonunion construction jobs. The new jobs were quickly filled by the vast numbers of immigrants fleeing here from war-wracked and impoverished nations in Central America and elsewhere. In the last year, we have learned how that density poses a serious public health threat. L.A.’s stratospheric housing costs have required many working-class residents here to double up or more when it comes to living arrangements.
2021-01-06 Capitalism on a Ventilator: A New Book Analyzes the Impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. and China While China contained Covid-19 and preserved its economy, the U.S. spins lies while hundreds of thousands of its people die for lack of even a semblance of a national health system. “The United States has 80 times more deaths than China from COVID-19 despite possessing less than a fourth of the population.” The COVID-19 pandemic has placed China and the United States on the opposite ends of human progress. In the U.S., massive casualties of the pandemic have been coupled with the worst capitalist crash since the Great Depression. The story is much different in China. China began re-opening its economy as early as April of 2020. Deaths due to COVID-19 are virtually non-existent, and economists now predict that China’s economy will surpass the U.S. economy in GDP terms two years ahead of schedule.
2021-01-06 How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men While COVID-19 has killed 1 out of every 800 African Americans, a toll that overwhelms the imagination, even more stunning is the deadly efficiency with which it has targeted young Black men like Bates. One study using data through July found that Black people ages 35 to 44 were dying at nine times the rate of white people the same age, though the gap slightly narrowed later in the year. And in an analysis for ProPublica this summer using the only reliable data at the time accounting for age, race and gender, from Michigan and Georgia, Harvard researcher Tamara Rushovich found that the disparity was greatest in Black men.
2021-01-00 When Science Meets Capital “The COVID-19 Pandemic” stands as a searing indictment of the Trump administration’s response to the crisis. Conner condemns the Trump leadership as “characteristically fatuous and obstructionist.” Almost two years before the first confirmed U.S. COVID case, the Trump wrecking crew was busy eliminating the vital early warning system so essential in containing the spread of a virus. In May, 2018, the White House put the National Security Council directorate on the chopping block. This directorate had been set up, in the wake of the earlier SARS and H1N1 flu alarms, precisely to respond quickly to a potential viral pandemic. Another cost-cutting blow came in September, 2019, when the administration shut down a USAID program called Predict. Predict had been responsible for identifying 1200 viruses, among which — what leaps out in retrospect — 160 were novel coronaviruses.
2021-01-00 The 21st Century Plague THE CALAMITOUS MALFEASANCE of the outgoing Trump regime’s response to the coronavirus pandemic threatens to obscure deeper realities of this global as well as U.S. crisis. The incoming Biden-Harris tem faces a deeper and more menacing emergency of both public health and the economy than the 2008-09 financial meltdown that confronted president Obama’s first year. Throwing money to keep banks solvent, as in the 2009-10 bailout, will not work this time. Distributing vaccines as they become available is a wartime-level challenge. And the racially-driven polarization of the United States’ political culture, escalating under Trump’s reign, has never been more acute, or dangerous.
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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index
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