Time flies. Hard to believe that it was twelve years ago that healthcare reform activist Wendell Potter left his job as head of corporate communications at Cigna and shortly after, loudly blew the whistle on the gross malpractices of the health insurance industry that had employed him. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s pathological racism, which he displays every day, has hampered international efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19. Trump’s insistence on using terms like the “Chinese flu” or “China flu” to describe COVID-19 is merely designed to stoke tensions with China and, by default, between Trump’s racist white nationalist base and Asian-Americans. Worse is Trump’s use of the blatantly racist “kung flu” to denote COVID-19. Continue reading
Stuck at home? Watching a lot of TV? Pharma’s way ahead of you. Continue reading
Donald Trump said that June’s jobs report, which showed an uptick, proves the economy is “roaring back.” Continue reading
WASHINGTON—The U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, already criminally absent, appears to be getting worse and the data confirm it. Continue reading
In 1979, United Nations Committee on Human Rights rapporteur Abdelwahab Bouhdiba cited the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia as an example of “autogenocide,” the carrying out or enabling of mass deaths among one’s own nation. Previously cited examples of genocide at the time Bouhdiba coined the word autogenocide, were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The former’s genocide of Eastern European Jews, Romani, Slavs, and other non-Germans also included German Jewish and other citizens, making it a practitioner of both genocide and autogenocide. The genocide of Chinese by Japanese military occupiers fit the broader definition of genocide. Continue reading
Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease is raging anew because corporate-serving public officials rushed to “open the economy,” causing more infections and deaths. Continue reading
As the world contends with the deadly pandemic of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, the Chinese embassy in the Kazakhstan capital of Almaty has issued its citizens a warning about an unknown pneumonia that has seen a spike in infection cases since last month. The novel pneumonia spikes are in Atyrau and Aktobe provinces and the city of Shymken. Continue reading
A federal court late Friday struck down the Trump administration’s attempt to erect new barriers to abortion care, this time using the for-profit insurance industry. Continue reading
Donald Trump said last Thursday’s jobs report, which showed an uptick in June, proves the economy is “roaring back”. Continue reading
The chief cultural signifier of our times is this: Wearing a mask. Or not. Continue reading
I’ve bored family and friends with this story for years. Now it’s your turn. Continue reading
The racial disparities of COVID-19 have received much attention. Blacks are dying at a higher rate that is typically more than double the rate of whites. But we need to move beyond naming the problem to fighting for solutions. Medicare for All would go a long way to beginning to address racial disparities in health care in general and for COVID-19 in particular. Continue reading
More than 100 companies are competing to be first in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine to market. It’s a race against time, not because the death rate is climbing but because it is falling—to the point where there will soon be too few subjects to prove the effectiveness of the drug. Continue reading
The horrific truth is that Native Americans, Latinos, and African-Americans are dying at much higher rates than white people – and we don’t know the half of it because the CDC hasn’t released any racial data about the virus; we don’t know if they’re even collecting it. Continue reading
A virulent virus has wrapped its tentacles around the planet with fatal consequences for hundreds of thousands and unless and until there is a vaccine or the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity, it will not be defeated. Until such time people everywhere have been ordered or advised to follow certain rules for their own protection designed to slow the spread. There is no mystery in the above realities which anyone with a modicum of common sense would judge indisputable. Unfortunately, in some countries plain old-fashioned common sense is at a premium. Continue reading
Indifference toward human health and welfare by Trump and hardliners infesting his regime has been shown repeatedly throughout their time in office. Continue reading
Trump is a congenital liar. Accept nothing he says at face value. Continue reading
Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, is gifted with a likeability quotient that’s off the charts. He is witty, eccentric with a mind as sharp as a diamond-cutter, yet charmingly self-effacing. Continue reading
As America reopens for business, you might expect Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, and his Amazon corporation, one of the most profitable corporations in America, to set the corporate standard for how to protect the health of American workers. Continue reading
The US is the only developed nation without some form of universal healthcare coverage. Continue reading
Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back. Continue reading
Meat processing plants are high risk for spreading COVID-19, and many are shutting down. Animals due for processing have nowhere to go, and they are being culled. Continue reading
The discussion of coronavirus has taken some sharp turns. One such turn is the claim that the mortality rate is not high enough to justify shutdowns. But the mortality rate is not the reason for the shutdowns. The purpose of the closedowns is to reduce the exponential rate of infection. COVID-19 is much more contagious than flu, people can spread the virus for days and weeks prior to developing symptoms, the seriousness of each case is not predictable in advance, and it is a new virus about which little is known including treatment. Therefore, the highly infectious virus can easily overwhelm health care systems—just ask New York City and Italy. This is the reason for trying to reduce the rate of infection. There is no good information on mortality rates as there is no reliable or widespread testing, and the payment incentives result in hospitals reporting the virus as the cause of any deaths that can be associated with it. Continue reading
Global leaderships are being tested by an unseen enemy. Decisions affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions are being made based on flimsy expert projections as to the behaviour of a virus that so far remains unknowable. Continue reading
There are lots of choices for this dubious distinction from elements of both right wings of Washington’s one-party state. Continue reading
Every country, with the exception of Sweden, found it necessary to close down at least part of the economy in order to prevent the highly infectious virus from overwhelming their medical care systems. The exponential rate of infection together with a lack of sufficient health resources obviously meant an overwhelmed system that would be unable to provide care for those suffering from other illnesses and deadly conditions, such as heart attacks. Continue reading
The Swedish government has gone out on a limb with its implementation of a strategy known as ‘herd immunity’ to beat back the most aggressive pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu that killed over 50 million worldwide. Continue reading
Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer has closed its Sioux Falls, SD, slaughterhouse after 238 Smithfield employees grew sick, according to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Continue reading
Woken in the middle of the night and marched out of a crowded, quarantined group cell by prison guards to be deported. That is the story of one D.C.-area man on Wednesday, inside of an ICA Farmville for-profit prison full of hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The unit is in the middle of a two-week lockdown due to a number of inmates showing symptoms of COVID-19, yet that did not stop guards bursting in and taking the man, who has not been named due to fears about retaliation, out to process his deportation, recklessly endangering others in the facility. Continue reading
The best birthday present I got this year was a refill of my medication. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be much to celebrate, but the coronavirus has upended the ordinary. Continue reading
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Wake up, America! We must force Trump to resign or at least step aside
Your messages tell presidents which way the political winds are blowing. Make this ‘rumble of the people’ speak loud and clear NOW!
Posted on July 21, 2020 by Ralph Nader
Public Citizen’s open letter, co-signed by over twenty nonprofit civic organizations working for the public health, demanded that Trump and Pence immediately give up their disastrous daily mismanagement of the Covid-19 response. Trump’s bungling and ignorance have allowed the Covid-19 virus to spread faster at an alarming rate around the country. Continue reading →