Most people prefer safety and security first (see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) over everything else. I don’t think the response of either Democrats or Republicans to COVID-19 has been optimal (to say the least). What people want is public health safety with economic compensation.
Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti react to the recent ABC News townhall President Trump participated in, receiving both backlash and criticism from many of the voters present.
If and when the vaccine comes, the Trumpists will suddenly embrace scientism and the “liberals” will suddenly embrace anti-vaxxer conspiracism.
Saagar Enjeti blasts Democrats for rejecting the idea of vaccines coming from a Trump administration.
Obviously. But are there any politicians who are not mediocre? Maybe a few here and there like Jill Stein, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Mike Gravel, Jesse Ventura, Ron Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and others on the margins. But “successful” politicians are mediocrities and scumbags almost to a person. Mediocre public health officials empower mediocre politicians.
What Can We Learn From Cuba?
By Don Fitz
As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All as a final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world.
Contrasting Cuban changes in medicine during the last 60 years with the US non-system of medical care gives a clear picture of why changes must be all-encompassing. The concept of Medicare-for-All is deeply intertwined with attacks on Cuba’s global medical “missions” and the opposite responses to Covid-19 in the two countries.
Immediately after the 1959 revolution Cubans began the task of spreading medical care to those without it. This included a flurry of building medical clinics and sending doctors to poor parts of cities and to rural areas, both of which were predominantly black.
One thing that I have found interesting about the pandemic is the way that so many anarchists have acquiesced to the supposed authority and expertise of scientism or the white coat priesthood, or passively accepted media narratives. In others words, they have simply deferred to the authority of the clergy.
“Our atheists are very pious people.” -Max Stirner
The therapeutic police state.
By Christian Britschgi, Reason
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said on a press call today that he would not allow indoor dining to return in New York City unless local politicians devoted significant police resources to enforcing social distancing and other reopening conditions.
Dr. Dara Kass reports on the latest data from the CDC on coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 16 July 2020.
From the moment I saw that Anthony Fauci was in charge of the COVID-19 response, my feeling was, “Oh, no, not this guy again.”
By Sean Strub
Huffington Post
By Joe Pinsker
The Atlantic
During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the coronavirus pandemic will transform politics, work, travel, education, and other domains. Less sweepingly, but just as powerfully, it will also transform the people who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all over—and perhaps even long after that—how will we be different?
For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands. When I interviewed roughly 20 people from across the country about their pandemic-era habits, most of them planned to keep aspects of their new hygiene regimen long into the future, even after the threat of the coronavirus passes. “I will more regularly wash my hands throughout my life and I will never be anywhere without hand sanitizer and a mask,” Leah Burbach, a 27-year-old high-school teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, told me.
Okay, Tucker, Sean, Noam, Pakman. Here’s your revolutionary Marxist most progressive candidate ever, lol.
If this turns out to be legitimate, the neocons and neoliberals will be crying and the alt-right and commie Russophiles will be jerking off with excitement.
By Jake Rudnitsky and Ilya Arkhipov
Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin said Russia cleared the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine for use and hopes to begin mass inoculation soon, even before clinical testing has finished.
This interview contains my general take on the great lumpenproletarian cultural revolution of 2020 from a Howard Cosell perspective.
By Derrick Broze
The Last American Vagabond
Clearly, 2020 has been unlike any previous year in the last century or so. The world is currently battling against an infodemic of propaganda spewing from the corporate media and official health authorities. Yes, people are sick and dying. However, the statistics make it clear that COVID-19 simply does not warrant a total lockdown of the planet and further destruction of the economy.
Regardless, nations around the world are using COVID-19 as an opportunity to grab more surveillance and police state powers, institute mask and vaccine mandates, accelerate the push towards a completely digital world, enact more corporate bailouts, and generally, extreme control and involvement in citizens lives. The sheer magnitude of the COVID-19 operation is unparalleled, with the most recent similar event being the attacks of September 11, 2001. As with the 9/11 attacks, the predator class is using COVID-19 as the excuse to push plans and agendas which predate the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Is another shutdown coming?
By Christina Maxouris
CNN
As more Covid-19 records get broken, debates on whether to send kids back to school or to shut down the economy again are coming to a head.
More than 1,000 people died every day for four straight days last week due to Covid-19. That brings the total US death toll from the virus to more than 146,000 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
And researchers project up to 175,000 deaths linked to the virus by August 15, according to an ensemble forecast published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With overwhelmed hospitals and lengthy delays in testing, some local leaders — including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — said a second stay-at-home order might be possible.
That kind of drastic measure is supported by more than 150 prominent medical experts, scientists, teachers, nurses and other experts who signed a letter urging leaders to shut the country down and start over to contain the rampant spread of the virus.
The second wave is upon us.
By Philip Wen, Joyu Wang
Wall Street Journal
Australia reported only a handful of new coronavirus cases in early June, while Hong Kong went three weeks without a single locally transmitted infection that month. Japan had already lifted a state of emergency in May after the number of new cases dropped to a few dozen nationwide.
All three reported new high-water marks in daily infection numbers in the past week, showing how difficult it can be to keep the virus at bay, even in places lauded for taking early and decisive action.
The number of infections in all three places are still small in comparison to the world’s hardest hit countries, but the fresh waves demonstrate the tricky balancing act authorities face as they attempt to reopen their economies.
ABC News
Over 15.5 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their nations’ outbreaks.
The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 4 million diagnosed cases and at least 144,305 deaths. While the U.S. remains the nation with the most coronavirus cases and fatalities, some countries “have been able to control the virus,” said Dr. Maria VanKerkhove, the World Health Organization’s lead expert on COVID-19.
The presidential election has more or less become a PSA about the problem of mental illness between Trump (narcissistic sociopathy), Biden (dementia, Alzheimer’s), and West (psychosis, bipolar disorder).
By Chloe Melas
CNN
(CNN)Kim Kardashian West has shared a message about her husband Kanye West and mental health.
This has been true not only of ICE detention centers but of the US prison/jail system generally. It is interesting how the media only reports on this stuff selectively, mostly to get some anti-Trump mileage out of it. After Biden is elected, if that happens, there will likely be no more mention of this.
CBS News
When the therapeutic state, medical martial law, and oligarchic capitalism converge.
By Chip Cutter and Thomas Gryta
Wall Street Journal
Companies have a new question for employees: Any plans this weekend?
As U.S. states reopen, sending residents back to work as well as social life, employers are urging workers to be cautious when they are off duty, and at least one local official has begun advising employers to ask staffers about activities in their off hours. Some companies are concerned that the many safeguards put in place at work to limit the spread of the coronavirus—from policies requiring masks on the job to separated desks—could be undone if workers are taking risks off the job.
Yet employers have to tread carefully, legal authorities say, making sure to exert influence without violating employee privacy.
