Politics

Our instinct to stay far away from disease is deeply rooted. Even though, this time, we can’t. By: Jay Michaelson “As long as they have the disease, they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.” So says Leviticus 13:46, one of literally hundreds of biblical verses about disease, quarantine, skin rashes, seminal emissions, menstruation, and other markers of “impurity.”  And the Bible is not alone. In virtually every culture in the world, there are protocols for dealing with the sick and infirm—and most of them require that the diseased be placed far away from the healthy. To quarantine is human. It’s not just about epidemiology either. Of course, in pre-scientific societies without the germ theory of disease, simply getting the sick pe...

by:  MARSHALL AUERBACK Photograph Source: IntangibleArts – CC BY 2.0 When historians look back on our current government’s response to a public health emergency and resultant economic depression, there won’t be many paeans to profiles in courage. It may seem impressive that Congress has approved legislation worth $2 trillion to help sustain the American economy, but it’s no New Deal. Rather it’s a massive economic slush fund that does its utmost to preserve the old ways of doing things under the guise of masquerading as a response to a public health emergency. In reality, the relief provisions are barely adequate. Had this been another financial crisis like 2008, it is doubtful that America’s oligarch class would be able to secure such huge provision for themse...

by: PATRICK COCKBURN Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair The US may be reaching its “Chernobyl moment” as it fails to lead in combating the coronavirus epidemic. As with the nuclear accident in the Soviet Union in 1986, a cataclysm is exposing systemic failings that have already weakened US hegemony in the world. Whatever the outcome of the pandemic, nobody is today looking to Washington for a solution to the crisis. The fall in US influence was visible this week at virtual meetings of world leaders where the main US diplomatic effort was devoted to an abortive attempt to persuade the others to sign a statement referring to the “Wuhan virus”, as part of a campaign to blame China for the coronavirusepidemic. Demonising others as a diversion from one’s own shortc...

by LAURA FLANDERS “A bridge is no stronger than its weakest part.” Former slave turned educator Anna Julia Cooper uttered those very contemporary-sounding words back in 1892. The US didn’t heed them then; we haven’t heeded them yet. The big question, brought home to us one more time by the Covid-19 crisis, is why not? What does American society so love about having weak parts that we refuse—year after year and epidemic after epidemic—to shore up? Most Western European nations took steps to strengthen the weakest parts of their health systems some time between 1918 and the so-called Spanish flu and AIDS. “Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offense for which they should be penalized, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the ...