The U.S. has stepped up its containment policy against China since the pandemic began.
During a panel discussion parallel to the National People’s Congress (ANP), China’s Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe Wednesday stated that the strategic confrontation between China and the United States has entered a period of high risk.
The new drug is considered the first candidate for the COVID-19 vaccine today.
The Chinese drug manufacturer CanSino Biologics, from the city of Wuhan, developed a vaccine against Covid-19 that has been found to be safe and induces a rapid immune response.
If the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States has not yet surpassed 100,000 when you are reading this, tragically, it soon will. In the space of the first five months of this year, we have long passed the milestone (just under 60,000) of Americans killed in the long Vietnam War. We know, of course, that some people died of the pandemic in the early part of 2020 before health authorities even knew what they were dealing with. We also know that others died at home, their families only at most suspecting what the cause of death might have been.
The United States leads the world in COVID-19 deaths. No advanced country was so unprepared for a health catastrophe as the U.S. under President Donald Trump. It’s hard even to say the numbers will abate in the coming weeks and months. We may not have peaked yet. With the president’s push to “reopen” the economy and secure his re-election in November, tens of thousands more in America could be exposed to the virus and require treatment. In new waves of infection, the death toll will continue to rise.
A lot of hope—and rightly so—is being placed in what a post-Trump country and world might look like. And yes, almost anything would be better. (As a popular lawn sign reads, “2020: Any Functioning Adult.”) Proposals for union-friendly organizing rights, student debt relief, a wealth tax, a green infrastructure bill (if not a Green New Deal), a rejoining of the Paris Climate Accord undertaken by a new administration would allow most everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. And breathing, in light of the almost 100,000 dead in this COVID-19 crisis, is not a thing to be taken for granted.
The scale and intensity of the crisis, however, and the public’s response to it, will determine what’s needed, party planks now contemplated be damned. With unemployment today at 25% or more, the shock to the capitalist system is profound. With a 3-to-1 ratio of African American and Latino to whites deaths, the racial implications are clear. Some, recalling William L. Patterson’s formula, that when our government is aware of the implications of its policy but does nothing, the result is genocidal. Overcoming these factors will be no small feat. But the question looms: how will this “overcoming” be defined?
The greater the number of epidemics and vaccine-associated diseases, the greater the boon will be for pharmaceutical companies, and the faster they will grow.
As drug makers prepare to make a killing on supposed vaccines against COVID-19, it is important, particularly for those who consider vaccines to be a wise investment today, or those whose retirement savings might get invested in such vaccines without their knowledge, to reflect on the fact that corporations are themselves viruses that can only make money for their investors by growing. The way they will grow is by making more vaccines for yet more pandemics. The new pandemics might come of their own accord, or they might get a little nudge.
TURKEY continues to breach an international ceasefire in northern Syria, launching frequent air strikes against civilians and infrastructure, according to a new report.
The Rojava Information Centre has published a 52-page dossier documenting the current situation in the largely Kurdish area that was invaded by Turkish forces in Operation Peace Spring in October 2019.
Many of the atrocities are well documented, including the judicial execution of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalef by jihadist forces working with the Turkish armed forces.
TRADE unionists in Belarus have launched a campaign demanding the reinstatement of a miner sacked for raising health and safety concerns at a Canadian-owned mine.
Mikalaj Valadzko was suspended from his job at a shaft-sinking project after he started a trade union to defend workers’ rights.
He worked at a mine owned by Canadian company Redpath Mining, with the work being carried out by its German subsidiary Redpath Deilmann.Read More »
Venezuela has recently been subject to a number of attempts of mercenary penetration in the country.
According to research conducted by authorities of the Venezuelan National Government, several armed cells made up by mercenaries and Venezuelan and foreign former militaries have intended to gather in Venezuelan territory in order to organize and perpetrate1 terrorist actions, including attempts on the lives of State authorities and chavismo leaders and, in turn, coordinate sedition among the FANB (Spanish acronym for National Bolivarian Armed Force).
For several months, Western mass media called the Hong Kong rioters, “pro-democracy protesters”. It still does. But I began noticing a new, even deadlier, terminology. Now, the black-clad ninja-looking men and women that are periodically and violently clashing with the law enforcement forces are once in a while described as “pro-independence”.
Some Hong Kong citizens are defining the rioters, who recently celebrated the Americans’ “Mother’s Day” with further protests and aggressive actions, as a “political virus”.
Now many people living in Hong Kong are calling for the use of force against the predominantly young, badly-informed and poorly educated individuals — those who have been responsible, together with the novel coronavirus, for bringing their city to its knees.Read More »
The fact that Cuba’s response to the COVID-19 has been far more effective than most countries in the region, including the United States and also several European nations, is a reality that is becoming evident. A health system based on prevention, with a presence in all communities of medical offices, organized by neighborhood and linked to polyclinics, as well as general and specialized hospitals in all provincial capitals and some of the most important cities, as well as medical schools, along with advanced centers for biomedical research, have made possible active monitoring and surveying to identify asymptomatic patients, to isolate them and provide early treatment with national protocols and medicines, in addition to the creation of our own technology to test patients, requiring a minimum costly reagents in pre-existing laboratories in all the country’s municipalities.
Journal of People 