Meet the influencers making millions by dealing doubt about the coronavirus vaccines.~~ Liz Essley Whyte

https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/spreading-fears-cashing-in-anti-vaccine/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

Journalist: Anti-Vaccine, Anti-Mask Protesters in L.A. Attacked Me & Ripped Off My Mask

 https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/20/reporter_recalls_how_anti_vaccine_anti

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

A monster pandemic

https://mronline.org/2021/08/18/a-monster-pandemic/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

"Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming" ~~ Max Fisher

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformation-social-media.html

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Op-Ed: Quit Ignoring Natural COVID Immunity ~~Jeffrey Klausner, MD, MPH, and Noah Kojima, MD

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/92836

~~ posted for a guest contributor ~~

Motherhood and Labor in the Pandemic ~~ Ursula McTaggart

https://againstthecurrent.org/atc210/motherhood-and-labor-in-the-pandemic/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

Restaurant Workers Say They Won’t Return to Work Without a Living Wage ~~ Saru Jayaraman

 https://truthout.org/articles/restaurant-workers-say-they-wont-return-to-work-without-a-living-wage/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

CDC’s maskless mandate puts workers at risk

https://www.workers.org/2021/05/56453/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

Who are the 10 Biggest Pandemic Profiteers? ~~ CHUCK COLLINS

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/25/who-are-the-10-biggest-pandemic-profiteers/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

Escalating Plunder ~~ Robert Brenner

 https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii123/articles/robert-brenner-escalating-plunder

~~ posted for dmorista ~~

On 23 march 2020, the Federal Reserve made the historic announcement that, in response to the coronavirus economic crisis, it would provide loans to non-financial corporations in industry and services for the first time since the early 1930s.footnote1 A few days previously, former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen had given their imprimatur to this precedent-shattering step.footnote2 Just how huge a cornucopia for big business the authorities had in mind would soon become clear. The Federal Reserve had, for the better part of a century, confined its lending to the us government, purchasing Treasuries and bonds issued by the Government Sponsored Entities (gses)—Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae. The Central Bank had traditionally resisted extending its loan purchases beyond these instruments, not least because buying the debt of specific companies would leave it open to charges of favouritism. At the time of the 2007–08 global financial crisis, however—with the justification that the meltdown threatened the financial sector’s very functioning—then Fed Chair Bernanke consigned such niceties to the dustbin of history, showing in the process why those norms had been established in the first place.footnote3

Georgians Are Starving — And Their Millionaire Senators Refuse to Force a Vote on Aid. ~~ DAVID SIROTA ANDREW PEREZ

 https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/georgia-kelly-loeffler-david-perdue-covid-relief-bill

Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue could actually force a Senate vote on $2,000 checks for almost two thirds of Georgia households. After all, their state is in the middle of a calamity. Instead, they are issuing belated, meek platitudes.

Dmorista on Covid-19 and Related Matters Can Capitalism Survive? PART 1 ~~ dmorista

This is the first installment of a series of articles that are generally entitled "Dmorista on Covid-19 and Related Matters Can Capitalism Survive?". There will be at least 4 or 5 more installments posted here at Leftist Politics.

Capitalist Covid Catastrophe ~~ Martha Grevatt

https://www.workers.org/2020/12/53129/

It’s December 2020. The working class in the United States is facing a crisis of survival. It is the worst such crisis since the Great Depression, especially for the most oppressed.

The statistics are damning: One in six households face hunger; one in five workers are out of work; some 30 million renters and homeowners face homelessness in the coming winter months. The COVID death toll will hit 300,000 any day now. The virus is now the leading cause of death in the U.S., passing heart disease and cancer. Hospitals are unable to cope with the surge in COVID cases.

There could likely be half a million deaths before vaccines are widely available — more than double the 200,000 projected as a worst case scenario at the start of the pandemic.

The Unraveling of America ~~ Wade Davis

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/

~~ posted for dmorista ~~

Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Renters Are Organizing To Fight Evictions, Just Like They Did in the 1930s ~~ Zacharias Szumer

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/australian-renters-evictions-organizing-1930s-covid

In the wake of the pandemic, Australian renters are once again facing the threat of mass evictions. The militant renters’ struggles of the Great Depression are an excellent model for the movement that’s taking shape today.

COVID Tipped the Scale: How King County Employees Made Childcare a Union Benefit ~~Michael Laslett

https://labornotes.org/2020/11/covid-tipped-scale-how-king-county-employees-made-childcare-union-benefit

Ten thousand union members who work for King County, where Seattle is located, have won a $9 million fund to cover emergency childcare expenses this school year. Now the union coalition is pushing to make the benefit permanent.

Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a capitalist virus ~~ Ashley Smith

https://mronline.org/2020/10/20/competing-with-nature-covid-19-as-a-capitalist-virus/

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

The COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating as the death toll climbs ever higher around the world. Spectre’s Ashley Smith interviews epidemiologist Rob Wallace about the global capitalist roots of the current pandemic, the likelihood of future pandemics, and the types of organized resistance necessary to prevent them.

Rob Wallace is an evolutionary epidemiologist with the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps. He is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and the just-released Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19. He has consulted with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.