Daily Archives: December 24, 2020

2020-12-24: News Headlines

Richard Lachmann (2020-12-24). No Co-Sponsor of 'Medicare for All' Has Lost Reelection in the Past Decade. zcomm.org Every single Congressional co-sponsor of these bills in the House and Senate who were up for reelection beat their Republican opponents in 2020. And in 2018. And in 2016…

teleSUR (2020-12-24). Political Crisis Stricken Peru Tops One Million COVID-19 Cases. telesurenglish.net Peruvian health officials reported 1,000,153 cases as of Tuesday evening, making it the fifth nation in South America to exceed one million cases and the 17th worldwide. With over 37,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Andean nation exhibits the world's second-highest per capita death toll from the pandemic, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University. | RELATED: | With a population of 32 million, the Andean nation estab…

Online News Editor (2020-12-24). Ecuador's indigenous people turn to ancestral remedies against Covid-19. laprensalatina.com By Domenica Enriquez Miwaguno, Ecuador, Dec 23 (efe-epa).- Residents of some indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon are choosing to rely on the natural remedies used by their ancestors as they battle the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 3,200 indigenous people have contracted the coronavirus and 49 have perished, according to figures from Ecuador's Health Ministry, …

Margaret Flowers (2020-12-24). US Airports Are Portals for Disease Spread. Venezuela Shows Another Way. zcomm.org People in the United States do have a lot to learn from Venezuelans and from people in many other countries that are handling the pandemic well…

Workers World Party (2020-12-24). PDF of December 24 issue. workers.org Download the 12-page PDF. Georgia Senate runoff Redbaiting derails people's needs Youth in vanguard; Russell Maroon Shoatz; The real 2020 heroes; Amazon union drive in Ala.; Five hottest years; Vaccine chaos; Editorial: Too little, too late GLOBAL: Amauta in Peru; 'Soft coup' attempt in Cuba; BLM in France. TEAR DOWN . . . |

WSWS (2020-12-24). Australian COVID-19 outbreak underscores danger of corporate drive to lift safety restrictions. wsws.org Limited safety restrictions have been relaxed in Sydney, despite warnings from infectious diseases experts.

Malik Washington (2020-12-24). Racist practices at the SF Health Service System will no longer be tolerated: Remove Mitch. indybay.org SF Bay View Editor Malik Washington reports on systemic racism in the SF Health Service System…

Matt Bruenig (2020-12-23). Medicare for All Would Save Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Annually. zcomm.org The most exhaustive study on Medicare for All just came out. Its conclusion: a single-payer system would guarantee health insurance to all people while reducing overall health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars every year…

_____ (2020-12-23). Unions Call For L.A. County Shutdown In January. popularresistance.org In a move that reflects the desperation of teachers, nurses, healthcare, grocery and hotel employees, their influential unions are calling for a strict month-long Los Angeles County shutdown in January to control the raging COVID-19 pandemic, save lives and ultimately allow for a quicker reopening of schools and the economy. | Evidence of mounting frustration and anxiety has also emerged in newly released surveys of teachers and parents as most campuses across L.A. County remain closed to in-person classes. | The union coalition called for what it described as a "circuit breaker" in a letter Wednesday night to th…

Julia Conley, staff writer (2020-12-23). 'Our Kids Deserve Better': Despite Pandemic, Trump EPA Refuses to Strengthen Smog Standards. commondreams.org "In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans are more keenly aware than ever of the need to take care of our health." | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…

Staff (2020-12-23). US Airports Are Portals for Disease Spread. Venezuela Shows Another Way. truthout.org I recently traveled to Venezuela to be an observer for its National Assembly election and was struck by a stark difference between the ways Venezuela and the United States are handling the COVID-19 pandemic. | My experience at the airport in Caracas, Venezuela, gave me a taste of what a coordinated public health approach looks like in practice, compared to the disjointed politicized approach in the United States. Airports in the United States are currently serving as uncontrolled portals of disease…

Stephen Lendman (2020-12-23). Worthless PCR Tests for COVID. "Almost all" PCR Tests Produce False Positives. globalresearch.ca PCR tests are a scam. They don't work as claimed. | Yet their widespread use provides a foundation for manipulating people to be vaxxed with experimental, hazardous to human health vaccines. | PCR tests produce false positive results up to 90% of …

Sara Flounders (2020-12-23). Las vacunas mundiales de China: un cambio revolucionario. workers.org En Estados Unidos, con menos del 5% de la población mundial, existe poca preocupación por el destino del otro 95% del mundo que se enfrenta a la pandemia. Cuándo, cómo y bajo qué condiciones se distribuirá una vacuna en los EE. UU. es la mayor preocupación de los EE.UU. Las . . . |

Tim Wheeler (2020-12-23). Labor creates all value, including vaccine value. peoplesworld.org As I watched the rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccines on television recently, I thought of that old line, "Labor creates all value." Above all, it is labor power—mental labor and muscle labor—that is producing safe, effective vaccines in quantities sufficient to vaccinate the 340 million people of the United States. People mistakenly credit Karl …

Global Research News (2020-12-23). Selected Articles: Staff at Hospitals in DC, Texas Turn Down COVID-19 Vaccine. globalresearch.ca By A long and cruel siege, constant Israeli attacks resulting in the killing of countless civilians, destruction …

RT (2020-12-23). UK govt plunges millions more into most draconian Covid-19 measures amid record infections surge & new mutation. rt.com Millions more people will be plunged into England's toughest Tier 4 coronavirus restrictions from December 26 in a bid to stem the rising number of infections, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday. | The new measures will apply to Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, some areas of Essex and the borough of Waverley in Surrey. | At least 18 million people in England are now living under the Tier 4 rules, which ban people from leaving their homes without a "reasonable excuse" and mean they cannot meet other people indoors, including over the Christmas and New Year period. | Tier 4 mea…

MEE and agencies (2020-12-23). Israel detects new Covid-19 strain, health ministry says. middleeasteye.net Israel detects new Covid-19 strain, health ministry says | Four people diagnosed with coronavirus variant that first emerged in the United Kingdom | Wed, 12/23/2020 – 16: 04 | An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man gets vaccinated against Covid-19 at Clalit Health Services Center in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, on 21 December 2020 (AFP) | Israel has detected four cases of a new Covid-19 strain, a highl…

Newsclick (2020-12-23). How dangerous is the new COVID-19 strain? peoplesdispatch.org News of a new strain of the COVID-19 disease has stoked fears in the UK and the rest of the world. A number of countries, including India, have banned or restricted travel to the country. Immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rath and Newsclick's Prabir Purkayastha discuss the new strain and its implications.

Ayla Ellison (2020-12-23). Staff at Hospitals in DC, Texas Turn Down COVID-19 Vaccine. globalresearch.ca Many employees at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., have reservations about taking the COVID-19 vaccine, and CEO Anita Jenkins is trying to get workers to follow her lead by getting vaccinated, according to The hospital, a major …

commondreams (2020-12-23). Joint Statement: Ensure Iranians Equitable Access to Covid-19 Vaccines. commondreams.org ______________________________…

Mehr News Agency (2020-12-23). Iran witnessing declining trend in COVID-19 deaths. en.mehrnews.com TEHRAN, Dec. 23 (MNA) — Iran on Wednesday recorded 153 coronavirus deaths, showing a declining trend compared to the previous day, said an official at the country's Health Ministry.

sputniknews (2020-12-23). UK's NHS Frontline Doctors Express Concern Over Pace of COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution. sputniknews.com Medical staff members in the US and the UK are currently receiving the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which is based on messenger RNA technology, a new type of treatment that works by providing instructions to healthy cells to generate antibodies for a certain antigen.

Chelsea Tejada (2020-12-23). Arkansas Politicians' Relentless Push to End Abortion Access, and Humiliate and Shame Abortion Patients. aclu.org This week, the ACLU is back in court working to protect the constitutional right to abortion in Arkansas. In 2017, the state legislature passed four anti-abortion laws to severely restrict access to abortion. If allowed to take effect, these laws would ban the only method of abortion provided in Arkansas after approximately 14 weeks in pregnancy; require that patients' partners or others be notified of their abortion; force the health care center to report teenage patients' abortion to local police where there is no reason to suspect a crime; and force physicians to request a vast number of medical records for…

Steve Watson (2020-12-23). World Tourism Chief: Mandatory Vaccines Will "Kill" Travel Industry. globalresearch.ca The head of one of the world's most prominent tourism lobby groups has warned that if governments embrace "no jab, no fly" polices, it will kill the travel industry. | Gloria Guevara, head of the World Travel and Tourism Council, …

Thomas Frank (2020-12-23). Populists and Experts. indybay.org Privilege versus equality. | "The central issue in the conflict between the government and doctors in Saskatchewan is not health insurance, but democracy," noted the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and Mail after the strike began. "The experts, no matter what their specialty, must always ultimately be subordinate to the laity, or democracy can't work."

posted by Norse (2020-12-23). Homeless Dead in Santa Cruz County 2020. indybay.org This is the list given out at the on-line 2020 Homeless Memorial on December 17, 2017, sponsored by Housing Matters, the Santa Cruz County Homeless Persons Health Project, Wings and the Salvation Army. It was updated for the in-person Memorial held today at the Food Not Bombs meal location at Front and Laurel Sts.

Kuehn BM. (2020-12-22). Shifts in Emergency Mental Health Care for Youth During the Pandemic. jamanetwork.com The proportion of visits to the emergency department (ED) for mental health concerns rose by about one-quarter among children aged 5 to 11 years and by nearly one-third among 12- to 17-year-olds in 2020 compared with 2019.

Tim Libretti (2020-12-22). A pandemic 'Nurse T' tells her COVID-19 story in new published diary. peoplesworld.org Reading A Pandemic Nurse's Diary, particularly against prevalent media representations of healthcare workers' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, brought to mind for me the opening words of the sketch by the U.S. radical writer Jesús Colón, "Something to Read," from his collection A Puerto Rican in New York, in which he describes "a piece of …

Corrigan JM, Clancy CM. (2020-12-22). Assessing Progress in Health Care Quality Through the Lens of COVID-19. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint describes US health system performance during the COVID-19 pandemic using the National Academy of Medicine's 2001 Quality Chasm framework, focusing on system cohesion, organizational capabilities, and environment of care.

news.un (2020-12-22). COVID-19: Support to frontline workers part of UN response in Brazil. news.un.org UN agencies in Brazil are supporting national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including by providing thousands of protective items for health workers, the global organization reported on Tuesday.

Martha Grevatt (2020-12-22). The vaccine: class division and chaos. workers.org To spotlight the need for COVID-19 vaccinations of hospital workers, Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., staged a photo op on Dec. 18. Front line medical residents and fellows demand vaccine access, Dec. 18. A group of medical residents created a media event of their own to protest their . . . |

Anand Naidoo (2020-12-22). The Heat: COVID-19 vaccines. america.cgtn.com Some good news on the fight against COVID-19. Moderna rolls out its vaccine across the United States. But even with that step forward, a new coronavirus variant is causing global concern.

MEE staff (2020-12-22). Covid-19: UAE rolling out Chinese vaccine to all citizens and residents. middleeasteye.net Covid-19: UAE rolling out Chinese vaccine to all citizens and residents | Emirates was one of three Arab countries that began vaccinating last week, along with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain | Tue, 12/22/2020 – 12: 29 | Dubai's ruler and UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum receiving an experimental Covid-19 vaccine, 2 November 2020 (AFP) | The United Arab Emirates said it is rolling out a free C…

Amy Goodman (2020-12-22). Bernie Sanders: Covid relief package is "totally inadequate" for "unprecedented" economic crisis. nationofchange.org "This country faces the worst set of public health and economic crises that we have faced in over a hundred years."

Children's Health Defense (2020-12-22). FDA Investigates Allergic Reactions to Pfizer COVID Vaccine After More Healthcare Workers Hospitalized. globalresearch.ca The FDA is investigating allergic reactions in "multiple states." The agency acknowledged the reactions may have been caused by PEG, a compound in the Pfizer vaccine that CHD previously told the FDA could put millions of people at risk. | ***…

Dorothy Cummings McLean (2020-12-22). Pfizer COVID Jab Warning: No Breastfeeding, Avoid Pregnancy for 2 Months, Unknown Fertility Impacts. globalresearch.ca Government produced safety instructions for a new coronavirus vaccine indicate that it should not be used by pregnant or breast-feeding mothers and children. In addition, they state that it is unknown what effect the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine will have on …

The Canary (2020-12-22). Take it one day at a time to tackle lonely Covid Christmas, charities say. thecanary.co Charities are urging people anticipating a lonely festive period to "take it one day at a time", in an effort to protect their mental health. Last-minute restrictions on social freedoms mean many of us will be facing the Christmas period without loved ones. | London and parts of southern and eastern England were rushed into the new Tier 4 lockdown regime at the weekend. This effectively cancelled most Christmas plans, and imposed measures similar to the previous national lockdowns amid the rise of a new coronavirus mutant strain. | Scotland and Northern Ireland have already announced new lockdowns from Boxing Day…

Barry Kissin (2020-12-22). Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ): The Suppression of a Proven COVID Remedy. globalresearch.ca Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been an FDA approved drug for over 65 years. It has been on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines since the list began in 1977. People have been safely treated with HCQ billions of times …

Maret-Ouda J, Markar SR, Lagergren J. (2020-12-22). Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. jamanetwork.com This narrative review summarizes recent advances in the diagnosis and management of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), including updates on pharmacologic options and surgical approaches.

Gaffney CD, Kashanian JA. (2020-12-22). Patient Information: Peyronie Disease. jamanetwork.com This JAMA Patient Page describes Peyronie disease, a scarring of tissue in the penis that may affect sexual function, and available procedural treatment options.

Dean Baker (2020-12-22). Vaccines, Vaccines, Vaccines — Why Doesn't Everyone Have One or Two? cepr.net David Dayan, at The American Prospect, raises the question of why we didn't do more planning, five, or six months, ago to ensure that when we had safe and effective vaccines, they could quickly be produced in huge quantities. Now we are being told that it won't be until the summer or even fall until …

Fight Back (2020-12-22). USW strikes Constellium at Alabama aluminum plant. fightbacknews.org Muscle Shoals, AL – More than 400 members of United Steel Workers Local 200 are on strike against Constellium over unfair labor practices at its Second Street production facility, formerly owned by Wise Alloys and Reynolds. | The strike began on December 15 after months of negotiations with management failing to bargain to a fair, acceptable agreement, despite extending the previous contract with Constellium for more than a month past its November 1 expiration. | "Constellium insists on a contract that would erase decades of collective bargaining progress on issues like seniority and occupational health and safet…

Butchart LC. (2020-12-22). Cross-Training in Neurology and Psychiatry. jamanetwork.com To the Editor In their Viewpoint on training in neurology and psychiatry, Dr Keshavan and colleagues, argued that the interface between the mind and the brain is neglected in training; the addition of residency training in clinical neuroscience may allow physicians to better address those diseases that cause neurological and psychiatric symptoms. However, by suggesting that all trainees in neurology and psychiatry focus more heavily on the neurosciences, I believe that they went too far.

Leatherman S, Berwick DM. (2020-12-22). Accelerating Global Improvements in Health Care Quality. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint proposes a policy framework for thinking about health care quality in low- and middle-income countries, emphasizing the importance of infrastructure, enforceable quality standards, safety practices, guideline-directed clinical care, and patient and family involvement.

Mary Elizabeth Williams (2020-12-22). Yes, older people like my mom should get the vaccine first: Here's why. salon.com My mother has dementia and a slew of health problems. Giving her the shot first could save your life…

Niko Harting (2020-12-22). "Health is not a Super basic right" indybay.org What has to change with regard to the handling of our fundamental rights from a legal, but also from a political point of view? The federal government's Corona policy is not without alternatives, and it has by no means always been successful, as the unsuccessful "partial lockdown" has shown. Nor is there "science" that agrees on necessary measures; there are also many critical voices among medical experts.

Sam Husseini (2020-12-21). Militarized Pandemic Science: Why is the Pentagon Funding the EcoHealth Alliance? counterpunch.org "Pandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what's responsible for them, but we don't know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way — by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes." This statement was written in the

Zero Hedge (2020-12-21). Thousands of Americans "Negatively Affected" Following COVID-19 Vaccination. globalresearch.ca Thousands of people have been unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a healthcare professional, after getting the new As of …

Peoples Dispatch (2020-12-21). Doctors in Kenya's public hospitals join nurses in strike. peoplesdispatch.org Health workers are demanding payment of salaries, comprehensive health insurance, quality PPEs, increase in risk allowances, and conversion of contract workers into permanent employees with access to pensions…

Center For Biological Diversity (2020-12-21). Donald Trump Administration's Approval of "Radioactive Roads": Lawsuit against EPA. globalresearch.ca Environmental, public health and union groups The EPA has long prohibi…