Health
Homeless Vets Confront A New Enemy: COVID-19
Photo credit: USAF / Senior Airman Jarad A. Denton / cc Under normal circumstances, Jerry Porter would be spending his time helping the veterans he finds in tent camps and run-down housing. But the escalating threat of COVID-19 forces the community activist and...
Trump Throws Grandma From The Train
A few days ago, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went on Fox News to deliver the message, “Let’s get back to work. Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it, and those of us that are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”...
Don't Let Pharma Make Us Pay Twice For COVID-19 Treatments
Photo credit: Tony Webster / flickr / cc Editor's update: After Public Citizen, People's Action and 50 other groups demanded Gilead Pharmaceuticals end its claim of "orphan drug" status for remdesivir, a potential treatment for COVID-19, Gilead has asked the FDA to...
We Must Vote To Protect Public Health
Photo credit: Joint Base San Antonio / cc There’s been a massive failure of leadership in the United States in preparation, containment, treatment and protecting our residents from the cascading effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. As Board members of Physicians for...
OSHA Needs A Prescription for Safety Now
Photo credit: Airman 1st Class Collin Schmidt, U.S. Air Force, cc Kimberly Delbrune-Mitter, a cardiac nurse, cares deeply about her patients and remains steadfast in her desire to help them, even as COVID-19 spreads across America. What plagues her about the new...
We Can’t Stop Covid-19 Without Confronting Right-Wing Nationalism
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / flickr / cc As the crisis around Covid-19, the novel coronavirus that has sparked a global pandemic, has unfolded sending shockwaves through the U.S. economy, President Trump and his allies wasted no time casting blame on China. On...
Coronavirus Needs a Movement to Respond
ACT UP rally, May 21, 1999. Photo credit: NIH History Office There are times in history when sudden events — natural disasters, economic collapses, pandemics, wars, famines — change everything. They change politics, they change economics and they change public opinion...
Feds Must Order Companies To Make Medical Supplies Now
Within two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American auto factories were already converting to make tanks instead of cars. The government needs to treat the Covid-19 pandemic like a war - except the enemy is an invisible virus rather than a foreign...
Coronavirus Prevention That Works For Working People
Photo credit: United Workers / flickr / cc America isn’t ready for coronavirus. In the last 24 hours, millions of school children across the country have been told to stay home for two weeks, or even longer. This is an important public health step to stop the spread,...
The Coronavirus Is A Wake-Up Call For Climate Change
In the short time since the COVID-19 virus was discovered and made public in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China, this new strain of coronavirus - a family of pathogens that includes the common cold, as well as more deadly strains like SARS and MERS - has...
