WHO
Vaccine Apartheid: If One Person Is Unprotected, We Are All Unprotected
“I’ve personally received more doses of a Covid-19 vaccine than 130 countries,” Dr. Craig Spencer writes, about the two vaccine shots he recently got as an emergency room doctor. In 2014, he contracted ebola while combating that epidemic in Guinea, Africa. Dr. Spencer knows the value of public health protocols,… »
Ebola strikes West Africa again: key questions and lessons from the past
News of a new outbreak of Ebola in Guinea is indeed distressing. The last in West Africa occurred between 2014 and 2015 and affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It was the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak, which began in Guinea and in which more than 11,300 people died. »
IMF and Big Business for Universal Vaccination: Better Red than Dead
The me-first policy on vaccine sharing will bring losses of $203 billion to $5 trillion to rich countries, while the returns are the highest if they support global universal vaccination. Prabir Purkayastha The world seems to have turned topsy turvy when the undisputed voices of global… »
WHO team leaves Wuhan quarantine to start COVID probe
World Health Organization experts have begun their fact-finding mission on the origins of the global coronavirus pandemic. But it is not yet clear where they will be allowed to go and who they will get to talk to. A World Health Organization (WHO) team emerged Thursday from a Wuhan hotel used… »
Chomsky and Prashad: Three Major Threats to Life on Earth That We Must Address in 2021
By Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad Large parts of the world—outside of China and a few other countries—face a runaway virus, which has not been stopped because of criminal incompetence by governments. That these governments in wealthy countries cynically set aside the basic scientific protocols released by the World… »
WHO Chief Says ‘We Must Ensure That All People at Risk Everywhere—Not Just in Countries Who Can Afford Vaccines—Are Immunized’
His comments came one year into the public health crisis and as the U.K. became the first country to approve a vaccine from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford that is cheaper and easier to distribute. By Jessica Corbett, One year after the international community first recognized the Covid-19 crisis—which… »
Australia-China Spat: It’s More Than Just Trade
Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne A one-sided trade war has been gathering momentum between China and Australia, ever since Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an “independent” international investigation of the origins of Covid-19, which infuriated China. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner with two-way trade worth A$ 235 in… »
There Is Enough Food, yet 2 Billion Have Difficulty Accessing It
By Santo D. Banerjee “Hunger is an outrage in a world of plenty,” the UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the governing body of the Organization’s food agency, highlighting the important role of food security in cementing peace. “An empty stomach is a gaping hole in the heart of a society. A… »
The ‘Extremely Active’ 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season Officially Ended, with a ‘Record-Breaking’ 30 Named Tropical Storms…
The extremely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on 30 November with a record-breaking 30 named tropical storms, including 13 hurricanes and six major hurricanes. There were 12 landfalling storms in the continental United States. This is the most storms on record, surpassing the 28 from 2005, and the… »
“Herd Immunity” is Unethical, says WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against the idea of allowing Covid-19 to simply spread through society, calling this “herd immunity” approach to fighting the pandemic “unethical.” “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding an outbreak, let alone a… »