Patrick's Notebook

By Sonia Shah

The invasive germ and its attendant pharmaceutical interventions became the dominant paradigm in Western medicine. But the magic bullet cures also dovetailed with the logic of industrial capitalism, in which the divisions between us and them, the pure and the contaminated, could be managed through the buying and selling of biomedical commoditiesThe way we talk about contagion matters. It shapes how societies respond—and whether many of us will survive

In the summer of 1832, a mysterious scourge that had come all the way from Asia loomed over the city of New York, having ravaged London, Paris, and Montreal. Medical officials collected data showing that the disease—cholera—was spreading along the newly opened Erie Canal and the Hudson River, heading straight to New York City. But New York’s leaders did not attempt to regulate traffic coming down the waterways.

The demands of commerce were part of the reason; officials knew that shutting down the routes would have disrupted powerful commercial interests. But no less powerful was the belief that they didn’t need to. According to the reigning paradigm, contagions like cholera spread through clouds of smelly gas called miasmas. Cholera, one expert said at the time, was “an atmosphere disease…carried on the wings of the wind.” To protect themselves from these deadly gases, people burned barrels of tar and strung up large pieces of meat on poles, which they hoped would soak up the cholera vapors. In London they attempted to rid their homes of stinky miasmas by dumping human waste into the river, which also served as the city’s drinking water supply.

The stories people told about the contagion in their midst sealed their fate. Outbreaks of cholera plagued London, New York, and many other cities for the better part of a century, killing millions of people. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Maria Copeland, Virginia Campus Correspondent

• A student at Texas A&M reported discovering racist messages left on his car windshield.
• A report from the university police department concluded that the student was responsible for the act.

A student at Texas A&M University who reported that racist notes had been left on his car windshield is responsible for the act, police say.

KBTX-TV reported that in June, Texas A&M senior Isaih Martin alerted the university police when he allegedly discovered handwritten messages reading “All lives matter” and “You don’t belong here,” along with a third listing the N-word, on his vehicle, which he had parked at an apartment complex on the school’s property.
“For them to tell me I don’t belong here, when I have earned my spot like everybody else here, and am working to get a degree like everyone else is, that was just kind of hurtful”

Martin posted a photo of the notes to a Twitter account that has since been made private. According to KBTX, the university responded to his post, asking him to report the incident. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Adam Geller and Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press

Electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which causes COVID-19

What is this enemy?

Seven months after the first patients were hospitalized in China battling an infection doctors had never seen before, the world’s scientists and citizens have reached an unsettling crossroads.

Countless hours of treatment and research, trial and error now make it possible to take much closer measure of the new coronavirus and the lethal disease it has unleashed. But to take advantage of that intelligence, we must confront our persistent vulnerability: The virus leaves no choice.

“It’s like we’re in a battle with something that we can’t see, that we don’t know, and we don’t know where it’s coming from,” said Vivian Castro, a nurse supervisor at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, just north of New York City, which struggled with its caseload this spring.

Castro had treated scores of infected patients before she, too, was hospitalized for the virus in April, then spent two weeks in home quarantine. As soon as she returned to the emergency room for her first shift, she rushed to comfort yet another casualty — a man swallowing the few words he could muster between gasps for air. » Read the rest of this entry «

The federal deficit set a new record in June, hitting a whopping $864 billion as coronavirus relief funds rolled out of the Treasury.

The government data released Monday showed the annual deficit had risen to $2.7 trillion in the first three quarters of the fiscal year, nearly double the largest full-year deficit on record.

Congress has approved more $3 trillion in emergency aid and support and is considering another round of relief before the end of the month, when a slew of benefits are set to expire.

The GOP-controlled Senate is looking at a roughly $1 trillion bill, about one-third the price tag of the package passed by House Democrats in May.

Even without another coronavirus relief bill, the annual deficit is on track to exceed $3.8 trillion, more than double the $1.4 trillion amassed in 2009 during the Great Recession.

by Bryce Covert

Banks will make out with $18 billion in fees for processing small business Paycheck Protection Program relief loans during the pandemic, according to calculations by Amanda Fischer, policy director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive economic think tank.

That’s money taken directly out of the overall $640 billion pot of funding Congress allocated to the program it created as part of the CARES Act. “If we did it through a public institution, there would be [more than] $140 billion left,” Fischer noted, as opposed to the $130 billion still up for grabs. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is releasing an analysis of the government response to the pandemic as soon as this week.

The fees compensate the banks for some of the costs that come with processing loans — call center time to handle business owners’ questions, employee hours spent on processing paperwork for both loan and forgiveness applications — and some of the risk they shoulder if any of the loans they extend end up being fraudulent. But there is no credit risk; if business owners who qualified for PPP loans later default, the Small Business Association takes the hit, not the banks. “Basically it’s free money,” Fischer said. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Rupert Neate

Exclusive: Group of 83 wealthy individuals demands ‘immediate, substantial and permanent’ higher taxes ‘on people like us’
Richard Curtis, left, Abigail Disney and Jerry Greenfield are among the letter’s signatories

A group of 83 of the world’s richest people have called on governments to permanently increase taxes on them and other members of the wealthy elite to help pay for the economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

The super-rich members, including Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield and Disney heir Abigail Disney, called on “our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently”.

“As Covid-19 strikes the world, millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world,” the millionaires said in a letter shared with the Guardian. “No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door.

“But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the years ahead, as our world recovers from this crisis.”

The group warned that the economic impact of coronavirus crisis will “last for decades” and could “push half a billion more people into poverty”. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Grigory Trofimchuk

Despite the statements of the US President D. Trump on the need for an early withdrawal of the US military from Afghanistan, the interest of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the industrial complex in maintaining a military presence in this country is obvious. We are talking about the use of American financial aid flows to Afghanistan for selfish purposes

For almost two decades of the Afghan campaign and the presence of the NATO and US contingent, Washington formally allocated large-scale funds not only for security assistance, but also for the civil reconstruction and development of this country.

Since 2001, approximately $130 billion was sent to Afghanistan. However, not all the money reached the country in need.

A significant part of the “aid” remained in the United States in the form of kickbacks, as evidenced, in particular, by the numerous reports of the US Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, J.Sopko. This is also confirmed by an article about US corruption in Afghanistan on the Turkish “Aydinlik”. » Read the rest of this entry «