Tag: Healthcare
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Health Coalition Demands that Ontario Government Stop Privatizing Healthcare
The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) expressed deep concern about the Doug Ford government’s privatization of healthcare services, the lack of a coherent plan for a second-wave of COVID-19, and cuts and layoffs at public hospitals while the government shifts funding to private companies for COVID-19 related services. On September 22, Premier Ford said, “I think … Keep reading »
What Happened to PPE Production in Canada?
Joint Statement on Domestic Production of N95 Respirators On August 21 the federal and Ontario governments announced major subsidies for 3M Canada to expand its Brockville plant, and starting in early 2021, to produce 50 million N95 respirators each year for five years. This is an important step toward addressing the existing shortage of this much … Keep reading »
The California Disaster: What is the Link Between Wildfires and the Coronavirus?
I live in the San Francisco-Bay Area outside of Berkeley. Following the COVID-19 outbreak we went into shelter-in-place in March and officially never left after a second wave in early summer perpetuated school closures and other preventive measures. Following another dry winter and an unprecedented heatwave, Northern California is currently experiencing a series of massive … Keep reading »
Transit Workers Are Still Dying – With No End in Sight
Though they’ve kept working in some of the most dangerous jobs, they’re now facing the prospect of furloughs and layoffs if there’s no more federal funding for transit. Keep reading »
Pension Fund Capitalism and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Revera
Of the many crises provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada, the dire situation in long-term care facilities and retirement housing may be the most widely and urgently recognized. Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose own party engineered the significant shift to more privatized and ‘marketized’ long-term care (LTC) provision in the 1990s, recently declared … Keep reading »
Shocking but Not Surprising: COVID and Class
A recent Toronto Star article, by Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Jennifer Yang, “More than 180 workers at this Toronto bakery got COVID-19,” and reproduced below, reveals a large COVID outbreak at FGF Brands, a major industrial bakery in Toronto, where 184 workers tested positive and one died. That outbreak began in mid-April, but we are only … Keep reading »
What Would the NHS Look Like If It Took Health Promotion Seriously?
On Sunday, July 5, 2020, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, wished it a happy 72nd birthday. Spitfires flew over in celebration, and buildings were lit up in blue as people poured out into the streets at 5 p.m. to clap in appreciation of Britain’s favorite institution. We’re talking, of course, about the National Health … Keep reading »
Trump’s Withdrawal From WHO: A Cover-Up for His Abject Failure on COVID-19
Gutting the WHO, the only instrument of global cooperation during a pandemic, is a road to disaster. Keep reading »
The Collapse of Healthcare in Peru
On 11 March 2020, Peru declared a 90-day national sanitary emergency. Subsequently, the country announced a total lockdown beginning 16 March, 2020. Despite implementing one of the earliest and strictest COVID-19 containment lockdowns in Latin America, Peru has gotten trapped in the turmoil of rising COVID-19 cases. With more than 420,000 Coronavirus cases, Peru has … Keep reading »
Viral Ideas of the Pandemic Moment
“The meanings that COVID-19 takes on in different contexts is a result of the different ways it is being mediated – public health officials, news media, Hollywood, and the new spaces of social media. These representations are not neutral. All have consequences for what it means to live in the time of COVID-19. They influence … Watch video »
Pandemic Worsens, Resistance Will Follow
World leaders like Trump and Johnson trying to get back to business as usual while the virus continues to spread are deliberately sacrificing public health. Keep reading »
The Fortress World: After the Pandemic, Which Future?
We were already on the way to variations of Fortress World before COVID-19: right-wing, authoritarian/fascist regimes have been able to capture political power riding on the immiseration, anxieties, and frustration resulting from global capitalism and corporate globalization, while progressive political-societal forces have been unable to unite resistance and create spaces for alternative systems to flourish. … Keep reading »