epidemic – Page 25 – Desdemona Despair

Indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami delivers a 30-page report at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, 3 March 2020, in which he notes that indigenous peoples isolated in the Amazon are at serious risk of genocide if they continue to "explode deforestation on their land." Photo: Marcelo Seixas / Funai

May 30, 2020

Deforestation drives cases of Covid-19 among indigenous peoples – “There is no decreased effect of deforestation with coronavirus, quite the contrary”

By Mark Candido 25 May 2020 São Paulo (ECOA) – Indigenous lands with the largest deforested areas in the country are also among the most vulnerable to the advance of the new coronavirus. According to experts, invaders may have taken the city’s virus toward the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol lands in Roraima. In […]

Map showing change in global daily fossil CO2 emissions, 1 January 2020 - 20 May 2020 Video: Le Quéré, et al., 2020 / Nature Climate Change

May 23, 2020

COVID-19 crisis causes 17 percent drop in global carbon emissions – “The drop in emissions is substantial but illustrates the challenge of reaching our Paris climate commitments”

19 May 2020 (UEA) – The COVID-19 global lockdown has had an “extreme” effect on daily carbon emissions, but it is unlikely to last – according to a new analysis by an international team of scientists. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that daily emissions decreased by 17% – or 17 […]

Enhanced infrared image of Tropical Cyclone Amphan nearing landfall in far eastern India at 0200Z (7:30 am EDT) Wednesday, 20 May 2020. Graphic: CIMSS / SSEC / UW-Madison

May 21, 2020

Kolkata devastated as Cyclone Amphan kills scores in India and Bangladesh – “We are facing three crises: the coronavirus, the thousands of migrants who are returning home, and now the cyclone”

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shaikh Azizur Rahman 21 May 2020 KOLKATA (The Guardian) – The Indian city of Kolkata has been left devastated by the worst cyclone it has seen in 100 years, which swept through India and Bangladesh on Wednesday and killed at least 84 people. Kolkata, home to almost 15 million people, bore […]

An aerial view of floodwaters flowing from the Tittabawassee River into the lower part of downtown Midland on 20 May 2020 in Midland, Michigan. Thousands of residents have been ordered to evacuate after two dams in Sanford and Edenville collapsed causing water from the Tittabawassee River to flood nearby communities. Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images

May 21, 2020

Two Michigan dams breached, thousands evacuated amid “devastating” record flooding – “It’s hard to believe that we’re in the midst of a 100-year crisis – a global pandemic – and a flooding event that looks to be the worst in 500 years”

By Elisha Fieldstadt and Doha Madani21 May 2020 (NBC News) – About 11,000 people in central Michigan were told to evacuate their homes after rapidly rising water overwhelmed dams, creating what the National Weather Service called a “life-threatening situation.” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the destruction in Midland County caused by the failures of the Edenville […]

Microwave satellite image of Cyclone Amphan's inner core on 19 May 2020, showing the exposed eyewall on the storm's eastern side. This is indicative of a weaker storm. Graphic: U-Wisconsin / CIMSS

May 19, 2020

Cyclone Amphan, most powerful storm on record in Bay of Bengal, poses extreme storm surge danger for eastern India, Bangladesh – Evacuations slowed by virus

By Andrew Freedman and Joanna Slater 19 May 2020 (The Washington Post) – Category 3 Tropical Cyclone Amphan is barreling northward toward the mouth of the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday and is forecast to make landfall in West Bengal, India, just south of Kolkata, on Wednesday. The storm is prompting officials in the states […]

An indigenous woman, wearing a face mask that reads “Indigenous lives matter”, attends the funeral of Chief Messias Kokama, 53, from the Parque das Tribos (Tribes Park), who passed away due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Parque das Tribos in Manaus, Brazil, 14 May 2020. Photo: Bruno Kelly / REUTERS

May 18, 2020

Coronavirus pandemic reaches dozens of indigenous groups in Brazil, felling Chief Messias Kokama – Hospitals on brink of collapse as Bolsonaro does pushups with supporters

By Rob Picheta, Vasco Cotovio, and Shasta Darlington 18 May 2020 (CNN) – The health care system in Brazil’s largest city is wavering on the brink of collapse and coronavirus deaths throughout the South American nation are soaring — but President Jair Bolsonaro nonetheless reveled in crowds of supporters on Sunday, joining yet another anti-lockdown […]

Monthly job gains or losses in the U.S., from 1939 to 30 April 2020. Data: U.S. Labor Department. Graphic: The Washington Post

May 8, 2020

U.S. unemployment rate soars to 14.7 percent, the worst since the Great Depression – “This is a catastrophe. When things go over a cliff, they usually they don’t recover quickly.”

By Heather Long 8 May 2020 (The Washington Post) – The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to fight the deadly coronavirus. The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people lost their jobs last […]

Trump, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Kushner as Immortan Joe and henchmen from “Mad Max: Fury Road”. “But nowhere has our policy been more evident than backward countries and failed states. Like the U.S. Here, as thousands of people died and got buried in mass graves, Il Duce left you to fight each other over medical equipment by entrusting it to his little shit-goblin-in-law.” Photo: The Juice Media

May 1, 2020

Honest Government Ad: Pandemic Update – “Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not.”

30 April 2020 (The Juice Media) – The Government has made an ad about its response to the pandemic, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not. The Machine said there was no profit in preventing future crises. So instead, […]

Aerial view of coffins being buried at an area where new graves have been dug at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, in April 2020. On 26 April 2020, 140 bodies of people killed by COVID-19 were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP / Getty Images

April 30, 2020

Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon – “They were just dumped there like dogs. What are our lives worth now? Nothing.”

By Tom Phillips and Fabiano Maisonnave 30 April 2020 MANAUS (The Guardian) – Day and night, the dead are delivered into the tawny Amazonian earth – the latest victims of a devastating pandemic now reaching deep into the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. On Sunday 140 bodies were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of […]

Aerial view of the Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Photo: NIH

April 28, 2020

Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties

By Sarah Owermohle 27 April 2020 (Politico) – The Trump administration abruptly cut off funding for a project studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to people after reports linked the work to a lab in Wuhan, China, at the center of conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins. The National Institutes of Health on Friday […]