Covid and the war on medical expertise

An anti-vaccine protester, left, attacks Status Coup journalist Tina Desiree Berg at an anti-vaxxer protest in Los Angeles on 14 August 2021. During the protest, one man screamed, “unmask them all” and clawed at a woman’s face. KPCC reporter Frank Stoltze walked out of the park near City Hall at was screamed at by anti-mask protesters. One man could be seen kicking him. Stoltze later told a police officer he had been assaulted while trying to conduct an interview. Stoltze later tweeted this statement: “Something happened to me today that’s never happened in 30 yrs of reporting. In LA. I was shoved, kicked and my eyeglasses were ripped off of my face by a group of guys at a protest - outside City Hall during an anti-vax Recall @GavinNewsom/Pro Trump rally.” Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

December 31, 2021

Covid and the war on medical expertise

31 December 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – If you’ve been on the internet for a few years, you may have encountered a skirmish with climate denialists or evolution “skeptics”. Frequently, these threads start with a “concern troll” who questions some aspect of science and insinuates corruption or deception on the part of scientists. The accusations are […]

Average annual global wealth growth rate, 1995-2021. Graph: World Inequality Lab

December 12, 2021

Global wealth inequalities are close to early 20th century levels, at the peak of Western imperialism – “The share of income presently captured by the poorest half of the world’s people is about half what it was in 1820”

8 December 2021 (World Inequality Lab) – […] An average adult individual earns PPP €16,700 (PPP USD23,380) per year in 2021, and the average adult owns €72,900 (USD102,600). These averages mask wide disparities both between and within countries. The richest 10% of the global population currently takes 52% of global income, whereas the poorest half […]

Missouri Governor Mike Parson answers media's questions on Tuesday, 13 July 2021, in Kansas City, Missouri. Parson, a Republican, is digging in on his belief that mask mandates don't work despite a health department analysis showing reduced COVID-19 infections and deaths in cities that require face coverings. The Republican governor on Thursday, 2 December 2021, ripped into a report on the analysis by The Missouri Independent. Photo: Shelly Yang / The Kansas City Star / AP

December 5, 2021

Missouri health department found mask mandates work, but Republican governor didn’t make findings public – “It’s devastating to see what the Missouri governor did”

By Rudi Keller, Derek Kravitz, and Smarth Gupta 1 December 2021 (Missouri Independent) – Mask mandates saved lives and prevented COVID-19 infections in Missouri’s biggest cities during the worst part of the delta variant wave, an analysis by the state Department of Health and Senior Services shows. But the analysis, conducted at the request of Gov. […]

Aerial view of deforestation in Labrea in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in September 2021. Photo: Victor Moriyama / Amazônia em Chama / Greenpace Disclosure

November 20, 2021

Amazon deforestation soars to 15-year high – “This is not surprising. The result of pulling apart Brazil’s environmental policy is deforestation.”

By Manuela Andreoni 19 November 2021 RIO DE JANEIRO (The New York Times) – Brazil’s pledge this month to end illegal deforestation in eight years drew much praise from global leaders, but an official report this week cast doubt on that commitment after it showed that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest was at its […]

Map showing the area of the Gulf of Mexico covered by the U.S. oil and gas lease sale on 17 November 2021. Source: US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Graphic: The Guardian

November 18, 2021

“Huge climate bomb”: U.S. auctions off oil and gas drilling leases in Gulf of Mexico after climate talks – “Coming in the aftermath of the climate summit, this is just mind boggling”

By Oliver Milman 17 November 2021 (The Guardian) – Just four days after landmark climate talks in Scotland in which Joe Biden vowed the US will “lead by example” in tackling dangerous global heating, the president’s own administration is providing a jarring contradiction – the largest ever sale of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf […]

Cumulative U.S. Covid deaths by county and political alignment, 1 January 2021 - 3 November 2021. The gap in Covid’s death toll between Republican and Democratic America grew faster in October 2021 than at any previous point during the pandemic. In October 2021, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened. Data: New York Times database / Edison Research. Graphic: The New York Times

November 9, 2021

U.S. Covid deaths get even redder – Gap in Covid death toll between Republican and Democratic America grew faster in October 2021 than at any previous time during the pandemic

By David Leonhardt 8 November 2021 (The New York Times) – As 2020 wound down, there were good reasons to believe that the death toll during the pandemic’s first year might have been worse in red America. There were also good reasons to think it might have been worse in blue America. Conservative areas tend […]

Gap between promised CO2 emissions reductions and the required level to reach the 1.5C Paris target. Photo: The Juice Media

November 7, 2021

Honest Government Ad: Net Zero by 2050 (feat. Greta) – “If you take all our promises and add them together, that puts us on track for ‘Still Very Much Fucked by 2050’”

6 November 2011 (The Juice Media) – Hello, I’m from the Government™ with an update on how we’re handling the climate crisis. We know you’re all counting on us to solve this problem, so humanity can keep enjoying its favourite pastime: continuing to live on this planet. But you see, we’ve realised that we are […]

Map showing the 12 worst countries in the Global Impunity Index 2021. CPJ’s Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free. Editor’s note: This map reflects that CPJ holds Russian authorities responsible for press freedom violations in Ukraine’s Crimea. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea led to de facto control of its media sphere, with Russian authorities jailing independent journalists, closing down media outlets and forcing critical journalists to flee. Graphic: CPJ

November 7, 2021

CPJ’s Global Impunity Index 2021: Killers of journalists still get away with murder – No one held to account in 81 percent of journalist murders during the last 10 years

By Jennifer Dunham 28 October 2021 (CPJ) – Somalia remains the world’s worst country for unsolved killings of journalists, according to CPJ’s annual Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where members of the press are singled out for murder and the perpetrators go free. The index showed little change from a year earlier, with Syria, […]

Total Annual CO2-e emissions in Australia during the Labor and Liberal governments. Photo: The Juice Media

November 6, 2021

Honest Government Ad: COP26 Climate Summit – “Fuck you: we’ll keep digging, burning and exporting fossil fuels, let you to do the hard work, and then take all the credit”

27 October 2021 (The Juice Media) – I’m from the Australien Government with a message for the world as we gather in Glasgow for this crucial climate summit: Fuck you. Over the coming days our Prime Marketer will be there trying to shake a lot of hands and saying a lot of blah blah blah […]

People cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims at a crematorium ground in New Delhi, India, 24 April 2021. Photo: Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS

October 2, 2021

Global COVID-19 deaths hit 5 million as Delta variant sweeps the world – U.S. deaths top 700,000 as anti-vaccine disinformation lures thousands to the grave – “If we had been more effective in our vaccination, we could have prevented 90 percent of the deaths since mid-June”

By Kavya B and Roshan Abraham 1 October 2021 (Reuters) – Worldwide deaths related to COVID-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with unvaccinated people particularly exposed to the virulent Delta strain. The variant has exposed the wide disparities in vaccination rates between rich and poor nations, and the upshot of […]