Ido Efrati has an important article about “long haul covid” in young children in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Please, don’t listen to the anti-vaxers and anti-mask folks who continue to spread dangerous misinformation about young children being immune, or only susceptible to a very mild form of covid-19.
At the “long COVID” clinic at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, about 150 children are being treated, but several hundred more are on a waiting list. “Demand is high and the wait is more than half a year, because we monitor and test everything for each patient,” says Dr. Liat Ashkenazi-Hoffnung, an infectious-disease specialist.
The clinic began operating in November, several months after similar clinics were opened for adults. The symptoms the doctors see are varied, from shortness of breath (the most common complaint), muscle pain, headaches, fatigue, disordered sleep, chest pain, hair loss, and digestive disorders, to the loss of taste and smell, weight loss, difficulty concentrating, memory loss and the exacerbation of tics in children who suffered from them previously. About 60 percent report reduced daily functioning because of the symptoms.
“What’s interesting, is that in some of the children, it really appears as a direct continuation of severe illness but in very many of the children, there is a severe illness, followed by a lull of several months and only then do the symptoms of long COVID begin,” says Ashkenazi-Hoffnung.
According to her, the persistence of the symptoms varies. “There are children for whom it takes half a year or more. For example, we had a boy here who was a competitive swimmer and came down with long COVID and was very anxious and in pain. After half a year he went back to swimming and even broke a personal record.”
However, she also says that there are “a few children here who, a year after the illness, haven’t recovered, and they have symptoms that are affecting their day-to-day functioning. There are cases in which it lasts for more than a year.”
. . . Another phenomenon, which was first reported in April of 2020 is multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, of which about 100 cases have been reported in Israel. The syndrome usually appears eight to ten weeks after the illness, even among children who had light cases. It starts out as stomach aches, a rash and a fever and can develop into life-threatening damage to the heart. It requires hospitalization, and in most cases cardiac damage remains after recovery. . .
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Dave Ramsey has spent the past three decades trying to build what he calls the best place to work in America.
From his headquarters south of Nashville, the evangelical Christian personal finance guru runs a media and live events empire that includes a popular national talk radio show. Tickets to workshops on topics such as “EntreLeadership” run from $3,000 to $10,000.
Thousands of churches around the country, meanwhile, host Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University,” a 9-week program built around his principles for handling money “God’s way.”
. . . Ramsey’s intolerance for dissent has created what former employees call a cultlike environment, where leaders proclaim their love for staff and then fire people at a moment’s notice. . .
At a staff meeting in July, Ramsey railed at his staff after an employee sued Ramsey Solutions for firing her for having premarital sex, which is against company policy, and said he would pay the price to protect what he had built out of love for his employees.
“I am sick of dealing with all this stuff,” Ramsey bellowed, according to a recording obtained by Religion News Service. “I’m so tired of being falsely accused of being a jerk when all I’m doing is trying to help people stay in line.”
. . . Ramsey’s return to in-person work frustrated Heather Fulk. She has asthma, which puts her at higher risk if infected with COVID-19. After learning employees were being called back to headquarters, she made what she thought was an innocuous comment in a private Facebook post.
“Jon’s company wants to bring all 900 employees back asap when a majority can do their work from home,” she wrote on April 20. “I do *not* understand how people don’t see we are setting ourselves up for a huge second wave. Ugh, people make me so angry.”
Before long, Jon got a call from his supervisor who said a co-worker had reported Heather’s comment. They had a screenshot of the post, sent by the co-worker’s spouse.
A few weeks later, Jon was fired. In his exit interview, Armando Lopez, head of human resources at Ramsey, confirmed that the cause was his wife’s social media comment, according to a recording of the meeting.
Once again, Republicans (and many Democrats) are running around like Chicken Little warning about the economic sky collapsing now that Congress has passed the recent covid relief bill.
It is a tired, predictable, knee-jerk, conservative reaction to any government spending that aims to help the average American.
Remember that none of these folks expressed similar concerns about the folly of “deficit spending” when president Trump’s retrograde tax plan added between $1 to $2 trillion to the national debt.
None of these people complained about the CARES Act last March when a vast portion of that relief money, intended for the unemployed and small business owners, ended up lining the pockets of the richest Americans.
The litany of deficit-hawk hypocrisy could go on and on…
[For an excellent analysis of this misguided concern written by a well-regarded economist, I recommend reading the recent book by professor Stephanie Kelton called The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy (PublicAffairs, 2021)].
At the DCReport, Bruce Bartlett has a good article exposing not only the
Bruce Bartlett
hypocrisy of this deficit fear mongering but also how very wrong the warnings have always been.
Predictably, conservatives are once again warning about inflation. This happens every time a Democrat takes office—even if he merely continues the identical policies of his Republican predecessor.
Unfortunately, these concerns, which always receive wide media attention, are costly both politically and economically.
Bill Clinton was forced to adopt a deficit reduction plan in 1993 that led to the defeat of many Democrats in 1994 and the installation of Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House.
Barack Obama was forced to scale back his stimulus plan in 2009 and was browbeaten into deficit reduction in 2011. That kept the economy running in slow gear throughout Obama’s presidency paving the way for Donald Trump.
Now that Joe Biden has gotten his stimulus, the inflation-mongers are just getting started again. . .
. . . It’s been an article of faith among conservatives since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008 that inflation is right around the corner.
This conviction follows from a core conservative belief that inflation invariably results from increases in the money supply. As Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist put it a half-century ago in an oft-quoted line: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
Thus, when the Federal Reserve vastly expanded the money supply in late 2008, conservatives anticipated a sharp rise in inflation. It didn’t happen. . .
. . . Yet, year after year, there was no inflation. In 2009 we saw prices fall slightly, the opposite of these predictions and warnings. The Federal Reserve couldn’t even hit its own target of 2% inflation. The average inflation rate for 2009 through 2020 was less than 1.3% annually.
That did nothing to dislodge right-wing orthodoxy, however. Conservatives continue to say that inflation was right around the corner. No amount of empirical data could shake their deeply held belief. . .
The wealthy Republican is evicting tenants despite the eviction moratorium passed by Congress. Once again, rich property owners do as they wish while others suffer.
Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above.
Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., drew ire for voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, as well as for refusing to wear a mask to keep COVID-19 from spreading when lawmakers locked down during the U.S. Capitol insurrection. His nonchalance about the coronavirus did not end there: Eviction notices have been filed against residents of two rental properties associated with Mullin during the pandemic.
The eviction filings come as coronavirus case counts have steadily increased in Oklahoma and the United States. So far, Oklahoma has seen 3,323 deaths from the coronavirus. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a national moratorium against evictions as a public health measure to prevent the spread of COVID. . .
. . . Mullin’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The CDC took action to curb evictions by issuing an eviction moratorium, which took effect on September 4. But the moratorium has been criticized as weakly enforced and has allowed evictions to continuedespite the pandemic. The moratorium was set to expire on December 31, before Congress took action and extended the moratorium until January 31. President Joe Biden then extended the moratorium until March 31.
Professor Juan Cole, who manages one of my favorite news blogs, Informed Comment, has written an article exposing apartheid Israel’s refusal to
Professor Juan Cole
distribute the covid vaccines to Palestinians in Israel or the Occupied Territories.
Yes, as I demonstrate in my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism, Israel is an ethnocratic state that prioritizes Jewish lives above all others.
Several of my friends in the West Bank have already contracted covid. Thankfully, none of
Journalist Robert Scheer
them have died, and all seem to have recovered fully.
Due to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and its perennial lack of funds (largely due to American and Israeli economic restrictions), the rate of infection is much higher than officially reported.
People are afraid to tell their bosses and supervisors when they do become sick, because they fear losing their jobs and being ostracized.
Cole’s article can be found at Robert Scheer’s new journalism site, Scheerpost.
The piece is entitled, “Israel’s Latest War Crime: Medical Apartheid.”
I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire piece here:
Some ten percent of Israelis have already been given the coronavirus shot, showing what an efficient government can do for its citizens with the right medical and administrative infrastructure. The Trump administration has not been able to ramp up the actual shots in arms, despite shipping millions of doses of vaccine to states and localities.
There’s just one problem with Israel’s success. It is only within Israel proper.
Israeli medical teams in Israel welcome the vaccine’s arrival…for them
Israel militarily occupies the Palestinian West Bank and keeps the little Palestinian Gaza Strip under blockade. In international law, Israel is responsible for the health and well-being of the people it militarily occupies. Not vaccinating them against a pandemic is a war crime.
You know how many shots Israeli physicians have given the Palestinians under their rule? None.
This, even though Israeli squatters who have stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank are being given the shot.
There has been a dangerous spike in cases and deaths during the past two months in the Palestinian Territories.
These statistics are almost certainly missing many cases and deaths, since Palestinians living under the Israeli boot have lost tens of billions of dollars in potential income and their medical infrastructure is ramshackle. There is a severe shortage, for instance, of intensive care units. On top of all that, the Trump administration has cruelly and ruthlessly slashed aid to the Palestinians and has knee-capped the UN Relief and Works Agency that used to help out Palestinian refugees. These are families ethnically cleansed by the Israelis in 1948 and 1967.
As far as the health ministry can tell, 13% of the Palestinian population tests positive for the virus and about 1% of those stricken end up dying. That would be 650,000 people stricken, of whom 6,500 will die. They wouldn’t die at that rate if they were getting the vaccine.
I like Glenn because he is an independent thinker. He does not follow the current of established media but offers “out of step” insights and analysis that we should all take seriously.
I have excerpted the article below. It is a bit long, but well worth your time:
Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.
In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.
But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator. . .
. . . The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.
The Trump administration was by no means free of authoritarianism: his Justice Department prosecuted journalists’ sources; his White House often refused basic transparency; War on Terror and immigration detentions continued without due process. But that is largely because, as I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late 2016, the U.S. Government itself is authoritarian after decades of bipartisan expansion of executive powers justified by a posture of endless war. With rare exception, the lawless and power-abusing acts over the last four years were ones that inhere in the U.S. Government and long preceded Trump, not ones invented by him. To the extent Trump was an authoritarian, he was one in the way that all U.S. presidents have been since the War on Terror began and, more accurately, since the start of the Cold War and advent of the permanent national security state.
The single most revealing episode exposing this narrative fraud was when journalists and political careerists, including former Obama aides, erupted in outrage on social media upon seeing a photo of immigrant children in cages at the border — only to discover that the photo was not from a Trump concentration camp but an Obama-era detention facility (they were unaccompanied children, not ones separated from their families, but “kids in cages” are “kids in cages” from a moral perspective). And tellingly, the single most actually authoritarian Trump-era event is one that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media: namely, the decision to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws (but that, too, is an extension of the unprecedented war on journalism unleashed by the Obama DOJ). . .
. . .Whether the U.S. was a democracy in any meaningful sense prior to Trump had been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. A much-discussed 2014 study concluded that economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of such a small number of U.S. corporate giants and mega-billionaires, and that this concentration in economic power has ushered in virtually unchallengeable political power in their hands and virtually none in anyone else’s, that the U.S. more resembles oligarchy than anything else:
The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
The real political powers in America today.
. . . But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.
. . . The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story:
“The combined wealth of the world’s super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (€8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017.”
. . . Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants which are thriving, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S. A Brookings Institution study this week — entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” — found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers.”
. . . These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.
. . . The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism. They view those who oppose them and reject their pieties not as adversaries to be engaged but as enemies, domestic terrorists, bigots, extremists and violence-inciters to be fired, censored, and silenced. And they have on their side — beyond the bulk of the corporate media, and the intelligence community, and Wall Street — an unprecedentedly powerful consortium of tech monopolies willing and able to exert greater control over a population that has rarely, if ever, been so divided, drained, deprived and anemic.
All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very wrong about the real source of that danger.
I am not a virologist so I will not pretend to know more than I do (which is very little) about the new covid19 vaccines now becoming available to the public.
What the average person can know is that these will be the first RNA-based vaccines ever administered to the public. Rather than explain what that means, I will refer you to a few good articles explaining the differences between older vaccines (e.g. polio and small pox) and the newer, genetically manufactured vaccines built upon DNA and RNA (see here, here, and here).
Apparently, the new covid19 vaccines will not prevent you from becoming infected with the covid19 virus. But they will prevent you from developing the physical symptoms that typically arise after infection.
In other words, the vaccine will prevent you from getting sick, but it will not prevent you from catching the virus, being infected by the virus, and carrying the covid19 virus in your body.
This, of course, raises a very important question: will the hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, of people being vaccinated all become asymptomatic carriers of the covid19 virus?
Will a vaccinated person be able to infect an unvaccinated person, causing them to become sick (and perhaps die)?
I posited my questions to a friend the other day whose son is a doctor in a busy Philadelphia hospital. He called his son on the phone and talked with him about my concerns.
Simply put, his answer to my question was: THAT is THE BIG unanswered question about this vaccine.
And no one knows the answer. Because this has never been done before.
“It’s all one enormous experiment,” says Dr. Peter Doherty, a Nobel Laureate and professor of immunology at Melbourne University.
Indeed it is.
I have not yet decided what I will do. What are your plans?
Dr. Francis Collins is a devout Christian who has never been hesitant in talking publicly about his faith. Thoughtful, responsible churchgoers ought
FILE – In this May 7, 2020 file photo, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins speaks during a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, file)
to pay attention to his advise.
NPR has posted an article by Tom Gjelten accompanied by a 4 minute video describing Collins’ advice to the country.
The fact is that both rates of infection and death from covid19 are MUCH higherthan they were earlier in the year when the initial lockdown orders were issued.
This past Wednesday, more than 3,500 Americans died of covid….in a single day. The virus is running rampant in large part because people are ignoring medical advice and listening to right-wing disinformation campaigns instead.
Why are any churches continuing to hold on sight congregational services right now at a time when the virus is infecting and killing more people than ever before?
All those who continue to insist that the new infection rate is itself proof that lock downs and isolation don’t work are conveniently ignoring the fact many locations across the country have never abided by the lock down measures or mask wearing from the beginning.
Below is an excerpt of the NPR article, or you can read the entire story here.
With COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths at record levels, a top public health official called on religious leaders to keep their worship spaces closed, despite rising protests from some church leaders.
“The virus is having a wonderful time right now, taking advantage of circumstances where people have let their guard go down,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “Churches gathering in person is a source of considerable concern and has certainly been an instance where super spreading has happened and could happen again.”
Collins, himself a regular churchgoer who speaks often about his Christian faith, discussed measures that church leaders can take to protect their congregations in a Zoom conversation on Thursday with Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Most churches really ought to be advised to go to remote services, if they’re not already doing so,” Collins said.
One of my daughters lived in Portland, OR for many years.
She keeps in touch with many of her friends in the area, a good number of whom have been out in the streets protesting. Some of them have been arrested. All of them tell the same story.
You can read much of this for yourself on Facebook. Just check out the hashtags #WallOfMoms, #WallOfVets, #WallOfDads.
The story goes like this:
Mixed groups of demonstrators have been in the streets regularly ever since George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
The demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful. When unknown agitators destroyed property, group leaders told them to stop and to go away. They were damaging the cause.
Then Federal troops appeared on the scene and began arresting people for no apparent reason, putting them into unmarked vehicles, and locking them up without charges. Some have been kept jailed in undisclosed locations for several days, while family and friends wondered where they were.
These unconstitutional actions by the Feds energized more citizens to march in the streets. Yes, a small group of agitators ramped up their property destruction. But both black and white organizers regularly tried to stop their activities, and were typically unsuccessful.
It is not surprising that this small minority of agitators garner most of the headlines and nearly all of the time on the TV networks, making it look as if Portland is in chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Feds have escalated the confrontations unnecessarily, with their rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, unnecessary aggression and violence against protesters.
It is totally unnecessary.
This is when the Wall of Moms was created, intentionally putting themselves between the demonstrators and the Feds. At this point, a
This protester-mom, was standing, linking arms with fellow demonstrators, when a Federal agent shot her in the face with a rubber bullet
portion of the protests became focused around the Federal courthouse, because that was were the Federal agents were concentrated.
Now the focus of the demonstrations became bifurcated.
The movement’s leaders worked to maintain their focus on Black Lives Matter and police brutality. You don’t have to watch many Facebook videos and pictures to see and hear large crowds chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
But, with the unsolicited intervention of Federal agents, another section of the movement gave their attention to demonstrating against the “police state” activities of Trump’s anti-demonstration forces. The increase in violence is due entirely to the brutal behavior of these Federal marshals and Border Patrol agents.
Yes, a minority of people get out of hand. After the Feds erected a fence in front of the courthouse, a few people focused their anger there and began to build fires under the fence. Again, the organizers consistently tried to stop this from happening.
But, get real! Have you seen the fires? They hardly pose a real threat to anyone, especially to the courthouse!
As the Feds continued to attack both the BLM demonstrators and the Wall of
The bruises on this mom’s body were made by the many rubber bullets fired at her by Federal “police.” Obviously, the Feds don’t hesitate to shoot a woman at close range when her back is turned
Moms, two additional sectors of society began spontaneously to appear: military veterans and dads.
Many veterans, understandably upset at what they were seeing, began to show up in support of the protesters and the moms. A number of videos show how brutally they too have been treated by the Federal agents, beaten with clubs for simply trying to speak to the officers.
Then dads appeared with leaf blowers to fend off the clouds of tear gas being fired by the Feds at unarmed civilians.
Naturally, conservative outlets such as Fox hateall anti-establishment movements, especially when they call for racial justice and condemn police violence.
By definition, conservatives support the establishment.
That is what conservatism means. It’s who they are. Their reporting is pure propaganda, tailored to anger their like-minded viewers, and to condemn the protesters.
Also, remember the old journalistic motto: “if it bleeds it leads.” All the news networks succumb to this principle. They would rather show us the few violent clashes than the masses protesting peacefully. It’s the way news/journalism has always worked in this country.
So, if you want to get angry, then get angry at our government. Get angry at “law enforcement” run amuck, attacking fellow citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.
Get angry at our president for intentionally making a difficult situation worse, as he manipulates civil unrest for his own personal, political advantage.
Trump is using the predictable FASCIST strategy of generating violence so that he can run on a “law and order” platform in November. You can count on it. This is how he hopes to win reelection.
Over at the Medium website, Francis Taylor details the many ways that corona virus has exposed the deepening chasm separating the rich from everyone else in America.
His article is “COVID 19 Has Exposed the Class Divide.” Below is an excerpt.
Throughout the pandemic, American billionaires have continued to make fabulous profits. As Tommy Beer of Forbes reports, their total net worth has increased by more than $400 billion since March 18. While the poorest struggle simply to survive, the rich see their fortunes grow. And some have even show their willingness to throw workers into the thresher of capitalism. Both Tilman Fertitta and Lloyd Blankfein have called for the economy to re-open, knowing full well that they will not be exposed to the worst of the risks.
But special mention has to go to Jeff Bezos and his Amazon empire. The massive conglomerate, having provided an extra $2 an hour for the warehouse workers braving a pandemic, now plans to end the increase by the close of May.
It should be noted that the additional wage has been in place for less than three months.
This terminated increase follows Amazon’s decision to scrap unlimited unpaid leave for workers who fear the Coronavirus and its dismissal of Christian Smalls after he spearheaded a walkout at their Staten Island Warehouse over safety concerns. Although the company maintains that Smalls and other protesting workers were fired for violating internal policies, Tim Bray, a former vice president at Amazon Web Services, avers that past workers have been “turfed” for whistleblowing. He also quit the company earlier this May, citing these punitive measures as the main reason.
It would seem then that Amazon is sending a clear message to its workers: the lot of you are interchangeable cogs, and if you squeak with acrimony you can always be replaced.
From his headquarters south of Nashville, the evangelical Christian personal finance guru runs a media and live events empire that includes a popular national talk radio show. Tickets to workshops on topics such as “EntreLeadership” run from $3,000 to $10,000.
[For an excellent analysis of this misguided concern written by a well-regarded economist, I recommend reading the recent book by professor Stephanie Kelton called The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy (PublicAffairs, 2021)].
others suffer.
What the average person can know is that these will be the first RNA-based vaccines ever administered to the public. Rather than explain what that means, I will refer you to a few good articles explaining the differences between older vaccines (e.g. polio and small pox) and the newer, genetically manufactured vaccines built upon DNA and RNA (see 
busy Philadelphia hospital. He called his son on the phone and talked with him about my concerns.
George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
advantage.