By Peoples Health Dispatch / Peoples Dispatch
The close of 2023 marked a grim milestone: over 7 million people had lost their lives to COVID-19 by then. Though the cases and deaths were lower than during the peak years of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) cautioned against complacency.
In December 2023, 10,000 people died from COVID-19, with over half in the United States. Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist with WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, has been warning about not underestimating COVID-19 before the year ended. While the pandemic might seem to be in the past, there are still serious risks.
“We need people to test, to get treated, to enter into clinical care pathways to make sure they have access to antivirals to prevent severe disease and notably to get vaccinated if you are in a high-risk group,” Van Kerkhove said during WHO’s beginning-of-the-year press conference.
Despite the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant causing fresh infections, the WHO urges vaccination, especially for high-risk groups like older people, pregnant women, and those with underlying conditions. Michael Ryan, WHO’s Health Emergencies Executive Director, highlighted, “The vaccines may not stop you from being infected, but they significantly reduce your chance of being hospitalized or dying.”
Unfortunately, immunization programs for both COVID-19 and influenza seem to have hit a wall. Even in countries that struggled to obtain enough vaccine doses due to hoarding and high prices in the past, vaccines are expiring. Uganda — where less than 45% of the population had received at least one vaccine dose by November 2023 — must discard millions of doses obtained through a World Bank loan.
To prevent such wastage, governments and health authorities play a crucial role. “We continue to call on governments to maintain surveillance and sequencing, and to ensure access to affordable and reliable tests, treatments and vaccines for their populations,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Despite COVID-19 seemingly becoming a part of daily life, not unlike influenza, lessons from the pandemic point to the importance of effective government responses and international mechanisms for sharing information and medical materials. In that regard, the discussions on the Pandemic Treaty and the upcoming World Health Assembly in May this year may signify a different benchmark than the one reached at the end of 2023 — although hopes for that remain low.
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Portland State University Pauses Ties With Boeing as Campus Protests Spread
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams
The president of Portland State University announced Friday that the school would suspend its connections to the military contractor Boeing as campus protests against U.S. colleges’ complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza intensified.
In an email to students and faculty, PSU president Ann Cudd wrote that while the university has no investments in Boeing, it “accepts philanthropic gifts from the company.”
“In consideration of the strong feelings that have been expressed, PSU will pause seeking or accepting any further gifts or grants from the Boeing Company until we have had a chance to engage in this debate and come to conclusions about a reasonable course of action,” Cudd wrote.
The announcement came amid an upsurge of campus protests nationwide, with students and faculty walking out of classrooms and setting up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations have continued spreading in the face of violent police crackdowns and right-wing attempts to discredit them as antisemitic; one tally shows that protests have taken place on at least 75 U.S. campuses over the past week.
Oregon Public Broadcastingnoted Friday that PSU students and faculty have been pushing the university to cut ties with Boeing for months, citing its connections to Israel. Cudd said at a press conference last month that Boeing donated $150,000 to PSU to name a classroom and that a Boeing executive sits on the advisory board of PSU’s business school.
On Thursday night, OPB reported, “a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom were holding anti-Boeing signs, set up tents and barricades on Portland State University’s South Park Blocks.”
“Demonstrators had planned to hold a protest on the PSU campus Monday, but it was not immediately clear if the university’s pause on relations to Boeing would change those plans,” the outlet observed. One student told OPB that “the funding from Boeing has already been received by PSU for the year, so putting a pause on it doesn’t actually do anything.”
“It doesn’t change anything about the way things are being conducted,” the student added.
Boeing is one of the largest military contractors in the world, and Amnesty International has documented at least three cases in which Israeli forces used weaponry made by the company to commit atrocities in Gaza.
In one instance earlier this year, the Israeli military used a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb manufactured by Boeing to attack a family building in Rafah, killing 18 civilians and wounding eight others. In October, Israel used Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions to conduct a pair of airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, killing more than 43 people from two families—including 19 children.
Students across the country have called on their universities to divest from arms manufacturers like Boeing that are profiting from Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza, where the entire population is facing the possibility of famine as Israeli forces impede aid deliveries and prepare for a ground invasion of Rafah.
The Associated Pressreported Friday that Columbia University students who inspired campus demonstrations across the country said they have “reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their encampment until their demands are met.”
“We will not rest until Columbia divests,” said doctoral student Jonathan Ben-Menachem.
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Editor’s Note: This month makes four years since ScheerPost was born, maturing into an award-winning top news source on the most important issues of our time at a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes. Alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and we are one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing a “birthday gift” to help us reach our goal of $50,000 — we are 75% there. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.