May 19, 2022

Now that we (in the West) are learning to "live with COVID-19" – that is, putting the economy before human life – people are starting to notice other diseases that pop-up on the radar of public health defence organizations.

We must increase public funding to public medical research. We must fund public health. We must fund public health monitoring. We must put disease tracking, vaccine distribution, and medical emergency response funding at the top of the concern list.

Diseases currently of concern beyond the NEW variants and sub-variants of COVID-19 (no, it isn't done) include:

• CPI in Canada reached 6.7% – driven mostly by food and energy costs.
• No one should be surprised food prices are going up because it was highlighted it as major thing a year ago by all the economic agencies and news agencies.
• Fertilizer and oil prices along with drought (Climate Change, really) and supply chain slowing (leading to poor storage conditions) were easy predictors of increased food prices.
• Food price increases lead to instability.
• The only way to deal with increased food prices is to grow more food smarter and stop invading countries.
• Food supply chains should be the focus of logistic services. Too bad it is not.
• Unfortunately, unlike real inflation, increasing wages does not really help food affordability. Still, higher wages at the bottom quintile will be helpful for equity.
• State intervention in the distribution, production of staples, and support for equity in access is necessary to affect food prices.
• It might help if we start to address climate change and the shortage of farmers – but, only in the medium to longer term.
• Food prices will remain elevated for some time.

• Just picture a downward sloping graph and you have the general image from financial service reporting yesterday.
• Warning: it is not at the bottom yet.

• Yesterday saw a continued wipe-out of "market value" in even staple food companies – which were the last hold-outs of some value.
• The fictitious financial market participants have started to look down and notice that they are no longer standing on solid ground.
• Can't blame workers for equity valuation collapsing.
• Can blame capitalism.
• Watch out for the pro-capitalism folks talking about creative destruction, cleaning the brush, sweeping aside unproductive companies, and eliminating bubble values. That's all true, but it isn't really helpful to point out. One cannot ignore the fact that these useless firms were created and taken to such great heights in the first place. Also, low market value doesn't equal low value to human life.

With China’s economic outlook worsening, Standard Chartered cut its annual growth forecast for the world’s second-largest economy to 4.1 per cent from 5 per cent.

Shares in US tech groups also suffered on Wednesday, with Apple, Nvidia and Amazon all dropping more than 5 per cent while the Nasdaq Composite index closed down 4.7 per cent.

• Colombia might elect some lefty social democrats (called far-left in the USA press).
• Imperialist heads might explode if theirs are not made to first.
• Investors have flocked to Colombia as a safe-haven in the rise of the USA dollar and relative collapse of emerging market currencies/economies.
• All bad things loom in such scenarios.

Part of the reason is that Gustavo Petro — who is on track to win according to recent polls — is a former member of the M-19. Petro was not involved in the kidnap of the US ambassador — he was a 19-year-old new recruit at the time — but some of his ideas still reflect his youthful radicalism.

He has vowed not only to upend the country’s investor-friendly economic model but also to rethink key tenets of Washington’s most important strategic alliance in South America, such as the war on drugs, a free trade deal and a US-led push to unseat the revolutionary socialist government in next-door Venezuela.

Petro and his vice-presidential candidate, Francia Márquez, a social activist who is a rare black candidate for high office, both say they have received death threats. Amid pledges by their supporters to take to the streets if the left is denied victory and even rumours of a possible military coup or an election postponement, the country is on edge.