Covid-19 – LPE Project

On Being Essentially Dispossessed

James Brandt — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of SAQ week, celebrating a special issue of the Southern Atlantic Quarterly on Law and the Critique of Capitalism. *** “Are you okay? Can I send you money?” I texted Hope. I finally heard from her a few minutes before midnight. “I’m safe now. He drunk himself to sleep. I got back in. I’ll be safe tonight.” I responded, “You have to get out of there. I’m sending you money.

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Eight Reactions to NFIB v. Department of Labor

James Brandt — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Early this month, the Supreme Court blocked OSHA’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers from taking effect. The decision, which arrived amid record numbers of Covid-19 hospitalizations, will result in hundreds if not thousands of additional deaths. It also raises broader questions about the future of the regulatory state and the willingness of the Court to impose its own policy preferences...

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Excerpt: How to Vaccinate the World

Sam Aber — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 11:00:00 +0000

On Oct. 13, 2021, the LPE Project and the Global Health Justice Partnership sponsored a panel discussion about How to Vaccinate the World. In the following excerpt, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, the panelists discuss the development of mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa. At the core of the conversation are the questions of whether the U.S.

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The “Value of a Statistical Life”: Reflections from the Pandemic

Molly Gordon — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 13:20:21 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on the future of cost-benefit analysis. Read the rest of the symposium here. In Spring 2020, many economists argued that the COVID-19 economic shutdowns were justified on Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) grounds. It may initially seem difficult to justify lifesaving measures using a monetary calculus. If anything is beyond price, we might think, it must be the value of...

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Seven Reactions to the Eviction Moratorium Decision

James Brandt — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 12:45:00 +0000

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden Administration’s most recent moratorium on evictions. The decision, along with an anemic federal rental assistance effort, has put millions of people at risk of being removed from their homes. To offer our readers different ways into this important ruling, we asked Amy Kapczynski, Nikolas Bowie, Tara Raghuveer, Katharine Jackson, John Whitlow...

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How to Vaccinate the World, Part 2

Luke Herrine — Tue, 04 May 2021 11:00:00 +0000

In a previous post, one of us described why we need global cooperation to achieve massively scaled up production of COVID vaccines. The United States must play a key role in this process, because it has the ability to mobilize resources, and powerful leverage over companies that have so far resisted serious participation in global efforts – especially Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J. Some commentators question whether the US has the power to compel this cooperation. Others have doubted the relevance of the demand coming from developing countries to temporarily waive the requirements of the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Agreement to facilitate more manufacturing. In this post, we explain why existing US law gives the Biden Administration the power to mandate sharing and overcome IP barriers, and how the TRIPS waiver can contribute importantly to efforts to scale up production at a global scale.

How to Vaccinate the World, Part 1

Luke Herrine — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Over the last few days, anyone with a loved one in India–or who has simply been following the news–has heard unforgettable stories of the horrors unfolding there. Hospitals are overflowing. People are taking to Twitter pleading for help, posting their plummeting oxygen levels until their accounts go silent. Vaccines and oxygen are in short supply, and upwards of 3000 people are now dying each day.

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Not an “Achievement Gap”, a Racial Capitalist Chasm

Luke Herrine — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 07:00:00 +0000

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the risks associated with in-person learning, every weekday at 8:30AM students at the New Haven high school where I teach join our online advisory before virtually attending their remaining classes for the day. Kenneth[1], a senior and one of my advisees, logs on from his cell phone. He is a passenger in a coworker’s car, both of them clad in orange vests...

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Blame China? On the Very Possibility of Responsibility for COVID

Luke Herrine — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Many, if not most, of the dilemmas posed by COVID-19 can be reduced to a single question: Who is to bear the costs and burdens created by the pandemic? Part of the answer to this question seems to be beyond human reach: older people will bear more costs than younger people; people in large cities will be more exposed than people in rural, deconcentrated areas. Another part, however...

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Rent Cancellation: Social Protection in Uncertain Times

Corinne Blalock — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 17:01:35 +0000

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, interlocking structural inequities in health, employment, and racial justice have buffeted vulnerable populations. The looming “eviction apocalypse” sits at the nexus of these three ills. Black and Latinx people have the highest COVID infection, death, and unemployment rates nationwide. Mass evictions would only worsen this situation...

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