The marriage of neoliberalism and the medical industrial complex has had disastrous results in Canada, even without the presence of a pandemic. This toxic relationship has led to decades of healthcare cuts, privatization of services, and warehousing of disabled and elder populations. Now, COVID-19 is exacerbating an already broken system.

Pushing people into echo-chambers of their own solipsism is merely an extension of the way that many people live in both real and virtual worlds. In this sense, we are already socially distant–the more pressing concern is understanding the broader impacts of forced spatial distancing, especially upon society’s most vulnerable.

So often, universities are heralded as paragons of expertise, logic and altruism. How Concordia interpreted the mass eviction of hundreds of its students in the midst of a global pandemic to be a measure of health and safety is unfathomable.

Coronavirus is putting extra burdens on workers, from health professionals to low-paid cleaning staff at the front line of combating infection. Yet many of these same workers don’t even have the right to sick pay – meaning they’ll feel compelled to work even if it risks spreading the virus.

The coronavirus outbreak is a crisis that challenges us to look beyond our own immediate concerns and ask ourselves what kind of world we want to live in. We don’t have much time: climate change will make this virus seem like a picnic. But we do have some time right now. Let’s try to use it as constructively as we can.

Since its first application to combat dengue fever, Cuba’s interferon has shown its efficacy and safety in the therapy of viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS and dengue. Because it interferes with viral multiplication within cells, it has also been used in the treatment of different types of carcinomas. Time will tell if Interferon Alfa 2b proves to be the wonder drug as far as COVID-19 goes.

The left can’t allow itself to be bullied by the false and cynical allegation of antisemitism. To acquiesce in the face of the disruptive and dangerous IHRA definition is utterly unacceptable. It’s high time to confront the slanders and, in a spirit of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, accuse the accusers.

Not only deficient in logic, not only misguided in its quest for the veritable culprits, the IHRA’s so-called guidelines have lent themselves to immoral policies. The false equation made between condemnation of the Israeli state and the gas chambers is tantamount to a rhetorical ploy that desecrates the memory of all those who died in the Holocaust.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada stand with the Palestinian people who are taking to the streets in the thousands to denounce what many have called Trump’s “apartheid plan”. We call on the Canadian government to unequivocally denounce this plan, and instead to remind Trump, Netanyahu, and the international community of their responsibilities to follow the principles of international law and justice.

Housing that sits empty so that speculators can enrich themselves, while pushing up housing prices, is an ugly Achilles Heel of the neoliberal city that we would be targeting in a direct and compelling way. With this approach we could create a crisis for big property owners and their political enablers out of which concessions on housing could be won that were significant enough to address the unfolding disaster of homelessness in Toronto.