The Red Velvet Lawyer

  How a Pandemic Caused Economic, Political, Social, and Religious Upheaval in France The Black Death  reached Italy's shores at the Messina port in October 1347.   The Genoese ship had stopped previously in a port on the Black Sea.  They offloaded trade goods and a devastating infection.   The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin.  The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding.  The sick suffered sever pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes.  These victims coughed ans sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours.  In both types everything that issued from the body -- breath, sweat, blood fro...

The High-Risk of Aging Into Poverty or  Social Security is a Feminist Issue Over the last week, the two parties in the US tried to reach agreement about a relief package providing benefits during the pandemic that would help unemployed people buy food and other necessities and forestall evictions from housing .  When impasse in the negotiations continued,  Trump stepped in with several (potentially unlawful) executive orders providing some relief. However, he also gave employees and employees relief from payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for older people in the US. This week a Democratic campaign strategist, Paul Begala, discussed his book, You're Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump (Simon & Schuster 2020).  In an interview , he said that Democratic candidates should run on this messaging: the GOP wants to gut Social Security (SS), Medicare, and Medicaid, and abolish the Affordable Health Care Act during a pandemic....

Ongoing Efforts to Curb the Coronavirus: Fear, Frustration, Fatigue, & Family Infections May Recap: The month of May saw public health concerns collide with cultural norms associated with Ramadan and the Eid-al-Fitr holiday.  Ramadan began on April 23 with the Eid holiday in Qatar beginning on May 24 and ending on May 30. Government officials warned people to continue to stay-at-home during this season and avoid any inter-family meals, visits, or celebrations.  It continued to ban congregational prayer at mosques.  While it relaxed the rules on take-a-way meals from restaurants, it continued precautionary measures.  As Eid approached, officials imposed further pre-cautionary measures to curb the spread of the virus.  They required people to wear masks when they left their homes, to install a contact notification app called EHTERAZ to help people learn when they had had close contact with an infected person, and limit the number of persons in ...