We’ve been here before, you and I, right here at the fulcrum between controlling COVID-19 and letting it run wild. Here we are again, swaddled in the dented surety that doing the same thing over and over will bring about a different conclusion, just because we really really want it to… wait, strike that: Just because capitalism really, really wants it to. The rest of that “we” is most of us, baggage stacked down in the dripping darkness of steerage, waiting for the next viral iceberg to smack this gilded, hollow ship in half, again.
Trump declared a national emergency in March 2020 over the pandemic. A flurry of states were placed under lockdown. Almost immediately, Trump began hectoring his own scientific experts to downplay the dangers of COVID-19 as he pushed to “reopen” the economy as soon as possible. It was difficult to sell: Even as the number of unemployed grew to the millions and businesses closed all over, the majority of the country believed that masking, hiding, cloistering and social ditancing were real science. By then, nearly 25,000 people had died of COVID. This was a number many of us, in our innocence, found almost too shocking to contemplate.
“Around two weeks ago,” I wrote in that late March 2020, “when the first wave of closures — the schools, the ballgames, the bars — began to roll across the country, a clock began ticking in my head. How long will it take?, I wondered, before some rich person goes on TV and starts quacking about ‘getting the country going again,’ because they’re losing money? Flash-forward to this past Sunday morning, and wouldn’t you know it, some self-satisfied capitalist was on one of the cable networks arguing that ‘low-risk,’ low-wage workers (who These areEven though they rarely benefit, the economy is still important. From the economy) should go back to work and just let the virus ‘burn through’ their ranks.”
The quacking reached a crescendo in the spring and many state and local governments decided to let their collective guard down for the sake of making money for our financial tyrants. The result was a massive increase in COVID that destroyed our hopes and drove many of us back insides. The winter 2020-2021 was upon them. The red death ruled all.
The next spring brought widespread availability of vaccines, vaccines that actually work. Millions of people lined up to get their shots. However, millions of people also refused to have the vaccines administered to them. tied to fealty to Trump and his doomed attempt to overthrow the election he’d lost in November. The effectiveness of the vaccines was compromised, and when President Biden promised renewed hope for the summer, he and us were faced with the double punch that was the Omicron- and Delta variants. We fell into darkness again, with a death rate of over 900,000. This is at a rate of approximately 2,500 per day.
Over all those days, weeks, months and now — God help us — years, I sounded warning after warning after warning: Capitalism cannot be allowed to drive the bus when it comes to dealing with this, or any pandemic. “We’ve tried it their way for going on two years now,” I wrote this past November, “and all we have is close to a million people dead to show for it. Republicans are funding the very corporations that want to rush people back into infected workplaces. They have no interest to public health. Their goal is private wealth, and as far as they are concerned, wealth must be extracted at all costs.”
It is therefore with a despair verging on the inexpressible that I observe the nation’s leaders now lining up to displace science with profit, for the third time since this nightmare hamster wheel got to spinning. This time, however, it’s not the Abbotts of Texas and the DeSantises from Florida leading the march. That would be merely commonplace on this trainwreck timeline. No, this time it’s New York, New Jersey, California, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon — Blue states all —For openers, and more to come.
This new dismantling of effective public safety measures will affect the most vulnerable people, including those with disabilities and immunocompromised.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made it abundantly clear that it is. far too soonAfter Omicron and Delta started to play around with masking the most effective prophylactic against random infections. Biden administration: this charge toward ersatz normalcy came after the president pointedly said last week that decisions like these would be made by the states, and not the federal government… and it’s an election year.
“The moves highlight how even local officials who installed sweeping safety measures early in the pandemic are now preparing to live permanently with the virus,” reports The New York Times. Watch for that phrasing — “live permanently with the virus” — as it will be everywhere soon. It sounds stiff-upper-lip. Loosely translated, it means, “This is the course that promises the most profit, and must be adhered to without question.”
In other words, the capitalists are sick of your bullshit, it’s time to give up. They’re mightily weary of fighting for ground they thought was secure. Yes, you could die horribly under such profit-driven, twisted priorities. You will be a good citizen of your society if you can cough up a dollar while reaching for something to buy.
