Covid Fueled by Neoliberal Austerity

The neo-liberal austerity model of governance ensures that Covid-19 will continue spreading and producing new variants. Only people focused public health remedies will end the pandemic.

[blackagendareport.com]

{On December 31, 2019 Chinese media told the world about a newly discovered disease cluster in the city of Wuhan. What was thought to be a viral pneumonia came to be known as SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19. Two weeks later Chinese scientists sequenced its genome and gave the world the ability to test and trace the disease. Covid continued to spread and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

China didn’t wait for a WHO declaration in order to take action. The government immediately adopted a zero covid strategy. They dispatched health care workers to Wuhan and built new hospitals to care for the sick. The sick were isolated and the healthy were supported in a variety of ways. They developed their own vaccine, which 90% of the population have taken. China tests millions of its people on a regular basis. The result of this effort is fewer than 5,000 deaths in a nation of 1.3 billion people. The United States, with a population of 330 million, has more than 800,000 deaths and a record-breaking number of new cases in December 2021. Of course, one society is committed to serving human needs while the other wants to do as little as possible in that regard. Serving the donor class is the political priority in the U.S. Everything else is secondary.}

{Throughout 2020 Donald Trump was the face of the covid crisis and his performance was in large part responsible for his defeat. Despite campaigning as the man who would end the pandemic, Joe Biden’s response has been even worse than Trump’s. By the time Biden came to office the nature of the problem was well known, vaccines had been developed, and a test was widely available. What hadn’t changed is the hold of the oligarchy on the political system and the resulting commitment to austerity and keeping workers on the job.}

{Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki unintentionally explained why the situation is no better. In a now infamous response to a question about increasing the availability of rapid tests for at home use, she said. “Should we just send one to every American? Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost and what happens after that?” The operative words were about cost.}

See, it's more profitable for you to become as sick as possible so the healthcare industry can benefit from you. Alive or to death. Reduced testing helps the government and their MSCM in hiding the actual numbers, diminishing concern which in turn fuels citizen division trapped in manufactured ideology. A limited supply of test works both ways. On one hand it makes Biden look like he's doing something, on the other, it's not nearly enough to produce positive results.

{But big money is still in control and they have direct access to the president who promised them that nothing would fundamentally change. When the CEO of Delta Airlines asked to reduce the number of days that employees could end infection isolation from ten days down to five, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did just that. Most physicians and scientists vehemently opposed the decision, but big business said jump and the white house asked, “How high?” Delta’s lobbying success was immediately followed by a cut in paid sick leave for its employees with covid.}

{In 2020 the campaign against Trump and his mishandling was the centerpiece of Biden’s campaign. He said he would, “Trust the science,” but when scientists made recommendations that might have reduced the spread of covid he ignored them. It is Biden’s CDC that declared vaccinated people didn’t have to wear masks and thus precipitated the spread of the delta variant.}

{It was recently revealed that in October 2021 a group of researchers proposed what they called A Testing Surge to Prevent a Holiday COVID Surge . Their plan was simple. The federal government should produce and distribute 732 million free test kits per month. But the idea was rejected because of a “lack of capacity.” Of course the real problem was just what spokeswoman Psaki said out loud. There was never an intention of using federal resources to benefit the people.}