So now, "school's out for the summer" in parts of the United States and the economy is crushed.
It all goes back to how the U.S. responded; the effort to contain the virus at the border and in the airports came much too late, and mitigation had to be carried out within our borders instead of at them.
Some will blame the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO) for its delayed announcements regarding the spread of the pandemic. Perhaps that is what led U.S. President Donald Trump to initially write off COVID-19 as "just the flu". To bolster the argument, Trump compared the death tolls from the first weeks of the outbreak to yearly seasonal flu death tolls:
The analogy took statistics from two different spans of time, a glaring error that all but the dim or dishonest cannot ignore; it also failed to consider a host of variables, like the prevalence of the flu during the period surveyed, when the flu is generally seasonal. But people went with Trump's "just the flu" suggestion anyway, and to this day continue to make comparisons based on death tolls.
Others argued their way to the same "it's just the flu" conclusion by looking at the fatality rate for COVID-19. Ann Coulter endorsed this idea to some degree. And, like many others, she used unreliable figures, shaped by disparities in calculation procedures, fluctuations in flu death totals from one year to the next and differences in age-group susceptibility based on obesity and other factors from country to country.
But "it's just the flu, bro" was a bad take even if we ignore these flaws in argumentation. The reason being, it took something few civilians except the ill and elderly rarely take seriously and made it the baseline for preparatory measures introduced nationally, meaning only in a best-case scenario - where this coronavirus is like the flu or milder - are we fully prepared. Worse, with the comparison to the flu, the public had a mindset to go about its daily business as always, increasing the likelihood that this coronavirus would spread beyond its initial, regional and perhaps containable space once it was allowed to come into the country. And that is exactly what happened. That this happened was particularly important given the prospect of asymptomatic carriage of the coronavirus, as well as its tendency to linger, which suggests a problem larger than what we are used to with the seasonal flu.
During flu season, we have people filling hospital beds and requiring medical attention in large number; so, imagine a problem of this magnitude, plus the flu hospitalizations to boot, and it is not hard to imagine a scenario where those who need hospital services are unable to get them. Imagine a society with no hospitals - or one where people know that, because of the effect this coronavirus and the flu can have on the ill and old, our hospitals are death traps for anyone who is ill or old, and are avoided in turn. This could be the reality we face, both because of the infectiousness of this coronavirus and the "just the flu" mentality that has people refusing to wear masks or change any aspect of their daily routine.
That someone is willing to risk the danger posed by COVID-19 without knowing more about it seems like complete insanity. But it could be worse; imagine of we just let this disease take its course "so mass immunity is developed through mass exposure", following the philosophy of 'herd immunity':
Unbelievably, that is where some people wanted to take us - and still do - even without knowing whether immunity is achievable or not and if, and to what degree, the virus can mutate. What is more, we still do not know what the long-term results are after one has contracted the virus. Reports are circulating about irreversible organ damage and other chronic complications.
So why on earth would anyone support such a thing as 'herd immunity'? Well, there are people who do not want to be told what to do, like wear a mask, and consider themselves to be strong enough that they are not at risk for this disease. Just as importantly, 'herd immunity' would be good for business - at least initially - because everyone could carry on as they always had. People would simply continue working until they became ill, at which point they would disappear in a hospital and somebody else would presumably take their place. But imagine the number of people who would be put in danger, or put others in danger, due to their unknown contraction of the virus and what would happen if they immediately succumbed to its sudden respiratory difficulties. And imagine the effect this could have on hospitals, not to mention the flow of the economy. Markets do not like disruption and uncertainty. Beyond that, herd immunity is really as rough as it sounds, which is why a metaphor has arisen based on the idea of sacrificing oneself - and risking exposure and death - to keep the economy going for GDP and Dow, something likened to a literal call for "human sacrifice" for the economy:
There is an even more important takeaway here because nearly everything that has blown up in our face so far is because of that same, profits-first, business-first ideology. Years ago, many jobs were exported. Since then, the borders have remained open to feed the profit-first and business-first model, giving employers access to wage-stagnating, cheap labor. In those crucial early weeks when this coronavirus spread, the gates to the country at airport terminals remained wide open, predictably. Tens of thousands of people from China entered the country. What reason could there have been to let this continue other than to not inconvenience international commerce? Naturally, the market activity taking place did not involve stockpiling PPE (personal protective equipment, i.e. N-95 respirators or face masks in hospitals), which had been sold off after the Ebola outbreak - because, profit - and never replenished. But let us not forget that America now depends on China to manufacture its PPE. Additionally, America is dependent on China to supply over 95% of all antibiotics, which is why the country is completely unprepared for what is coming. Nurses, aware that their employers are recklessly exposing them to danger, are striking. Throw in the concept of herd immunity as a solution to the pandemic proposed by business-first - which we may still gravitate towards - and we are looking at a potential disaster caused by catering to those who worship DOW and GDP and have only profit-first and business-first ideology on the mind.
That said, we need to understand that this profit-first lobby is not only a terrible ally that puts itself above us, the People, but is also incredibly incompetent, and fully incapable of stepping outside of its ideological box if even for a second. Forget strategizing to win in November by reaching out to disaffected Bernie supporters and at least offering a measly, temporary UBI that might double as a test-drive for the future. Likewise, remember that things like three or four weeks of unrestrained market activity were put above the measures that would have kept this coronavirus from storming in, spiraling out of control and shattering the economy in the first place.
"It's just the flu, bro" - that was the rationalization to keep economic activity unchanged and at its peak. It completely fails the nation-first smell test, yet it is the hill that some right-wingers have oddly chosen to die on instead of demanding that the health of the nation's People, not global markets, comes first. And this comes at a time when #NotDying4WallStreet is literally the top conversation topic right now..
The Republican Party, currently still the vehicle for business-first and profit-first, has to be reformed or blown up; we cannot continue to attach ourselves to this profit-first wagon that dominates it, especially when it is so flawed, and so hungry for cheap labor and expansion, that the obvious end is going to be international socialism, when the whole globe is imported and internationally enslaved (eat your heart out, Karl Marx).
Come to think of it, perhaps we should start shilling for the international socialists, under whose system and flaws the default dissenters - capitalist and nationalist alike - could probably rally arm in arm, which is basically what has happened throughout history and even in 2016. But we need to understand that, perhaps just like the left's shaky alliance of rich city liberals, poor non-white urban types, Muslims, LGBT, peacenik boomers and violent Antifa, a common-interest alliance between nationalists and capitalists only works as an opposition block, when both are on the outside looking in - particularly in the global era, where profit-first interests have clearly diverged from what is best for the nation, because corporations span over borders and, benefiting from everyone either being a consumer or a producer, have no loyalty to anything except the boardroom balance sheet and a portfolio. We cannot allow ourselves to be restrained and miss opportunities to rally alongside those who understand what we do simply because Wall Street will not allow it. We cannot allow ourselves to become apologists for Wall Street anymore than Wall Street is an apologist for us or anyone else.
It all goes back to how the U.S. responded; the effort to contain the virus at the border and in the airports came much too late, and mitigation had to be carried out within our borders instead of at them.
Some will blame the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO) for its delayed announcements regarding the spread of the pandemic. Perhaps that is what led U.S. President Donald Trump to initially write off COVID-19 as "just the flu". To bolster the argument, Trump compared the death tolls from the first weeks of the outbreak to yearly seasonal flu death tolls:
The analogy took statistics from two different spans of time, a glaring error that all but the dim or dishonest cannot ignore; it also failed to consider a host of variables, like the prevalence of the flu during the period surveyed, when the flu is generally seasonal. But people went with Trump's "just the flu" suggestion anyway, and to this day continue to make comparisons based on death tolls.
Others argued their way to the same "it's just the flu" conclusion by looking at the fatality rate for COVID-19. Ann Coulter endorsed this idea to some degree. And, like many others, she used unreliable figures, shaped by disparities in calculation procedures, fluctuations in flu death totals from one year to the next and differences in age-group susceptibility based on obesity and other factors from country to country.
But "it's just the flu, bro" was a bad take even if we ignore these flaws in argumentation. The reason being, it took something few civilians except the ill and elderly rarely take seriously and made it the baseline for preparatory measures introduced nationally, meaning only in a best-case scenario - where this coronavirus is like the flu or milder - are we fully prepared. Worse, with the comparison to the flu, the public had a mindset to go about its daily business as always, increasing the likelihood that this coronavirus would spread beyond its initial, regional and perhaps containable space once it was allowed to come into the country. And that is exactly what happened. That this happened was particularly important given the prospect of asymptomatic carriage of the coronavirus, as well as its tendency to linger, which suggests a problem larger than what we are used to with the seasonal flu.
During flu season, we have people filling hospital beds and requiring medical attention in large number; so, imagine a problem of this magnitude, plus the flu hospitalizations to boot, and it is not hard to imagine a scenario where those who need hospital services are unable to get them. Imagine a society with no hospitals - or one where people know that, because of the effect this coronavirus and the flu can have on the ill and old, our hospitals are death traps for anyone who is ill or old, and are avoided in turn. This could be the reality we face, both because of the infectiousness of this coronavirus and the "just the flu" mentality that has people refusing to wear masks or change any aspect of their daily routine.
That someone is willing to risk the danger posed by COVID-19 without knowing more about it seems like complete insanity. But it could be worse; imagine of we just let this disease take its course "so mass immunity is developed through mass exposure", following the philosophy of 'herd immunity':
Unbelievably, that is where some people wanted to take us - and still do - even without knowing whether immunity is achievable or not and if, and to what degree, the virus can mutate. What is more, we still do not know what the long-term results are after one has contracted the virus. Reports are circulating about irreversible organ damage and other chronic complications.
So why on earth would anyone support such a thing as 'herd immunity'? Well, there are people who do not want to be told what to do, like wear a mask, and consider themselves to be strong enough that they are not at risk for this disease. Just as importantly, 'herd immunity' would be good for business - at least initially - because everyone could carry on as they always had. People would simply continue working until they became ill, at which point they would disappear in a hospital and somebody else would presumably take their place. But imagine the number of people who would be put in danger, or put others in danger, due to their unknown contraction of the virus and what would happen if they immediately succumbed to its sudden respiratory difficulties. And imagine the effect this could have on hospitals, not to mention the flow of the economy. Markets do not like disruption and uncertainty. Beyond that, herd immunity is really as rough as it sounds, which is why a metaphor has arisen based on the idea of sacrificing oneself - and risking exposure and death - to keep the economy going for GDP and Dow, something likened to a literal call for "human sacrifice" for the economy:
There is an even more important takeaway here because nearly everything that has blown up in our face so far is because of that same, profits-first, business-first ideology. Years ago, many jobs were exported. Since then, the borders have remained open to feed the profit-first and business-first model, giving employers access to wage-stagnating, cheap labor. In those crucial early weeks when this coronavirus spread, the gates to the country at airport terminals remained wide open, predictably. Tens of thousands of people from China entered the country. What reason could there have been to let this continue other than to not inconvenience international commerce? Naturally, the market activity taking place did not involve stockpiling PPE (personal protective equipment, i.e. N-95 respirators or face masks in hospitals), which had been sold off after the Ebola outbreak - because, profit - and never replenished. But let us not forget that America now depends on China to manufacture its PPE. Additionally, America is dependent on China to supply over 95% of all antibiotics, which is why the country is completely unprepared for what is coming. Nurses, aware that their employers are recklessly exposing them to danger, are striking. Throw in the concept of herd immunity as a solution to the pandemic proposed by business-first - which we may still gravitate towards - and we are looking at a potential disaster caused by catering to those who worship DOW and GDP and have only profit-first and business-first ideology on the mind.
That said, we need to understand that this profit-first lobby is not only a terrible ally that puts itself above us, the People, but is also incredibly incompetent, and fully incapable of stepping outside of its ideological box if even for a second. Forget strategizing to win in November by reaching out to disaffected Bernie supporters and at least offering a measly, temporary UBI that might double as a test-drive for the future. Likewise, remember that things like three or four weeks of unrestrained market activity were put above the measures that would have kept this coronavirus from storming in, spiraling out of control and shattering the economy in the first place.
"It's just the flu, bro" - that was the rationalization to keep economic activity unchanged and at its peak. It completely fails the nation-first smell test, yet it is the hill that some right-wingers have oddly chosen to die on instead of demanding that the health of the nation's People, not global markets, comes first. And this comes at a time when #NotDying4WallStreet is literally the top conversation topic right now..
The Republican Party, currently still the vehicle for business-first and profit-first, has to be reformed or blown up; we cannot continue to attach ourselves to this profit-first wagon that dominates it, especially when it is so flawed, and so hungry for cheap labor and expansion, that the obvious end is going to be international socialism, when the whole globe is imported and internationally enslaved (eat your heart out, Karl Marx).
Come to think of it, perhaps we should start shilling for the international socialists, under whose system and flaws the default dissenters - capitalist and nationalist alike - could probably rally arm in arm, which is basically what has happened throughout history and even in 2016. But we need to understand that, perhaps just like the left's shaky alliance of rich city liberals, poor non-white urban types, Muslims, LGBT, peacenik boomers and violent Antifa, a common-interest alliance between nationalists and capitalists only works as an opposition block, when both are on the outside looking in - particularly in the global era, where profit-first interests have clearly diverged from what is best for the nation, because corporations span over borders and, benefiting from everyone either being a consumer or a producer, have no loyalty to anything except the boardroom balance sheet and a portfolio. We cannot allow ourselves to be restrained and miss opportunities to rally alongside those who understand what we do simply because Wall Street will not allow it. We cannot allow ourselves to become apologists for Wall Street anymore than Wall Street is an apologist for us or anyone else.
" There may be a thousand intermediate shades of opinion: but, eventually, one is forced back into the position of having to decide whether money exists for man or man for money [...]"
- William Joyce
