The title is fair warning. If you don’t want to read political stuff, skip right on over.
I’d been rolling thoughts around in my head about the federal response to this pandemic and I hadn’t really gotten around to writing this because my thoughts hadn’t coalesced. Then, the White House issued it’s plan for reopening America.
The rage focused my thoughts a wee bit.
Let’s just start out with the fact – and it is a fact whether you like it or not – that Trump has failed on nearly every single level when it comes to this pandemic. He sent off 17 tons worth of equipment and PPE from the strategic reserves even after he’d been fully briefed on what was about to befall us. He waited and waited and waited before even acknowledging that we have a problem. He has withdrawn $400 million in funding from the World Health Organization IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC. He is using FEMA and DHS to seize shipments of PPE to states – and no one knows where those seized shipments are going. We have no national shelter-in-place order. He has sent less aid to states whose Governors don’t sufficiently kiss his ass. He fired the people responsible for the oversight of the 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill so that big corporations could get bailout money meant for small business. He lies over and over in press conferences.
Now they’ve released their “phased plan” to reopen America and the bald fact is that it means states are now on their own. Ramping up testing and contact tracing? State responsibility. Hospital capacity expansion and provision of PPE? State responsibility. Mitigation of outbreak or rebound? State responsibility. So they feel just fine using federal agencies to seize what states need to make this happen and feel zero responsibility to help states in any meaningful way.
What the White House has done is to say that they don’t care to lead, they don’t care to help, and they don’t care to be part of any solution. As far as they are concerned, a pandemic is none of their purview. It’s up to the states to figure this out and the Feds are just there to, I don’t know, look pretty?
Today the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed 40,000. FORTY. THOUSAND. Trump is up there at the White House podium telling us that 100,000 dead is a victory. A victory!
WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.
Exactly 2 people died from Ebola in the US and Trump called for Obama to resign. Exactly 4 people died in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton testified for 11 hours straight. We lost 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks and this country still mourns. But 100,000 dead men, women, and children is suddenly an acceptable price to pay if it means we get to open up the economy. Don’t even get me started on that fucking quack Dr. Oz and his statements on how reopening schools with a 2-3% death rate of CHILDREN is an acceptable outcome if it means we can all go back to the fucking mall.
But with Jacksonville reopening their beaches and protesters rallying without obeying social distancing and masking guidelines, we are about to see an explosion of cases. A death toll of 100,000 is going to be a pipe dream. It will be much, much worse.
The only conclusion I am left with is that late-stage Capitalism has become end-stage Capitalism and the only question that remains is how many people are going to die before this country fractures. States are forming regional compacts to coordinate reopening and if you think that isn’t the beginning of Panem style Hunger Games districts, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.
We are being hung out to dry by the very person who is supposed to lead us. I don’t even know how I have rage to give this anymore because it’s been three years of this never-ending river of shit and the only thing we know now that we didn’t know then is that there is no bottom to this and there is no check on the despot in the Oval.
If I believed in god, I’d beg the deity to save us from the mess. As it is, I can only the hope alien lizard overlords swoop in soon because there’s no saving ourselves from this madman.
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