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You could say I lost my faith in science and progress… I never saw no miracle of science, That didn’t go from a blessing to a curse — Sting, “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” (Recorded in 1992, Released in 1993) I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently […]
The post Covid-19: A Series of Unlikely Events first appeared on Dissident Voice.
The current pandemic continues to have a large negative impact on most aspects of our lives. Over 20.6 million have been infected and almost 750,000 have died worldwide (about 5.3 million infections and over 168,00 deaths in the US) due to this pandemic. Besides these horrific impacts, this pandemic has also made clearer the failure of the bipartisan neoliberal economic approach that puts profit before people and planet.
Pre-pandemic
Positive COVID-19 Test (Shutterstock)
The US is at a moment of truth. This week, Congress has to face up to a pandemic that is out of control and an economy that is collapsing. The Republican’s and Democrat’s proposals show they will fail this test. The people will need to protect themselves and lead from below.
Medicine has changed. We used to be a calling that catered to the public welfare, and our prime consideration was the patient. Now we are a business, and some of us practice as impersonal corporations, with the bottom line the profits, not the well-being of the patient.”
— From The Doctor, by Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum, 1991
As the US continues to be ravaged by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the country remains in lockdown, a morbid irony of which is that we appear to have traded COVID-19 deaths for suicides. The catastrophe has laid bare the cruelties of neoliberalism, yet this has not stopped the media from unleashing a barrage of misinformation, blaming the disaster on the president, racism, and the Chinese, interspersed with other creative attempts at scapegoating.
As the capitalist emperor strolls down the avenue of U.S. public opinion butt-naked but for the first time since the 1930s, more and more people are starting to realize that they were not crazy. The brutal failures of the capitalist system that they saw were not a figment of their imagination or a diversion from their own personal failures. Instead, they were the awful reality of degradation, dehumanization and social insecurity embedded in the system. Many could see that reality but wouldn’t allow themselves to believe their own eyes and experiences.
In the United States, tens of millions of people are at a much greater risk of getting sick from the coronavirus than others. The most vulnerable among us do not have the option to comply with suggestions to stay home from work or work remotely. Most low wage workers do not have any paid sick days and cannot do their work from home. The over two million people in jails and prisons each night do not have these options nor do the half a million homeless people.
