Biden predicts surge in deaths, proposes no measures to stop it, and pledges to reopen the schools
Marched into unsafe workplaces to produce profits for the top 1% and the Next 9%, what policies does the 90% TRULY need?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
On Tuesday, Democratic President-elect Joe Biden gave what was billed as a “major speech” on the coronavirus pandemic. He spoke following a meeting with his coronavirus advisory panel.
In perfunctory remarks that lasted barely 15 minutes, Biden provided a grim description of the mass death already occurring and predicted that things would get only worse in the coming months. “We will lose tens of thousands more lives in the months to come,” he said. “Hospitals are being stretched beyond capacity. That is data before the impact of cases coming from the holidays and this coming holiday of New Year’s Eve.
“We have to anticipate that infections over the holidays will produce soaring death tolls in February. Turning this around is going to take time. We might not see improvement until we are well into March.”
If anything, Biden’s grim portrayal was a serious underestimation of the scale of death and suffering, not to mention the devastating economic crisis impacting tens of millions of workers and small business people.
In many cities across the US, intensive care units are at 100 percent of capacity. Freezer trucks are being used to stack bodies that cannot be accommodated by morgues.
Only hours after Biden’s speech, NBC Nightly News reported that overwhelmed hospitals in Los Angeles are beginning to ration care, deciding to withhold treatment from patients less likely to survive. Ambulances are waiting hours to deliver patients to triage wards. The broadcast showed an LA nurse tearfully saying, “Patients are dying like flies.”
Biden reiterated his earlier prediction that 400,000 Americans will have died of COVID-19 by the end of the Trump administration in mid-January. But once again, he presented this catastrophic wave of death and suffering as something inevitable and unalterable. He proposed no emergency measures to prevent tens of thousands of additional deaths over the next few weeks.
He incongruously combined clichés, happy talk and hollow exhortations—“Brighter days are coming. It’s going to take all the grit and determination we have as Americans to get it done”—with an acknowledgment that the process of distributing and administering vaccines has already virtually collapsed.
“The pace at which the vaccination program is moving now,” he said, “if it continues, is going to take years, not months to vaccinate the American people.” Even if Congress approved his requests for additional money for vaccinations, he added, “It would take ramping up six times the current pace to one million shots per day. It will still take months to have the majority of the United States population vaccinated.”
In concluding, he declared, “My ability to change the direction of this pandemic starts in three weeks, with thousands dying every day between now and then.” Under the heading of “What needs to happen now,” he limited himself to urging President Trump to reverse course and promote mask-wearing, adding, “I hope the president will clearly and unambiguously urge all Americans to take the vaccine.”
As for his administration’s pandemic policy, Biden rehashed previous pledges to encourage mask-wearing. He also said he would invoke the Defense Production Act to require private corporations to speed up the production of vaccines and protective equipment. Most significantly, he restated his plan to reopen K-8 schools for in-person learning by the end of his first 100 days in office.
Thus, despite campaigning against Trump’s criminally negligent response to the pandemic, on the central pillars of Trump’s policy of “herd immunity,” i.e., encouraging the spread of the virus, Biden and Trump are in agreement. When one of Biden’s pandemic advisers, Dr. Michael Osterholm, called for an emergency shutdown of non-essential production with full income protection for the affected workers, Biden immediately repudiated any such action. “I am not going to shut down the economy, period,” he declared.
The Biden administration will continue to force workers into unsafe factories and workplaces and double down on Trump’s efforts to reopen the schools, so as to free working class parents to resume pumping out profits for the corporations. This is despite scientific studies proving that factories and schools are leading vectors in the spread of the virus.
When the ruling class and its political representatives, whether Republican or Democratic, talk about the “economy,” they are not talking about the jobs and living conditions of the vast majority of the people who work for a living and produce all the wealth. They are talking about the exploitation of the working class and the profits and wealth of the corporate-financial elite.
As the World Socialist Web Site has explained , this counterposition of human life and “the economy,” with the latter prioritized over the former, is the “awful calculus” that is used to justify the normalization of death. Biden’s miserable speech exemplifies the indifference to human suffering and death, on a scale previously unseen outside of wartime, which characterizes the entire political establishment. It is driven by class interests.
None of the half-measures proposed by Biden and the Democratic Party impinge in the slightest on the economic interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy that rules America and, for that matter, the world. The entire response of both parties to the pandemic, from the beginning to the present, has been dictated by the need to keep stock market prices rising and corporate profits and the fortunes of the super-rich growing.
These interests preclude any serious, scientifically and socially driven measures to contain, treat and eradicate the virus. The pandemic has demonstrated that the capitalist system is incompatible with the most elementary social needs, including human life itself.
The fight against the pandemic requires the independent intervention of the working class, in the US and internationally, to impose the shutdown of all non-essential production and schools and full income protection for all affected workers and small businesses. It is a fight against Biden and the Democrats no less than against Trump and the Republicans. To secure the resources needed to contain the virus and save lives, the wealth of the capitalist oligarchs must be expropriated and the corporations and banks transformed into publicly owned utilities under the democratic control of the working class.
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Joe ‘Nothing Will Change’ Biden was able to change the pandemic direction all along. He might have exposed the administration policy of malign neglect as did the WSWS. He could demand that officials who supported that policy be prosecuted for their crime against humanity. He could demand the shut-down of all schools and non-essential workplaces. He could defend science from political attacks. He could institute a permanent education pandemic campaign. Joe ‘Nothing Will Change’ Biden could do many things; instead he pretends that currently he can do ‘nothing.’
And, he said ‘I am not going to shut down the economy, period.’
If as Grey says ‘the entire response of both parties … has been dictated by the need to keep stock market prices rising and corporate profits and the fortunes of the super-rich growing,’ it is difficult to evade his conclusion that our economic system is itself incompatible with human life.
This leads to the point that the way forward for the 90% is the closure of schools and all non-essential production through independent action by the working class itself.
This struggle must be conducted against Biden’s Democratic Party and Trump’s Republican Party EQUALLY. The enormous profits extorted by and funds gifted to Capital’s oligarchic class must be returned to the workers who produced that wealth and used to contain/eradicate COVID-19 and to save lives.
Agree/disagree, and why!
Please stay on topic.
Your thesis statement is timely. At the start of any new administration a new starting point can be initiated.
However, civility is on the margins these days as people are hard-pressed on every side to not panic, while in the deep recesses of a pandemic and a remarkable trolling president these continuing four years.
Our nation is primed for change. Ironically, the Trump Administration through brash, sass, and audacity has broken some things and systems and scattered them about for strong reconsideration for the incoming Biden Administration to restructure, reunify, or trash whole.
It is in this spirit, that I ask: Can our national civility survive, its soon be former president 'ferociously on a tear,' the next chapter of Coronavirus sicknesses and deaths, and the two-party system under assault by a yet new "peoples party" come to roost?
Honestly, I see a need for attention to your ideas. I do not see how those concepts and principles get there from here! That is, this nation will convulse against you in the 'red' party sufficiently enough that the "blue" party will be allowed to just stand and watch uncommitted to any tasks.
That looks to be pretty close to what will happen, the way we are going.
It probably is.
Much of this rise in cases may be attributable to Winter. The disease simply lives longer when it isn't exposed to as much sunlight and heat. Furthermore, people are inside more than in summer, where people not only congregate more, but the air is dryer, and this inhibits the body's ability to produce enough mucus to block the virus.
And of course, people are gathering. We had Halloween, and then Thanksgiving, and now Christmas. You think people will avoid parties for New Years? Have you met America? I wouldn't count on it. The deaths that result from such gatherings takes weeks to fade away.
I'm not sure what measures he could take at this point. The hospitals could use some help, to be sure. And perhaps the military could be used to better effect to distribute vaccine. That's just me guessing, though. How many deaths will that avoid? Not a lot, I would guess, because people are still infecting other people.
So, what are you going to do to keep people from mingling with other people? Post the army in front of their houses?
Biden - and his supporters - are going to have to face the reality that there is only so much the federal government can do with this crisis.
Tacos! Very interesting fair-minded reply.
Are you talking about using military nurses & doctors at the local level to actually put shots in the arms? Because I believe there are already a lot of hospitals where military staff are working to supplement local staff. And what happened to the hospital ships, one of which was for a time parked near LA?
But with the enormous need of doctors and nurses in hospitals that are at capacity, wouldn't the military members be more needed in the hospitals rather than moving around to administer shots?
Yeah, my thoughts in that realm are just those of a layman spitballing. Im sure things are being done that I don't know about and probably some things I might imagine aren't possible for one reason or another.
Tonight, I saw a report that indicated there is a steep learning curve with the various procedures involved in storing and administering the vaccines. It is, after all, completely new technology. So hopefully, as people get better at this in the next week or so, we can speed things up.
IMT, I would like an 'early' comparison of two people from your points of view: Nancy Pelosi, Mitchel McConnell - are symbols right now of WHAT?! Pluses or minuses, but don't let it become over-tasking.
NOTE: Your answer to the question, may help me quantify your position a lot quicker than tedious research. In any case, it will help!