To: Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
March 18, 2020
Re:  The COVID-19 pandemic - what wasn't done, what is being done, and what should be done

On the fight against COVID-19

by Frank Arango, Seattle Workers' Voice

As everyone knows, the novel coronavirus is sweeping the world. It can be carried by people who show no symptoms. There's no vaccine for it. And it's a killer. (According to the World Health Organization [WHO], COVID-19's mortality rate is 3.4 percent while the seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent.) Thus, despite initial measures like quarantining individuals known to have the disease, in Washington state we had our first reported case on January 21, our first reported death on February 29, and we now have 55 deaths in mid-March. And there are now over 107 deaths in the country.

Meanwhile, the global COVID-19 death toll now exceeds 8,200, and in Italy 368 people have died in just one day. How high the death toll will rise depends on what is done to prevent the spread of the disease, as well as to treat those who have caught it. Although China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea have now made good progress in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, they obviously cannot relax their efforts. But while the responses of governments around the world vary, the general response to this global pandemic has been that governments have acted too slowly and haven't done enough. Indeed, the spread of the coronavirus appears to be out of control in a large number of countries, including the United States.

Lack of preparations

• The CDC. For years WHO and others have been warning of pandemics caused by new pathogens. But few countries have taken these warnings seriously, particularly the United States. Indeed, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a tiny budget of around $6 billion, Obama was already squeezing it while he was president (1), and Trump has continued on this path. In February this year--in the midst of the growing coronavirus pandemic--he even proposed a 9% cut in the CDC's funding for next year. But that's now history.
  
  
• Hospitals beds. Large numbers of people with COVID-19 have to be hospitalized in serious or critical condition. But the U.S. only has 2.77 hospital beds per 1000 people (number 32 in the world), whereas Italy has 3.18 beds per 1000 people, and Italy's hospitals have been overwhelmed! People die in intensive care units gasping for air because there are not enough respirators. Doctors, nurses and other staff work until they drop from exhaustion. Doctors are forced to choose between who they will try to save and who they must let die--usually older people. Tent hospitals have been set up, yet the problem of too few doctors remains. And Italy has 37.6 doctors per 10,000 people contrasted to the U.S. only having 24.5 per 10,000! On top of this, doctors and nurses themselves are getting sick with COVID-19, and one recently died. (In China, quite a few doctors died, including doctors who were 29, 34, 42, and 51 years old.)
  
  
• Test kits. The CDC's handling of testing has been a murderous scandal. It should have ordered crash production of large numbers to test kits in January, but it didn't. The Trump administration then refused the test kit offered by the World Health Organization. Then, after weeks of delay, in February the CDC sent out a flawed test kit. Moreover, during all this time local labs were prohibited from using their own tests. The result was that almost no one in the U.S. had enough test kits, while South Korea was testing 10,000 people a day. Even the patients and staff of the Kirkland, Washington nursing home where 19 people died from COVID-19, could not be tested because of lack of kits.
  
  In Seattle, Dr. Helen Chu and colleagues, bless them, eventually defied the CDC prohibition and began testing. But had they been allowed to test earlier, this might have gone a long way toward stopping the spread of the coronavirus throughout Washington and the rest of the country.
  
  Nevertheless, at this late date there still aren't enough test kits! Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has offered to donate 500,000 testing kits and 1 million masks to the U.S., and his Jack Ma Foundation has announced that the donation is "sourced and readied for shipment". We'll see if Trump and Co. accepts.
  
  
• Masks, protective clothing and hospital supplies. The CDC or Trump should have ordered mass production of these too, but they didn't. The result is that many nurses and other hospital workers have been working unprotected, with numbers of them getting sick with COVID-19, as well as unwittingly spreading it before they're diagnosed as having it. Additionally, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has just said that the U.S. has only stockpiled 13,000 respirators.
  

What has been done?

Despite their late start, governments and even employers around the country have taken unprecedented actions in trying to stop the spread of the coronavirus. They've all suddenly found money that they've previously denied having. Sick leave is being given where it was never been given before. Amazon is limiting deliveries to necessities, and it's hiring an additional 100,000 employees in its warehouse and delivery networks. It has also said that it would raise their pay by $2 per hour through April. There has been a loosening of the requirements for collecting unemployment benefits. There are moratoriums on evictions in several cities. Detroit has turned the water back on for people who had it shut off because they couldn't pay. Other cities are suspending payments for electricity. COVID-19 tests will now--finally!--be given free of charge. Small businesses are being given aid. Numerous school districts are finding ways to provide childcare and meals when they close schools. King County has set up seven sites for quarantining homeless people and for easing likely hospital overflow. New Rochelle, NY and Hoboken, NJ have been locked down, meaning the capitalists there will lose money.

But there are also many failings and bureaucratic blockages in the measures taken so far, and they've been taken too timidly. For example, the bans on public gatherings were often bans on gatherings of 250, 500, or even 1000 people--too large of crowds. The CDC then recommended that events of 50 or more people not be held for some two months, and Trump has now reduced that number to 10. Similarly, there was timidity about lockdowns. Hindsight is easy, but it appears that part or all of King County should have been locked down many weeks ago. One reason I say this is that a genome study showed that someone from this area carried COVID-19 to California, creating a new cluster there.(2)

And there have been fiascoes. Most notably, Trump's travel ban on flights from Europe was probably necessary. But it did not include U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Thus, at terribly inflated prices, thousands and thousands of them flew back to this country from heavily infected Europe. Their temperatures were not taken as they got off the planes (a strategy used in Asia, but does the U.S. even have enough thermometers?), and they were packed into huge lines in the terminals with no social distancing. More, at Dulles International the line for infected people was just inches away from the line for (presumably) uninfected people. As a local activist commented, "if you were trying to spread COVID-19 across the country, you couldn't do any better [than this]."

What is to be done?

In ordinary times the U.S. government cares very little about the health of the people. (Witness the minuscule CDC budget, or the fact that the richest country in the world stands at number 29 in the quality of its health care, or that we do not have universal health care.) But looking at the crashing economy in China due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the government is greatly concerned about the same thing happening here. Thus, it has slowly and timidly acted to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

On the other hand, the masses of people have not been so slow and timid. Naturally, they've been washing their hands, social distancing, staying home when possible and so on. But all the attempts to slow the spread of and mitigate the coronavirus will not work if the livelihood of workers is not taken care of. Thus, sections of the people have also been signing petitions demanding things like protective masks and clothing in hospitals. Auto workers in the U.S. and Canada have walked out on brief strikes for anti-virus protection. Hospitality workers in New Orleans disrupted the mayor's news conference to demand that the health and safety of workers and the public be a priority. Teachers in New York threatened a mass sickout to make de Blasio close the schools, and de Blasio has now closed them.

Various governments and employers are now to some extent taking the measures being demanded. These include paid sick leave, moratoriums on evictions, social distancing in factories, care for the homeless population and more. (King County is suddenly housing the homeless!)

All these struggles must continue, and this tendency among the masses should be further developed. As well, there's a need for struggles to ensure that the various levels of government follow through with their promises. And while there have been demands to close the concentration camps on the Mexican border because the coronavirus will spread like wildfire in them, infect staffs and then infect the general population, Trump has not done this. Instead, he's planning to step up his war against migrants and refugees from the south by further strengthening border "security". This is turning reality on its head! Mexico only has 93 confirmed cases, and Central American countries have even fewer. If anyone needs to be restricting travel, Mexico needs to restrict people coming from the United States.

The future

We must presently do all we can to stop further spread of this coronavirus plague. But when it ends I think we will be living in a changed country. I think large numbers of people will be asking, why can't we always have paid sick leave for everyone? Why can't the moratoriums on evictions be made permanent? Why can't the sheltering of the homeless be made permanent? Why must the water in Detroit be shut off again? And why can't we have universal health care?

Moreover, in the midst of this crisis I think there's a spirit of solidarity growing up among the masses of people. There's a growing realization that

NO ONE IS SAFE UNTIL EVERYONE IS SAFE! <>

Notes

(1) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-cdc-funding_n_5990114

(2) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236799358718185472.html <>

Back to main page, how to order CV, write us!

Posted March 18, 2020
http://www.communistvoice.org
e-mail: mail@communistvoice.org