a shocking new report<\/a>\u00a0last week that life expectancy in the United States plummeted by a full year in the first half of 2020, the largest single-year drop since World War II.<\/p>\nOn Feb. 22, President Biden issued remarks at a White House ceremony to \u201cmark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone: 500,071 dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
This grim milestone was, in actuality, surpassed long ago. When one takes into account direct COVID deaths as well as \u201cexcess deaths,\u201d \u2014 which include COVID deaths ascribed to other causes, as well as deaths resulting from indirect consequences of the pandemic on society \u2014 then the numbers go way up. Excess deaths could include the recent dramatic rise in \u201cdeaths of despair,\u201d deaths stemming from drug overdoses, alcohol, and suicide, a reflection of COVID\u2019s economic and mental health impacts.<\/p>\n
President Biden, keen on distinguishing his administration\u2019s pandemic response from the Trump administration\u2019s, used the occasion to offer empty platitudes about \u201chealing,\u201d \u201cremembering,\u201d \u201cstaying vigilant\u201d and \u201cfinding purpose.\u201d There was no elaboration of how the government would stop failing, so as to avoid another year of profound loss. The main distinguishing thing that somber Monday was between Trump\u2019s refusal versus Biden\u2019s willingness to hold remembrances for the dead.<\/p>\n
In his 1,339-word address, President Biden allocated only 12 words to say what actions should be taken to prevent more people from dying. He asked the public to individually, \u201c[S]tay socially distanced, to mask up, get vaccinated when it\u2019s your turn.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was all commander-in-chief Biden, who stated in January that he was leading a \u201cfull-scale wartime effort\u201d against the virus, had to say.<\/p>\n
One year into the pandemic, medical-grade masks \u2014 known as N95 respirators \u2014 are astoundingly still in short supply. Health care workers are still rationing and reusing supplies designed for single use.<\/p>\n
Public demand for medical masks is growing as coronavirus variants spread. Yet large domestic producers are still only making 120 million masks each month when the health sector alone requires nearly 300 million per month. Big capitalist manufacturers are loath to expand production further, afraid of dropping demand should COVID-19 infection rates flatten.<\/p>\n
Masks are not the only thing left in short supply by the capitalist market. So are vaccine doses! The federal government estimated that to meet its goal, there should be 200 million vaccine doses delivered to states by the end of February. So far, only 82 million doses have been delivered. Along with this deficient rollout lies another reality of the capitalist market: the wealthy are getting their shots first.<\/p>\n
Vaccination data shows that a significantly higher proportion of people living in wealthy counties have been vaccinated compared to residents in poorer counties. For example, in California, 156 shots have been given to residents in rich counties for every 100 shots in the poorest counties. Black, Latino, and Native people have received disproportionately fewer vaccinations throughout the country.<\/p>\n
Compare the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cfull-scale war effort\u201d to China\u2019s response, dubbed a \u201cpeople\u2019s war\u201d against the pandemic. Days after the first outbreak in January 2020, construction began of entire towns of prefabricated housing and hospitals for people who were being tested or treated for the virus. Contracts, plans, and materials for the building were fixed within hours.<\/p>\n
A U.S. \u201cfull-scale war effort\u201d to combat the pandemic is unthinkable without measures like replacing people\u2019s income so they can stay safely at home, canceling rents and mortgages for the duration of the crisis, mass centralized manufacturing and distribution of vaccine doses, and the mobilization of tens of millions of medical students and retirees to deliver shots.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s Feb. 22 statement from the White House is yet another example of what the Democratic Party is all about: nice-sounding words, but nothing at all to actually improve things.<\/p>\n
Source: LiberationNews.org<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The COVID-19 death toll in the United States has now surpassed half a million people \u2014 approximately 20%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-zenger-zone"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}