Precious Roy wrote:
What is happening in NYC is going to play out in small towns and rural communities next. And it will be much more devastating as these communities have had their health care systems cut to the bone. Albany, GA is a good example of how quickly and easily it can happen. They had an outbreak of just over 100 positives. It took just days for their healthcare system to be completely overrun by this relatively small outbreak. There are hundreds of small towns like Albany that have done little social distancing and have very little testing going on.
While state and local officials are responsible for responding to these outbreaks, but their efforts are futile without a strong federal response both on taking steps to stop the outbreak and in assisting with overwhelmed local health systems.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/southwest-georgia-icu-units-full/index.html
Roy,
You are conflating two separate issues. They may have temporarily crossed paths but the logic behind "the hospitals are overcrowded due to COVID" has a fatal flaw to it- that being the hospitals in the US and Spain and Italy are overrun, understaffed and underfunded due to austerity measures not due to COVID per se, as you yourself point out. All of this would (and has been) have been exposed were there to have been a natural disaster (see: Hurricane Katrina e.g.) and what we are seeing today is an indictment of how and what and who is prioritized in the capitalist system.
On another note there are many pieces of the puzzle missing so folks should be questioning the official narrative- not only because the US media is demonstrably one big lie machine (and I'm not talking about the orange-haired idiots version of fake news) and virtually all of the establishment institutions are thoroughly compromised by money from big business. That includes the WHO, the CDC, the FDA and so forth. Just look at who sits on their decision making bodies and where their funding comes from.
You are correct that all local entities should be getting massive federal funding for any and all sorts of social programs. That they have not for years, across the board they have been cut back (remember Grover Norquist's famous phrase) speaks again to what I touched on earlier.
Moreover if everything is blamed on a "killer virus" each year, rather than the global mode of production that creates the environment in which viruses can flourish, then the actual culprit, the capitalist mode of production, is let off the hook and the robber barons get to keep soaking up the profits while destroying the planet.
And do keep in mind that the PTB being the opportunists that they are will use this for further draconian measures. We have already witnessed what will be a bailout of 6-10 trillion and I can assure you little of that is coming the public's way in any form.
Also Roy the amount of disinformation and lack of critical thinking skills on display has been staggering. Take care Roy and please drop the presumptuous nonsense.