Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
When even the centrist to conservative NY Times Editorial Board is critical of Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats for not doing enough, and it seems to me deceptively so, (the Dems, not the Board) you know we are in trouble in this fading Republic.
Here’s the editorial which points out the crucial “fine print” : small firms under 50 employees are exempt from paid sick leave provisions, modest as they are, as well as the large corporations, the threshold there is an exemption for those who employee 500 or more. The Times offers that the bill only covers about 20% of the workforce!
Here the link: www.nytimes.com/...… the title of the article is “There’s a Giant Hole in Pelosi’s Corona- virus Bill.”
I don’t think this needs much further elaboration. This is the editorial board which endorsed Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for their moderation and ability to undercut Bernie Sanders by being more and more incremental, Senator Klobuchar for being loudly, explicitly for that.
Therefore, let me share a comment I made just around the time Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were about to have their press conferences, statement on the crisis over the Pandemic. Two days ago, but as the sweep of events goes, that seems like it was much longer, but quite relevant “still”.
Here’s what I was commenting on, and what I said, which received way over the usual very modest number of “recommends” I get at the Times. And triggered a lively set of comments. I’ll spare you those.
In essence, what I was saying that Bernie’s policies, especially those for universal health care, were the ones to best meet the crisis of the Pandemic, and also the “Right to a Job” for the recession heading economy...as sector after sector must pull back, withdraw from full commerce to meet the medical threat...
www.nytimes.com/...
Here's the irony, Democratic Centrists united in opposition to, and even hatred of Bernie Sanders, and in equal measure, his policies. What he has put on the table, medically, socially for day care, for worker rights, a guaranteed job - is the broad social caring - broader than what I just heard Speaker Pelosi put on the table in a press conference...In other words, Bernie's impossible agenda in the eyes of people like Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Wang, Bloomberg, Harris, Delaney, ...sorry, not going to fit them all in but none have endorsed Bernie...is what is needed to fight the virus: the caring, do what it takes... where went the worries of the deficit when businesses bottom line is on the line ...and yes, out of medical and self-preservation logic, we're even going to have to care for the bottom 60% for the first time since the Great Depression and perhaps the narrow window that socialist Michael Harrington gave us in "The Other America" to pry open the barriers just a bit for Medicare and other anti-poverty programs for a reluctant LBJ...Will it register for the gang tacklers of the greatest left wing bashing since the McCarthy era of the Cold War? No. But there the truth is...moving left and caring forced by dint of circumstances of self-survival, as in 1932-1936 and 2008-2009 (barely, and limited to finance)...GM bailout with workers' wages and benefits pushed down...I hope Bernie makes the most out of the establishment's hypocrisy and narrow ideals.
I don’t want to leave without noting our debt to John M. Barry’s 2004 book, still quite relevant, “The Great Influenza: The Epic story of the Deadliest Plague in History.”
I’ll let him make the case with a couple of paragraphs from pages 102-103, which I had bookmarked way back in 2004-2005 when I first read it. His focus goes right to the heart of our lack of planning for intensive care beds and what you need most for most viral pandemics: help for the lungs, to breath: respirators.
“Influenza and other viruses — not bacteria — combine to cause approximately 90 percent of all respiratory infections, including sore throats.
Coronaviruses (the cause of the common cold as well as SARS), parainfluenza viruses, and many other viruses all cause symptoms akin to influenza, and all are often confused with it. As a result, sometimes people designate mild respiratory infections as ‘flu’ and dismiss them.
But influenza is not simply a bad cold. It is a quite specific disease with a distinct set of symptoms and epidemiological behavior. In humans, the virus directly attacks only the respiratory system, and it becomes increasingly dangerous as it penetrates deeper into the lungs. Indirectly it affects many parts of the body, and even a mild infection can cause pain in muscles and joints, intense headaches and prostration. It may also lead to far more grave complications.
The overwhelming majority of influenza victims usually recover fully within ten days. Partly because of this, and partly because the disease is confused with the common cold, influenza is rarely viewed with concern.
Yet even when outbreaks are not deadly as a whole, influenza strikes so many people that even the mildest viruses almost always kill. Currently (C. 2004) in the United States, even without an epidemic or pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that influenza kills on average 36,000 people per year.
It is, however, not only an endemic disease, a disease that is always around. It also arrives in epidemic and pandemic form. And pandemics can be more lethal — sometimes much, much more lethal -than endemic disease.
Throughout known history there have been periodic pandemics of influenza, usually several a century. They erupt when a new influenza virus emerges. And the nature of the influenza virus makes it inevitable that new viruses emerge.”
Again: given these facts, where was the physical preparation, even before this new pandemic, for respirators and critical care spaces...which flow from the nature of what we will continually face?
Thanks John Barry.
Best to you all,
Bill of Rights
Frostburg, MD