It's fitting that we're ending the year with this messaging: Cancel your plans with family and friends, don't enjoy the holidays, but show up to work because apparently COVID clocks out when you clock in.
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Our government is supposed to step up during times of crisis or when collective action is needed. But throughout this pandemic, it's ordinary Americans who were asked to sacrifice; COVID was made an issue of personal responsibility and morality. It's been 2 years of scapegoating.
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Hospital capacity: Unvaccinated individuals get blamed for overcrowding hospitals. But why aren't we better prepared? Hospital execs spent decades cutting back the # of hospital beds we have. Empty hospital beds might better prepare us for an emergency, but it would cost them $$.
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Nursing: Then there's nursing capacity. Bare minimum, at this point below minimum, staffing led to overworked, stressed-out nurses who are quitting. We don't have a "nursing shortage"; we have executive greed that refuses to pay or hire enough nurses to keep staff/patients safe.
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This was a perfect time for progressives to argue for Spain's strategy - publicly take over the financing of hospital systems. Send the billing departments home (with pay) & allow federal funding to sufficiently staff hospitals with adequate pay. A #MedicareForAll trial.
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Instead, Congress gave hospitals $100 Billion via the CARES Act. Hospitals are using it to buy up independent practices and consolidate. Consolidation will lead to worse outcomes and worse experiences with our healthcare system for Americans in the future.
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Testing: We needed billions of free rapid covid tests from the very start. They can quickly tell you if you're highly contagious or not. 500 million free rapid tests by sometime in January is totally inadequate. They should be free & readily available.
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The reason they aren't available sooner is because experts didn't trust the public with them. Respect people enough to be honest with them & they may return that respect by listening to you.
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Paid leave: For many working people with no paid leave during COVID, the financial risk of missing work for two weeks leads them to avoid testing. We still don't even offer paid time off to get vaccinated for the boosters. Are our leaders trying their best?
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I'm sure this lack of paid leave is part of the reason for the CDC's shorter quarantine recommendations. Having tests readily available for people at the end of the shorter quarantine would help the new policy make more sense, but whoops - we don't have enough.
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Inflation: Average workers, who are getting their wage increases wiped away, get blamed for inflation. Meanwhile corporations are bragging about making record profits because they realized our politicians won't touch them & the mainstream press would happily blame workers instead
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The government should be protecting us from price-fixing, from coordinated price hikes in concentrated markets. Impose a temporary excess profits tax. Pass legislation to prohibit stock buybacks again. Do /something/ to show Americans you're fighting for them.
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Our government, in both parties, has decided to prioritize corporate profit over the lives of people. And yet who are we told to blame? Each other. Individuals trying to get by the best we can for us and our families in the face of an onslaught of problems.
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Americans are left feeling like they have to take on the pandemic and price hikes all on their own because their government doesn't have their backs. Either people completely check out of politics or they unleash their anger at equally powerless voters across the aisle.
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We know it isn't because the government can't function. It has no problem over-delivering on military spending. No problem passing infrastructure legislation corporate America wanted. No problem modifying CDC guidelines to ensure staffing levels remain adequate.
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I believe the government can function for working people instead. I’m willing to do the hard work of governing on behalf of the American people, willing to take on corporate and wealthy interests, willing to fight for the many, not the few.
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