Among the hundreds of thousands of losses among the elderly to the coronavirus are parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends. Losses of family histories, support, and loving relationships between the old and the young. We look daily at the rising count of our tragedy and see that it should never have turned out this way. People around the world are horrified by how little elderly lives are valued in the United States.
There is no excuse for such criminal disregard for human life.
As of mid-December, a person in the United States dies from the coronavirus every 33 seconds, and it was the leading cause of death. Overall, the U.S. leads the world in the number of cases and deaths. Through December 16, 92 percent of COVID-19 deaths nationwide have occurred among those ages 55 or older. This trend is also on the state level. Thirty-nine percent of Covid-19 deaths have happened in nursing homes. The U.S. government barely responded to the increasing deaths in nursing homes and gave conflicting guidance.
Now add in the millions of Americans who have become or are on the verge of becoming homeless. Look at the children whose development is being harmed by a lack of education, social, and physical activity. Recognize the disproportionate effects on African American communities. And there are millions of us never going back to work.
The vast majority of those sick and dying are among the working class, those who were struggling to survive before the pandemic developed. Clearly, our society must change to end the suffering, poverty, and lack of access to housing, education, and health care.
It is not as if this country doesn’t have the resources to manage this crisis in its people’s best interests. The debate goes way beyond the opening or closing of the economy. It is about what kind of future we are going to have.
There were little government oversight and a complete lack of accountability in the nursing home industry. According to the ABA Journal, “At least 26 states, including Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, have implemented immunity provisions protecting long-term care facilities and other health care providers from civil negligence lawsuits arising from the COVID-19 pandemic—including decisions resulting from resource or staffing shortages.”
From the beginning of the pandemic, our government provided no leadership and did not guarantee the production and distribution of the resources needed to control the outbreak. Looming pandemics were not unexpected, and warnings were ignored. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, nurses, and everyday people have been pleading for some measure of decisions, plans, and contingencies to deal with the crisis. The simple idea of wearing a mask was turned into a political and ideological battleground.
Like it or not, the United States is made up of classes, and the working class is suffering from the decisions and actions of a government more beholden to the corporations every day. As a class, we are going to have to hold our government accountable to meet our needs. We will have to fight for a society where all the wealth is not piled up on one side and all the poverty on the other. We have no choice but to overcome the divisions imposed on us by the ruling class and unite to put an end to the hunger, poverty, and homelessness.
Communism is a social organization based on the common ownership of socially necessary means of production. Millions of people in the United States and billions in the world demand to be fed, housed, and educated even if they don’t have the money to pay. This movement has to learn that it must take over the automated equipment, the entire electronic digital economy, and run it for the benefit of humanity, rather than for the profit of the few.
Published: January 3, 2021
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