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Showing posts with label Covid-19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Covid-19. Show all posts


As I sit here today, looking at a world rocked by the COVID-19 crisis and thinking about the vast sums of money needed to address it, I find myself wondering what it would’ve been like had we had even one trillion dollars to spend on something a few years ago.

What might the world be like now, if four or five years ago we had had $1 trillion to spend on the global climate change crisis? What would have happened if we had $1 trillion for the educational crisis in America? If a trillion dollars had been put towards ending America’s homelessness crisis, what could we have achieved? What about the hunger crisis? Could a trillion dollars have solved with that? America faces, and has faced for many years now, a crisis of structural inequality, income inequality, wealth inequality, and inequality of opportunities. I am betting that if $1 trillion had been used to solve America’s inequality crisis, we could probably have gone a long way towards addressing it. What about $1 trillion to help solve the healthcare crisis? A trillion dollars to build hospitals, buyout insurance companies, and solve any and all other problems associated with a single-payer health care system. Looking globally, America could’ve taken $1 trillion to completely eliminate the world’s refugee problems. Pick the disease or illness of your choice; now imagine $1 trillion focused on solving it. Malaria? Cancer? Infectious diseases? I don’t know, maybe $1 trillion could’ve bought solutions to all three.

Four or five years ago we “did not have” $1 trillion to spend on any of these crises. But crises they were, and crises they continue to be. [Note: Yes, I understand that the government neither has nor doesn’t have any given amount of money. We are not on the gold standard – we don’t have to get more gold in order to print more money. Budgetary deficits of the federal government are not the same thing as household borrowing. The federal government doesn't need to get money from somewhere, it just creates it out of thin air (really!) The act of printing money, or not printing money, effects the money supply. That, plus the velocity of money, impacts inflation or deflation. Four or five years ago the government could have printed a trillion dollars to use on anything it (we) wanted. The decision whether or not to create money was dictated by monetary policy, not by the need to address specific issues.]

The pandemic crisis has been a body slam to America and the world. Yes, America had to spend several trillion dollars keeping the economy together, with trillions more yet to come. We had to provide safety nets for people losing their jobs, facing the loss of a home, and so forth, as well as businesses going under and the resultant collapse of the economy. The pandemic had to be dealt with right now, period. It couldn’t wait. The trillions had to be spent, and they had to be spent right now. But why did we have to wait for a crisis that hits us in the face to spend money on serious problems? 

Meanwhile, all the crises listed above, and more, are slowly destroying our lives. These crises slowly impoverish hungry people, homeless people, people who cannot get an education, and people who are held back in life due to our crisis of structural inequality. Healthcare in this country is a crisis. But clearly we’re not going to fix it until people are lying dead in the streets for want of medical care. Most of the world has known for ages that climate change is a crisis. Yet Americans are barely waking up to the ways that climate change is ruining our way of life and actively killing people, now, not some time in the dim future. How obvious must it be that climate change is a crisis that has to be addressed right now, before people in America are willing to spend the trillions of dollars needed to address it, just as we are spending trillions to manage the effects of COVID-19.

These slow crises lack immediacy, so they are ignored. But they cant be ignored by the people they are killing. If we can spend trillions on our response to the COVID pandemic, then we can spend serious money tackling our other crises too.


I woke up this morning really, really, truly anxious about the arrival of winter. What is going to happen to people during a winter with a raging COVID-19 epidemic? 

What happens to restaurants that are barely holding on right now, when weather makes outdoor dining basically impossible? What happens to all sorts of shops, grocery stores, etc., that expect lines of people to stand outside and wait before coming in one at a time? It’s one thing to keep people lined up on the sidewalk in good weather – in the middle of a winter storm is quite another. And let us not forget the lines outside of unemployment offices.

What happens when travel to pleasant, warm places is difficult, or even banned due to travel restrictions? What happens when you can’t have a socially distanced visit outside in the yard with family, friends, or neighbors, because it’s raining, cold, snowing, or whatever flavor of "shitty" your climate brings in winter? We will all be even more isolated.

I don’t know what brought skiing to mind (I can’t ski any more due to health issues), but I wonder if ski areas can survive with socially distanced skiing. One person per lift? Lift lines with people 6' apart? Lift lines that snake for a mile, not just an annoyingly long 50'? Not that skiing is so terribly important to the world, but having the ski industry wiped out kills a whole domino of support industries and jobs.

More importantly, what businesses haven’t I thought of that can’t survive a socially distanced fall/winter/spring, and the businesses that rely on those businesses, and the people that rely on the jobs they provide?

What is it like to wear a mask when its freezing cold and your breath condenses on it?

What the fuck is this winter going to be like?

[PS: Yes, I am aware that the examples of dining out, travel, and skiing are largely the concerns of the wealthy. I am just as concerned, or more so, about the emotional and financial impact on those less fortunate. These are just my personal thoughts on how COVID may affect me. Furthermore, while "trickle-down" economics doesn’t work, the web effects of wiping out any given industry impacts us all.]



Thank heavens for COVID-19! For it has brought to the fore awareness of the way our government and institutions feel free to oppress us. I am speaking, of course, of being forced to wear masks. The anti-mask rallies and mask-protesting speakers at local government meetings have opened our eyes to the way masks are a symbol of the yoke of governmental regulation.

There is one group in particular that has been systematically oppressed by mask wearing for literally generations. I speak, of course, of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. These brave individuals, of singular importance to our nation, have gone unnoticed for decades as they are choked to death by mask-wearing requirements.

It's not just the masks either. Agencies at all levels of government require our front-line healthcare providers to not only bear the brunt of facial coverings, but also to scrub their hands till they are virtually bleeding, and even to wear gloves. In fact, in many cases, they are compelled to not only scrub their skin, but to then wear gloves over their now pristine hands - a clear message to this cultural minority that society considers them to be unclean, and no amount of bathing can wash away their filth. It is obvious to anyone who dares to look that these gloves crush fingers, and impede doctors from the very actions we call on them to perform.

There is no doubt that this wasteful activity was put in place solely to keep these workers in their place. Shockingly, medical schools, nursing programs, and others have been complicit in maintaining the notion that these rules are somehow necessary, and not blatant repression of the freedoms and creativity of doctors and nurses.

So, thank you staunch protesters. Thank you outspoken advocates. And thank you COVID-19, for bringing common sense back to the covering of our bodies and the systemic oppression of the medical community who were heretofore disenfranchised and unable to resist these soul crushing, demeaning, regulations.


The refusal to socially isolate is so small minded. Bad things happen in this world, and then you have to deal with it. Guess what? You had a heart attack. Deal with it. You cant just decide that you didn't have a heart attack. Running up flights of stairs is going to be harder than it used to be, for a while, or for the rest of your life. A loved one died. That can be terribly painful. But there it is. They died. Do what you need to do to preserve their memory and salve your hurt, but, they are dead now. Your car got stolen. I'm sorry to hear that. Depending on your circumstances that can be anywhere from annoying to devastating. But no matter the impact on your life, you cant pretend that it didn't happen. You can sit in a chair in your driveway making "brummm brummm" sounds, but until you get a new car, you ain't going anywhere.

There's a pandemic going on. You cant go to work, or school, or the gym, or the playground. Wow. That sucks. Its gone on for months and months. That's gotta be really hard to take. Social isolation is depressing, boring, and getting really old. I know. Tell me about it! But guess what? There's a pandemic going on. Try as you might, you cant just pretend that it is over. You cant just return to life as usual. That sucks. Deal with it.