https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DvMNhnXea4&feature
Friday, August 14, 2020
Growing wave of protests across the US against school openings
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/13/scho-a13-1.html
By Evan Blake
13 August 2020
Across the United States, thousands of teachers, education workers, parents and students are mobilizing to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Car caravans, demonstrations and other forms of protest are building wherever schools are slated to resume in-person instruction.
The reopening of schools is taking place in an unplanned, haphazard manner, in which each of the country’s nearly 14,000 local school districts are being left to their own devices. Cash strapped schools are quickly improvising as students return, including in Oklahoma, where teachers this week were given two rolls of paper towels, three boxes of tissues, one 24-ounce bottle of spray disinfectant, and a mask and gloves to carry out daily cleaning over nine weeks.
Predictably there have already been outbreaks at schools in Georgia, Oklahoma, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Hawaii.
The scientific case against the reckless reopening of schools has been bolstered by a new study from the University of Florida based on capturing and analyzing air samples containing the live virus from hospital rooms. The study confirms that tiny droplets, known as aerosols, produced simply through speaking, can travel 16 feet or more, well beyond the recommended six feet for social distancing. The aerosols can also remain airborne for hours.
A classroom simulation shows that the spread of the virus can be significantly reduced by placing ventilation near a teacher. However, the Government Accountability Office recently found that 41 percent of school districts need to update or replace the ventilation systems in at least half of their schools, and a 2016 report by the Center for Green Schools found that 15,000 schools have indoor air quality deemed unfit for students and staff to breathe.
From the US to Brazil, South Africa, Britain, France, Australia, Germany and other countries, capitalist politicians are demanding that schools reopen in order to force parents back into unsafe workplaces to resume the flow of corporate profit. In the US—the epicenter of the global pandemic with over 5.3 million cases and nearly 170,000 deaths—the drive to reopen schools finds its most homicidal expression.
On Wednesday, the White House issued a press release that stated in part, “The education of children is more than an essential business—it’s a top national priority to ensure America can continue to aggressively compete with the rest of the world.”
Shortly after the press release, a forum was held with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and a panel of teachers, academics, and Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, who is pushing the resumption of full in-person instruction in one of the nation’s epicenters. The aim of the event, titled, “Kids First: Getting America’s Children Safely Back to School,” was to promote pseudoscience and downplay the risks of reopening schools.
While cynically feigning concern for students, Trump threatened to utilize the pandemic to defund public education, saying, “I’d like to see the money follow the student,” i.e., to parochial and other private schools. He added, “If a school is closed, why are we paying the school?”
Trump and his Republican allies on the state level express most nakedly the demands of the ruling class, but the return to in-person schooling is a bipartisan policy. Last week New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that “all schools can reopen” across the state, including in New York City, the largest district in the country with 1.1 million students and 135,000 teachers and support staff. In other Democratic-controlled districts like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, schools are opening online initially or rotating online and in-person learning, but this is largely aimed at dissipating opposition and biding time to reopen fully.
Opposition to the reckless reopening of schools is mounting in the working class, whose interests are dictated by science and public health, not the rise of the stock market. Facing a concerted, bipartisan campaign to vilify educators, create divisions with parents, and use students as pawns in the return-to-work campaign, educators, parents, and students have courageously organized dozens of protests to voice their opposition.
In Elizabeth, New Jersey, a groundswell of resistance forced local officials to reverse their plans to provide in-person instruction, as demanded by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. Over 400 teachers opted out of in-person instruction, prompting the school board to change to entirely online instruction at the start of the year. This decision prompted Governor Murphy to announce that he will reverse a previous policy and develop plans for remote learning in the state.
There are growing protests across Nebraska, where Republican Governor Pete Ricketts has promoted the resumption of in-person instruction. On Monday, over 200 educators rallied at Memorial Park in Omaha, and another 100 protested in Lincoln. One teacher dressed as the Grim Reaper held a sign saying, “I can’t wait to meet my kids!”
Roughly 60 educators held a silent protest outside the Papillion La-Vista school board meeting in Papillion, Nebraska on Monday, demanding a halt to the resumption of fully in-person instruction. At the board meeting, parents and educators spoke out in favor of online learning, with Dr. James Wilson, a biology professor, stating, “I have a four-year-old little girl and a 78-year-old pair of parents that I cannot go see starting tomorrow because I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Despite the outpouring of opposition, the board voted unanimously to resume in-person instruction, which began Tuesday and Wednesday.
In Arkansas, teachers protested against Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s plans to fully reopen even as the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths have risen statewide over the past month. Dozens of protesters participated, holding signs that read, “The blood will be on Asa’s hands,” “Whose child has to die?” “I can teach from home. I can’t teach from a ventilator,” “School = super spreader event” and others.
The Fayetteville Education Association, a local affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), was compelled to organize the protest due to the immense opposition developing among educators in the state. In less than six weeks, the Facebook group Arkansans For Safe Public Schools has rapidly gained nearly 14,000 members.
In Utah, dozens of teachers protested the resumption of in-person learning in Alpine School District, the largest district, which has roughly 80,000 students. The district is located in Utah County, which currently has the highest rate of infections in the state. The guidelines adopted only mandate that a school closes when 15 or more positive cases are found.
With schools slated to resume in-person learning in Washoe County School District, in Nevada, over 100 educators, parents and students protested outside the district’s school board meeting Tuesday. High school teacher Debra Harris told the Reno Gazette Journal, “This is insane. This cannot be a safe condition during COVID.” She noted that professional development, which is usually focused on lesson planning, was now entirely about hygiene, commenting, “Nothing has been about education because that’s not what’s going to happen this year on campus.”
Facing immense pressure from educators, parents and students, Jefferson Parish Schools, the largest school district in Louisiana with some 50,000 students, was forced to delay the start of the school year by two weeks to August 26. Last week, hundreds protested at a school board meeting. With COVID-19 spreading rapidly throughout the state, nearly half of all students in the districts chose distance learning over in-person instruction.
Brian Williams J.D., a Jefferson Parish schoolteacher, spoke to the WSWS about the opposition to reopening. Describing the school board meeting, he said, “They are clueless about actual conditions on the ground. If they think school is safe, then they should put their jobs on the line, the way our lives are on the line. Promise us it’s safe by offering to resign if you’re wrong.”
Highlighting the connection between the back-to-school campaign and the back-to-work campaign, Williams said, “[These are] low-income, minority communities, essential workers. Jefferson Parish is the hottest spot for COVID-19 in all of Louisiana. Talking about reopening, the only thing you can figure is, they’re so desperate for the children’s parents’ labor that they’re willing to risk our lives.”
While last week’s protest was partially organized by the Jefferson Federation of Teachers, the local teacher union, Williams expressed disappointment with their actions. He said they were “unmotivated, moving very slowly, very hesitantly” and not calling for a strike.
The above protests are a small fraction of the dozens and possibly hundreds that have taken place across the country in recent weeks, in nearly every state.
The central task facing educators is to develop fighting organizations to connect their disparate struggles and prepare for a nationwide general strike to halt the drive to reopen schools. This can only be done independently of the procorporate American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), which have rejected the widely supported call for a nationwide strike.
The initiative and active struggle of educators, parents and students must be expanded and deepened as widely as possible. To organize and coordinate these struggles, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) calls upon all those opposed to the deadly reopening of schools to form a network of interconnected rank-and-file safety committees in every school and neighborhood.
These committees must establish connections with the broadest sections of the working class—manufacturing, logistics, health care, transit and other workers—to prepare a common fight against both corporate-controlled parties, which intend to use all forms of intimidation and state repression to force teachers back into the classrooms, regardless of the human toll.
The fight to stop the reopening of the schools will require the political mobilization of the entire working class against both corporate-controlled parties and the capitalist system they defend. Instead of squandering trillions on Wall Street and the Pentagon war machine, the working class must ensure that the resources are made available to provide state-of-the-art online learning for all students, the payment of full wages to parents who must care for their children, free and universal health care and a massive program of regular testing and contact tracing, which is the only way to contain the deadly virus.
We urge all those who wish to take up this struggle to contact us today and follow developments through the WSWS Educators Newsletter.
13 August 2020
Across the United States, thousands of teachers, education workers, parents and students are mobilizing to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Car caravans, demonstrations and other forms of protest are building wherever schools are slated to resume in-person instruction.
The reopening of schools is taking place in an unplanned, haphazard manner, in which each of the country’s nearly 14,000 local school districts are being left to their own devices. Cash strapped schools are quickly improvising as students return, including in Oklahoma, where teachers this week were given two rolls of paper towels, three boxes of tissues, one 24-ounce bottle of spray disinfectant, and a mask and gloves to carry out daily cleaning over nine weeks.
Predictably there have already been outbreaks at schools in Georgia, Oklahoma, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Hawaii.
The scientific case against the reckless reopening of schools has been bolstered by a new study from the University of Florida based on capturing and analyzing air samples containing the live virus from hospital rooms. The study confirms that tiny droplets, known as aerosols, produced simply through speaking, can travel 16 feet or more, well beyond the recommended six feet for social distancing. The aerosols can also remain airborne for hours.
A classroom simulation shows that the spread of the virus can be significantly reduced by placing ventilation near a teacher. However, the Government Accountability Office recently found that 41 percent of school districts need to update or replace the ventilation systems in at least half of their schools, and a 2016 report by the Center for Green Schools found that 15,000 schools have indoor air quality deemed unfit for students and staff to breathe.
From the US to Brazil, South Africa, Britain, France, Australia, Germany and other countries, capitalist politicians are demanding that schools reopen in order to force parents back into unsafe workplaces to resume the flow of corporate profit. In the US—the epicenter of the global pandemic with over 5.3 million cases and nearly 170,000 deaths—the drive to reopen schools finds its most homicidal expression.
On Wednesday, the White House issued a press release that stated in part, “The education of children is more than an essential business—it’s a top national priority to ensure America can continue to aggressively compete with the rest of the world.”
Shortly after the press release, a forum was held with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and a panel of teachers, academics, and Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, who is pushing the resumption of full in-person instruction in one of the nation’s epicenters. The aim of the event, titled, “Kids First: Getting America’s Children Safely Back to School,” was to promote pseudoscience and downplay the risks of reopening schools.
While cynically feigning concern for students, Trump threatened to utilize the pandemic to defund public education, saying, “I’d like to see the money follow the student,” i.e., to parochial and other private schools. He added, “If a school is closed, why are we paying the school?”
Trump and his Republican allies on the state level express most nakedly the demands of the ruling class, but the return to in-person schooling is a bipartisan policy. Last week New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that “all schools can reopen” across the state, including in New York City, the largest district in the country with 1.1 million students and 135,000 teachers and support staff. In other Democratic-controlled districts like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, schools are opening online initially or rotating online and in-person learning, but this is largely aimed at dissipating opposition and biding time to reopen fully.
Opposition to the reckless reopening of schools is mounting in the working class, whose interests are dictated by science and public health, not the rise of the stock market. Facing a concerted, bipartisan campaign to vilify educators, create divisions with parents, and use students as pawns in the return-to-work campaign, educators, parents, and students have courageously organized dozens of protests to voice their opposition.
In Elizabeth, New Jersey, a groundswell of resistance forced local officials to reverse their plans to provide in-person instruction, as demanded by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. Over 400 teachers opted out of in-person instruction, prompting the school board to change to entirely online instruction at the start of the year. This decision prompted Governor Murphy to announce that he will reverse a previous policy and develop plans for remote learning in the state.
There are growing protests across Nebraska, where Republican Governor Pete Ricketts has promoted the resumption of in-person instruction. On Monday, over 200 educators rallied at Memorial Park in Omaha, and another 100 protested in Lincoln. One teacher dressed as the Grim Reaper held a sign saying, “I can’t wait to meet my kids!”
Roughly 60 educators held a silent protest outside the Papillion La-Vista school board meeting in Papillion, Nebraska on Monday, demanding a halt to the resumption of fully in-person instruction. At the board meeting, parents and educators spoke out in favor of online learning, with Dr. James Wilson, a biology professor, stating, “I have a four-year-old little girl and a 78-year-old pair of parents that I cannot go see starting tomorrow because I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Despite the outpouring of opposition, the board voted unanimously to resume in-person instruction, which began Tuesday and Wednesday.
In Arkansas, teachers protested against Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s plans to fully reopen even as the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths have risen statewide over the past month. Dozens of protesters participated, holding signs that read, “The blood will be on Asa’s hands,” “Whose child has to die?” “I can teach from home. I can’t teach from a ventilator,” “School = super spreader event” and others.
The Fayetteville Education Association, a local affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), was compelled to organize the protest due to the immense opposition developing among educators in the state. In less than six weeks, the Facebook group Arkansans For Safe Public Schools has rapidly gained nearly 14,000 members.
In Utah, dozens of teachers protested the resumption of in-person learning in Alpine School District, the largest district, which has roughly 80,000 students. The district is located in Utah County, which currently has the highest rate of infections in the state. The guidelines adopted only mandate that a school closes when 15 or more positive cases are found.
With schools slated to resume in-person learning in Washoe County School District, in Nevada, over 100 educators, parents and students protested outside the district’s school board meeting Tuesday. High school teacher Debra Harris told the Reno Gazette Journal, “This is insane. This cannot be a safe condition during COVID.” She noted that professional development, which is usually focused on lesson planning, was now entirely about hygiene, commenting, “Nothing has been about education because that’s not what’s going to happen this year on campus.”
Facing immense pressure from educators, parents and students, Jefferson Parish Schools, the largest school district in Louisiana with some 50,000 students, was forced to delay the start of the school year by two weeks to August 26. Last week, hundreds protested at a school board meeting. With COVID-19 spreading rapidly throughout the state, nearly half of all students in the districts chose distance learning over in-person instruction.
Brian Williams J.D., a Jefferson Parish schoolteacher, spoke to the WSWS about the opposition to reopening. Describing the school board meeting, he said, “They are clueless about actual conditions on the ground. If they think school is safe, then they should put their jobs on the line, the way our lives are on the line. Promise us it’s safe by offering to resign if you’re wrong.”
Highlighting the connection between the back-to-school campaign and the back-to-work campaign, Williams said, “[These are] low-income, minority communities, essential workers. Jefferson Parish is the hottest spot for COVID-19 in all of Louisiana. Talking about reopening, the only thing you can figure is, they’re so desperate for the children’s parents’ labor that they’re willing to risk our lives.”
While last week’s protest was partially organized by the Jefferson Federation of Teachers, the local teacher union, Williams expressed disappointment with their actions. He said they were “unmotivated, moving very slowly, very hesitantly” and not calling for a strike.
The above protests are a small fraction of the dozens and possibly hundreds that have taken place across the country in recent weeks, in nearly every state.
The central task facing educators is to develop fighting organizations to connect their disparate struggles and prepare for a nationwide general strike to halt the drive to reopen schools. This can only be done independently of the procorporate American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), which have rejected the widely supported call for a nationwide strike.
The initiative and active struggle of educators, parents and students must be expanded and deepened as widely as possible. To organize and coordinate these struggles, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) calls upon all those opposed to the deadly reopening of schools to form a network of interconnected rank-and-file safety committees in every school and neighborhood.
These committees must establish connections with the broadest sections of the working class—manufacturing, logistics, health care, transit and other workers—to prepare a common fight against both corporate-controlled parties, which intend to use all forms of intimidation and state repression to force teachers back into the classrooms, regardless of the human toll.
The fight to stop the reopening of the schools will require the political mobilization of the entire working class against both corporate-controlled parties and the capitalist system they defend. Instead of squandering trillions on Wall Street and the Pentagon war machine, the working class must ensure that the resources are made available to provide state-of-the-art online learning for all students, the payment of full wages to parents who must care for their children, free and universal health care and a massive program of regular testing and contact tracing, which is the only way to contain the deadly virus.
We urge all those who wish to take up this struggle to contact us today and follow developments through the WSWS Educators Newsletter.
The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/13/pers-a13.html
13 August 2020
With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate of Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As was to be expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-wing candidates to run the most right-wing campaign possible.
There is a certain inevitability to the choice of Harris. In July of last year, the World Socialist Web Site—based on a survey of who would be the worst, most reactionary and at the same time most suitable choice for second spot on the Democratic Party ticket—predicted that Harris would most likely be named the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the nomination. She had all the ruthlessness, narcissism and careerism requisite for the job, plus the ethnic background to suit the Democrats’ obsession with racial and gender identity.
Kamala Harris is a dyed-in-the wool political reactionary.
This year has seen mass demonstrations throughout the country in response to the police murder of George Floyd. As a direct result of the policies of the ruling class, nearly 170,000 people have died to date in the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death toll now at more than 1,000. There is growing anger in workplaces over the homicidal back-to-work campaign and broad opposition among teachers to the efforts to reopen the schools. Tens of millions of people are unemployed, and they have been cut off from federal benefits and face being evicted from their homes.
In the midst of this monumental political, economic and social crisis, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American people are to be offered the “choice” between the fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California. This says everything about the degraded state of American politics.
Following the announcement by Biden on Tuesday, the media leapt into action with its nauseating effusion of state propaganda. The selection of Harris has been universally proclaimed to be “historic,” a watershed moment.
In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing “historic” about Harris. As district attorney in San Francisco (2004-2011), attorney general in California (2011-2017), and, finally, US senator (2017 to the present), Harris has compiled a track record of backing the police, locking up workers and immigrants, covering up for the banks and supporting militarism and war.
Wall Street is certainly happy with the choice. “A VP pick that big business can back,” ran a headline on the inside pages of the New York Times. As for the military, its main concern is what will happen if the aging Biden doesn’t make it through a full term. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, opposition from the Democratic Party has been focused on issues of foreign policy. Harris, who has no other agenda than her own self-promotion, will be silly putty in the hands of the military-intelligence apparatus.
The “historic” character of the Harris nomination is premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a Democratic Party administration.
As if any of this makes a bit of difference for workers, whatever their race, gender or ethnicity. As if, moreover, the world has not already had the example of Obama, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and many others.
The selection of Harris exposes the utterly reactionary character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of identity—anything but class. In response to the eruption of protests against police violence, the Democrats did everything they could to obscure the class issues, promote racial divisions and propagate the lie that the violence of the police is an expression of the oppression of “black America” by “white America.” The outcome of this racialist campaign is the selection as their vice-presidential candidate of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from their parents.
Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris “historic.” Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist and one of the chief inspirers of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, wrote on Twitter that “the Democrats now have a presidential ticket that reflects the American people better than the GOP ticket and every presidential ticket in US history.”
According to Kendi, politicians “reflect” the American people not because of the socioeconomic forces they represent, but solely by their racial and ethnic background and their gender. Interests are determined by race. This is not progressive politics, but right-wing and racialist politics, which shares much in common with the fascistic politics of Donald Trump.
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote that he was “incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU [historically black colleges and universities] grad, chosen as a vice presidential nominee.” This was, he added, the stuff “dreams are made of.”
Commenters on Twitter quickly pointed to the contrast between this statement and his declaration in November 2018 that he would never support Biden or Harris because “they both helped build & advance mass incarceration.”
Political principles have never been a strong suit of Democratic Party hacks. They look forward to positions within the Biden administration and other opportunities that will reap financial rewards.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders won widespread support for his attacks on social inequality and his calls for a “political revolution” against the establishment. On this basis, he emerged as the main contender against Biden for the Democratic Party nomination. In the end, however, the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party got nothing.
This has not, however, stopped Sanders from praising the outcome. Sanders tweeted that Harris “will make history as our next vice president.”
Since packing in his campaign in mid-March, Sanders has assumed his assigned role as principal cheerleader for the Biden campaign, along with Elizabeth Warren, et. al. The more that social anger grows, and the more the Democrats are exposed, the more determined is his support for the Democratic Party.
What an exposure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine and other political agents of the Democratic Party who claimed that Sanders was the path to the transformation of American politics and even the realization of socialism! They make fools of themselves every election. They will tag along with the Democratic Party in one form or another, no doubt accompanied by talk about how they are building a “progressive movement” inside that party of American imperialism, along with other varieties of political fraud. Every four years, the same play is performed.
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of American politics.
Certain conclusions must be drawn from this experience, not only about Sanders, but about an entire type of pragmatic politics that hopes for easy answers to the crisis confronting the working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.
The politics of the working class must begin with a serious theoretical understanding, rooted in a Marxist and class analysis. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. The politics of race and gender identity, which it relentlessly promotes, gives expression to the interests of layers of the upper-middle class, which employ this right-wing ideology in their fight for positions of power and privilege in the state, academia and corporate boardrooms. The pseudo-left, including the DSA and associated organizations, represent this social layer.
All of this is directed against the working class and the development of a genuine movement for socialism. Objective conditions, however, have created the conditions for a powerful eruption of class struggle, in the United States and internationally. The coronavirus pandemic, as the Socialist Equality Party has explained, is a “trigger event in world history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic, social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.”
Nothing progressive will emerge except through the intervention—the interference—of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign are oriented to the development of a socialist leadership in the working class. Our campaign is the only campaign that raises critical questions of perspective, exposing the reactionary promoters of racial conflict and the cheerleaders of Sanders’ “political revolution.”
The SEP is spearheading the organization of workers against the homicidal policy of the ruling elite, in opposition to all factions of the ruling class, on the basis of a revolutionary program to put an end to inequality, war, dictatorship and the capitalist system. This is the way forward.
How The Pandemic Humiliated Critics Of Medicare for All
Centrist Democrats and Republicans once pointed to Europe as the example of why single-payer wouldn’t work. Things look different today.
Walker Bragman
Aug 13
This report was written by Walker Bragman.
When the novel coronavirus first arrived in the United States, it spurred on remarkable message discipline among America’s political class. The consensus that emerged on both sides of the aisle dictated that no matter what happened, Americans ought to be glad they do not live in a country with socialized medicine.
At the final Democratic presidential debate on March 15, former Vice President Biden pointed to COVID numbers in Italy as evidence that not only was Medicare for all not a solution to the crisis, but it would put the country at greater risk.
"With all due respect for Medicare for all, you have a single-payer system in Italy,” the former vice president said. “It doesn’t work there. It has nothing to do with Medicare for all. That would not solve the problem at all."
Weeks later, in early April, Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden echoed the sentiment in a Twitter spat with a Medicare for All supporter. “You might want to check out the death rate in France before you think the form of health system is the answer here,” she tweeted.
Not long after, the Washington Post ran an op-ed by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen declaring the COVID-19 pandemic was “an indictment of socialized medicine.”
“If you think today’s pandemic bolsters the case for socialized medicine, then ask yourself a simple question: If you came down with a serious case of COVID-19, would you rather be in an Italian hospital or an American one?” the piece opens, before lauding Biden’s debate answer.
Such arguments were never fair -- the pandemic was only just starting in the United States, while COVID-19 had indeed rampaged across Europe, there were contributing factors like years of austerity and a lack of supply chain redundancy in the modern globalized economy. But now, just a few months later, these arguments completely and utterly fail.
New infections are still surging in the U.S. while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on the virus. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported more new COVID cases in a single day than Italy, France, and the U.K. reported last month combined, and roughly 45 percent of their total deaths.
With 53,344 new cases and 1,450 deaths, Tuesday’s numbers were not extraordinary. There have been days with far higher counts on both statistics. But compared to the numbers coming out of Europe and elsewhere, they serve as a bleak reminder that America has completely failed to manage the pandemic. For the entire month of July, Italy reported just 6,959 new cases and 374 deaths; France reported 23,118 new cases and 434 deaths; the U.K. reported 19,424 new cases and 2,389 deaths.
In other words, it took the U.S. one average day to record more new cases and almost half the deaths that Italy, France, and the U.K. recorded in the month of July combined.
Polls Show Surging Support for Medicare For All
Outside of Europe, countries with national health care programs have also outperformed the United States.
Taiwan, which has single-payer, reported 20 new cases and no deaths in July.
New Zealand -- also a single-payer country -- declared itself COVID-free in early June. On Tuesday, it recorded its first locally-transmitted COVID case in 102 days.
The U.S. currently leads the world in active COVID cases with more than 5 million -- despite the fact that other nations are conducting more tests. Today, less than half of U.S. states are seeing a decline in infections. The U.S. also leads in the number of deaths with more than 162,000. The country represents just four percent of the planet’s total population but a stunning 25.5 percent of all COVID cases and 22 percent of all COVID deaths.
By comparison, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, a body of the European Union, all of Europe, which has a population of 741 million, has about 3 million active cases and roughly 207,215 deaths since the pandemic started. All of Asia, with a population of 4.5 billion, has just over 4.8 million active cases and has seen roughly 106,711 deaths.
While much of the explosion in cases and deaths in the United States can be attributed to a premature push to reopen the country by the Trump administration and state governors, as well as the politicization of mask-wearing by the president and conservative activists, the pandemic has exposed gaps in America’s health care system that are impossible to ignore.
Public support for Medicare for all swelled in April according to the Koch-funded Pacific Research Institute, a think tank dedicated to “advancing free-market policy solutions.” A recent The Hill-HarrisX poll found that Medicare for all had the support of 87 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents. Indeed, even naysayers are beginning to change their tune.
Retweeting a call for Medicare for all by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), MSNBC host Joy Reid, who gained notoriety as a pro-establishment attack dog in 2016, acknowledged that while she’d been “a past M4A skeptic,” she couldn’t “think of one good reason today to keep the current system.” It’s a sentiment shared by many in the medical field.
Democratic Establishment Remains Opposed To Medicare For All
Even so, Biden has remained steadfast in his opposition to single-payer, which was not included in the recently released draft of the 2020 Democratic platform as a result. In response, 360 delegates have threatened to oppose the final platform if it does not include Medicare for All.
While the Democratic Party leadership battles things out with the base, many doctors are sounding the alarm, arguing the need for single-payer is urgent.
“Hospitals are now run as businesses and it doesn't make money to have empty beds, so ICUs and such are designed to be at 90-ish percent capacity to minimize loss,” explained Dr. Peter Possidente, a family medicine resident in upstate New York. “Not great when you have a massive surge of patients.”
To his point, New York experienced this problem of space in April. In mid-July, Florida, Arizona, and Texas hospitals struggled with the same problem.
Dr. Adam Gaffney — the president of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports single-payer — said cost barriers to health care are making the crisis worse.
“The pandemic is laying bare the lethal inequality of American society and American health care,” he explained. “COVID-19 threatens the health of people everywhere, but only in the U.S. will it also ruin patients financially. When people avoid testing and care because they fear the costs, it fuels the epidemic’s spread.”
Possidente echoed this warning, noting that health care rationing has left the U.S. population needlessly vulnerable to pandemics.
“Overall, if people have preventative and proactive health care, as opposed to just going when they’re on death’s door, they’ll be healthier and stand a better chance of surviving things when something does happen because they’ll be up to date on all the stuff that should have been done,” he explained. “Our population is not as healthy as it could be because it’s such a burden to have consistent medical care and medications in our system.”
Possidente worries that rationing will almost certainly be made worse with the recent surge in the number of uninsured Americans, a result of spiking unemployment as businesses let people go or fail altogether.
By May, an estimated 27 million Americans had lost their insurance plans, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
According to a WestHealth/Gallup poll from late April, one in seven Americans said they would not seek treatment for COVID due to cost. Indeed, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo noted in May that 66 percent of people newly diagnosed with COVID were not seeking care. In cities across the country -- Houston, New York, Boston -- there have also been upticks in the number of Americans dying at home from coronavirus without seeking care. This trend, however, may reflect multiple causes including the late onset of the virus’s severe symptoms or fear by patients of contracting COVID at the hospital.
To solve the rationing problem and get COVID patients treatment, Congress has allocated billions in relief funding to hospitals and health care providers to cover free pandemic-related care. Meanwhile, large insurers like Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare have made announcements waiving cost-sharing for COVID-related treatment -- even as they rake in record profits from people holding off on seeking care. As one recent headline put it, “Health insurers strike gold with COVID-19.”
UnitedHealth Group, for example, recorded its highest quarterly profit ever in the second quarter with a $6.6 billion haul. Even though the Affordable Care Act placed caps on health insurer profits and requires companies to pass any extra profits back to customers through rebates, companies are retaining their massive hauls.
Meanwhile, patients still face significant out of pocket expenses related to COVID treatment and testing. Last month, progressive California Rep. Katie Porter revealed that she had received a bill for $56.60 for a COVID test in addition to her $20 co-pay. Others have been less fortunate, facing charges of thousands of dollars.
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