I’ve had family visiting hence the two week break between pieces and even this is a bit of a filler, some collected thoughts and ramblings just spilling out (I’m working on a meatier science thing which I should have up later this week).
Maybe this is "filler" and "ramblings" - but it's important and needs to be said, all of it. It's interesting how often those who support mitigations for pandemics also oppose genocidal slaughter.
On "just the flu", yes SARS-2 (should probably be -4 by now given the spike strain jumps for BA.2 and JN.1) is much worse for the reasons you give. But influenza is also bad and regularly causes tens of thousands of premature deaths. It, too, is unnecessary as shown by the 2020-2021 season which had very few cases and caused the extinction of the B/Yamagata strain. The same mitigations that could tame SARS also could tame influenza.
Nate, thank you for writing about what my friends and I learned in 2020. We worked for the state of Minnesota public health department. We learned that our jobs were jobs in name only. We were not allowed to do our jobs. We sat and watched people die. People who believe all of the covid lies. Or, people who still are washing their hands for an airborne illness. No one has told them how to protect themselves and their families. Many of the children who died from covid in 2020, were the children of “essential workers”, first responders, health care workers, meat packers.
I tried so hard to get the attention of leaders in the agency to put together a plan to protect these children. Black children were hospitalized with MIS-C at 5 times the rate of white children. The leaders told me that Black children were getting sicker cause of genetics and they weren’t going to do anything. This broke me. I have always been able to influence leaders to do the right thing, or gone around them to make the right thing happen. I couldn’t do anything to save the children. They were simply numbers in a report.
So my friends and I quit. We couldn’t do our jobs. There is only an illusion of public health.
Oh, in 2020 when the Navajo Nation asked the Feds for Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), the Feds sent them body bags.
The Democratic Party apparatus lacks a concept: voters own their votes. I have voted third party for the past 8 Presidential elections. I did so because those candidates were not war mongers and supported public services like single-payer health care and tuition free state universities.
In my state this year no sane and sentient third parties appear on the ballot. Just the Democrats and the Republicans and two far right-wing parties. There is going to be a lot of blank spaces on my ballot for that is how democracy functions these days. This is ridiculous. In a first past the post election my non-vote does not advance Harris any faster that would my vote for Jill Stein, MD.
That is my take on the state of U.S. democracy. One cannot defend it as it is in flames.
Talk to almost any person who is the descendant of people kidnapped, tortured, enslaved by the USA, or any of the indigenous people whose ancestors survived the genocide and relocation by the USA, and we will tell you the usa was designed to keep rich white people in power. Which it has done since 1781. Heck, the White House was built by people who were enslaved and didn’t even count as a person. We are all waiting for our reparations which will never come.
I was born a crime in 15 states and without civil rights. My family could not get a loan or a buy a home in the best parts of California. Some cities passed laws in California, Minnesota, Oregon to keep anyone not white and Christian out.
Wilson propagated the big lie of American exceptionalism and a democracy worth giving up your life for. And if you didn’t agree with the lie, your neighbors would turn you in. And if you were caught, and did not want to go fight in Europe, you would be hung upside down until you died.
Btw- love your handle. I worked in public health from 2019-21. And I live 8 miles from where George Floyd was murdered in the street. 2020 almost broke me. Then my spouse, who supports all distractions, had to play pickle ball in Dec 22. He got covid and quickly gave it to me. I got long covid. Lost my job. Had sepsis in July 2023. Had the insurance company assign a nurse to me, and she required that I write my living will. Some democracy…🤦🏽♀️
It isn’t rich white people love it is rich sociopaths. It used to be the white people years ago, and they obviously are on advantage but look at the amounts of poor white people aswell. It isn’t just about race, it is about calling them by what they are. And I guess all of us are just enablers.
Notice how many people have a 'weird fluey thing' at the moment? Guys, it's summer in the Global North, it ain't flu.
How could we live through a pandemic, enter a summer wave, and still people won't entertain the possibility that the heavy summer cold they're nursing is in fact covid.
Many states used the slave labor in the usa, I mean prison labor, to move the bodies of the covid dead from hospitals to refrigerated trucks. That’s what democracies do, right?
You talk of diversions such as the US Tennis Open which have always been thrown to us by capitalists in order to divert our attention from their rancid operations; but now the bread and circus events are actually killing us and repressing us en masse, pandemic superspreader events policed by authoritarian, fascistic security operations. Some people are actually praising competitors for taking part in events whilst COVID positive. The same at the Paris Paralympics watched by disabled people who have had no choice but to segregate ourselves from a society intent on spreading disease -probably the biggest segregation of disabled people from society in decades - most notably due to the ongoing COVID pandemic which capitalists, centrists and their pseudo left apologists have let rip for the sake of profit and the continuation of the putrid capitalist system. Now we see the true fascistic face of all capitalists as regimes around the planet seek to scapegoat and punish disabled people, to continue culling us whilst making millions more people disabled with continued austerity, pandemics, climate breakdown and war. With regard to Harris, Sanders, Cheney et al; Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy was doomed to fail in a capitalist society with an inherently undemocratic ruling class controlling the putatively ‘democratic’ process. To ensure any kind of democracy or competent governance we must first rid ourselves of the ruling class. The lesson we learn from the 1930s is that rather than supporting the revolutionary aims of Trotsky the pseudo left held back the potential for a huge grassroots movement by suppressing anger and opposition to the ruling class with the same kind of popular fronts we are seeing emerge now which are led by people who have failed to grasp history.
Maybe this is "filler" and "ramblings" - but it's important and needs to be said, all of it. It's interesting how often those who support mitigations for pandemics also oppose genocidal slaughter.
On "just the flu", yes SARS-2 (should probably be -4 by now given the spike strain jumps for BA.2 and JN.1) is much worse for the reasons you give. But influenza is also bad and regularly causes tens of thousands of premature deaths. It, too, is unnecessary as shown by the 2020-2021 season which had very few cases and caused the extinction of the B/Yamagata strain. The same mitigations that could tame SARS also could tame influenza.
Wish we as a species could learn something.
Thanks for writing.
Thanks Rick
Nate, thank you for writing about what my friends and I learned in 2020. We worked for the state of Minnesota public health department. We learned that our jobs were jobs in name only. We were not allowed to do our jobs. We sat and watched people die. People who believe all of the covid lies. Or, people who still are washing their hands for an airborne illness. No one has told them how to protect themselves and their families. Many of the children who died from covid in 2020, were the children of “essential workers”, first responders, health care workers, meat packers.
I tried so hard to get the attention of leaders in the agency to put together a plan to protect these children. Black children were hospitalized with MIS-C at 5 times the rate of white children. The leaders told me that Black children were getting sicker cause of genetics and they weren’t going to do anything. This broke me. I have always been able to influence leaders to do the right thing, or gone around them to make the right thing happen. I couldn’t do anything to save the children. They were simply numbers in a report.
So my friends and I quit. We couldn’t do our jobs. There is only an illusion of public health.
Oh, in 2020 when the Navajo Nation asked the Feds for Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), the Feds sent them body bags.
The Democratic Party apparatus lacks a concept: voters own their votes. I have voted third party for the past 8 Presidential elections. I did so because those candidates were not war mongers and supported public services like single-payer health care and tuition free state universities.
In my state this year no sane and sentient third parties appear on the ballot. Just the Democrats and the Republicans and two far right-wing parties. There is going to be a lot of blank spaces on my ballot for that is how democracy functions these days. This is ridiculous. In a first past the post election my non-vote does not advance Harris any faster that would my vote for Jill Stein, MD.
That is my take on the state of U.S. democracy. One cannot defend it as it is in flames.
Talk to almost any person who is the descendant of people kidnapped, tortured, enslaved by the USA, or any of the indigenous people whose ancestors survived the genocide and relocation by the USA, and we will tell you the usa was designed to keep rich white people in power. Which it has done since 1781. Heck, the White House was built by people who were enslaved and didn’t even count as a person. We are all waiting for our reparations which will never come.
I was born a crime in 15 states and without civil rights. My family could not get a loan or a buy a home in the best parts of California. Some cities passed laws in California, Minnesota, Oregon to keep anyone not white and Christian out.
Wilson propagated the big lie of American exceptionalism and a democracy worth giving up your life for. And if you didn’t agree with the lie, your neighbors would turn you in. And if you were caught, and did not want to go fight in Europe, you would be hung upside down until you died.
Btw- love your handle. I worked in public health from 2019-21. And I live 8 miles from where George Floyd was murdered in the street. 2020 almost broke me. Then my spouse, who supports all distractions, had to play pickle ball in Dec 22. He got covid and quickly gave it to me. I got long covid. Lost my job. Had sepsis in July 2023. Had the insurance company assign a nurse to me, and she required that I write my living will. Some democracy…🤦🏽♀️
Thank you for the informative and heartfelt reply!
May your health improve! The World Socialist Web Site, https://www.wsws.org has rather good coverage on COVID. One author, Benjamin Mateus is a physician. There is a promising article today about recent long COVID research: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/09/geei-s09.html
To quote the Navajo, that survived our government's most malign efforts, "May we walk in beauty!" I know, that is a big ask ...
It isn’t rich white people love it is rich sociopaths. It used to be the white people years ago, and they obviously are on advantage but look at the amounts of poor white people aswell. It isn’t just about race, it is about calling them by what they are. And I guess all of us are just enablers.
Notice how many people have a 'weird fluey thing' at the moment? Guys, it's summer in the Global North, it ain't flu.
How could we live through a pandemic, enter a summer wave, and still people won't entertain the possibility that the heavy summer cold they're nursing is in fact covid.
I don't know anyone who has had covid this summer, or a weird fluey thing.
By the way, even if a cold is sometimes covid, it's still a cold, no? Used to be, nobody fussed about a cold. I get positively nostalgic.
excellent Nate, too bad it's all true
Thanks for this post!
Thanks for reading
Many states used the slave labor in the usa, I mean prison labor, to move the bodies of the covid dead from hospitals to refrigerated trucks. That’s what democracies do, right?
You talk of diversions such as the US Tennis Open which have always been thrown to us by capitalists in order to divert our attention from their rancid operations; but now the bread and circus events are actually killing us and repressing us en masse, pandemic superspreader events policed by authoritarian, fascistic security operations. Some people are actually praising competitors for taking part in events whilst COVID positive. The same at the Paris Paralympics watched by disabled people who have had no choice but to segregate ourselves from a society intent on spreading disease -probably the biggest segregation of disabled people from society in decades - most notably due to the ongoing COVID pandemic which capitalists, centrists and their pseudo left apologists have let rip for the sake of profit and the continuation of the putrid capitalist system. Now we see the true fascistic face of all capitalists as regimes around the planet seek to scapegoat and punish disabled people, to continue culling us whilst making millions more people disabled with continued austerity, pandemics, climate breakdown and war. With regard to Harris, Sanders, Cheney et al; Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy was doomed to fail in a capitalist society with an inherently undemocratic ruling class controlling the putatively ‘democratic’ process. To ensure any kind of democracy or competent governance we must first rid ourselves of the ruling class. The lesson we learn from the 1930s is that rather than supporting the revolutionary aims of Trotsky the pseudo left held back the potential for a huge grassroots movement by suppressing anger and opposition to the ruling class with the same kind of popular fronts we are seeing emerge now which are led by people who have failed to grasp history.