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How many
must die for Wall Street?
By Andre Damon
March 26,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
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Deaths from
the global coronavirus pandemic soared past 21,000
on Wednesday, continuing on an exponential
trajectory. In the United States, at least 247 new
deaths were recorded and the number of new cases
grew by over 13,000.
Every day,
more than 2,000 people are dying around the world.
“It took 67 days from the first reported case to
reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000
cases, and just four days for the third 100,000
cases,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the
director-general of the World Health Organization.
Within a
matter of days, the United States will have more
cases of COVID-19 than any other country, including
China and Italy, the initial epicenters of the
disease. In New York, lines of ill people snake
around city blocks, while a makeshift morgue is
being constructed outside of New York’s Bellevue
Hospital. In other New York City hospitals,
refrigerated trucks are being used to store bodies
in conditions doctors call “apocalyptic.”
Experts
have repeatedly warned that the United States is at
only the beginning of its outbreak and that cases
will continue to soar. But already hospitals
throughout the country—including those far away from
the main centers of infection, such as the Beaumont
and Henry Ford Health systems in Detroit—are filled
to capacity.
Despite
widespread claims that the pandemic afflicts only
the elderly, the disease has proven dangerous to
broad sections of society. Thirty-eight percent of
people hospitalized in the US are between the ages
of 20 and 54.
Meanwhile,
despite the pleas of health experts, many workplaces
throughout the country remain open. It is becoming
increasingly clear that the disease is rapidly
spreading in American workplaces, many of which do
not have even the most basic safety measures in
place to protect workers.
Two US Fiat
Chrysler workers, including a worker at the Sterling
Heights Assembly Plant north of Detroit and another
at the Kokomo Transmission Plant in Indiana, have
died after becoming infected with COVID-19.
Nine
workers in Amazon warehouses have tested positive
for the virus. But despite the mounting toll, Amazon
has made clear that it will neither shut down
warehouses nor provide warehouse workers and
delivery drivers with necessary protective
equipment.
Even as the
pandemic gathers strength, the Trump administration
is escalating its campaign for a prompt return to
work. Trump, disregarding the warnings of his own
health experts, has called for America to be “open
for business” by Easter, demanding to see “packed
churches all over our country.”
In perhaps
the most deranged expression of the outlook shared
by Trump, the far-right Federalist online
magazine, whose content Trump has repeatedly
promoted on Twitter, published an article urging its
readers to deliberately infect themselves and their
children with the virus in order to generate “herd
immunity.” |
