The United Nations has now referred to the Corona Virus as ”the most challenging issue the world has faced since World War 2”. It has spread around the world, with the number of reported cases now over one million, with 54,000 fatalities. America is the country with the most reported cases of the virus, with almost a quarter million infected and 6,000 dead. The American health care system is in danger of being overwhelmed.
The medical professionals anticipate running out of equipment within a few days. Hospitals in all fifty states are being forced to ”bid against each other”, in an attempt to buy the medical equipment they so desperately need. This includes not only ventilators, but also personal protective equipment, such as face masks, so as to give the staff a measure of protection from the virus. As the situation becomes ever more desperate, the price of all such medical equipment continues to rise.
The capitalists refer to this as the ”law of supply and demand”. The greater the demand, the higher the price of the items which are available, so they do their best to limit the supply, possibly hoarding such things as face masks, in order to increase profits. As a result of this, the fact is that countless people are getting sick and many of them are dying. This is of no concern to the capitalists. They are only concerned with their profit, their ”bottom line”. This pandemic, which is sweeping the world and causing untold suffering, they see as an ”opportunity”. Make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of this ”opportunity”, making money ”hand over fist”.
New York City is currently considered to be the ”epicentre” of the outbreak in America, with the hospitals and medical staff stretched to the limit. The New York Fire Department, as ”first responders”, is reported to have 3,000 members out sick, mainly as a result of being exposed to the virus, in the performance of their duties. In addition, the president of the New York Nurses Association pointed out that ”it does not matter how many ventilators we have, if we are dead”. That girl has a way with words!
The American military is not indifferent to the suffering of the citizens, and has graciously sent a military hospital ship, the Comfort, to New York City, to help relieve the pressure. The only stipulation is that the ship will only allow patients who are not infected with the virus to be treated. In that way, hospital beds in the city will become available for those who are infected with the virus.
The patients who are identified as candidates for transferral to the Comfort must first be tested, to see if they have the virus. It takes several days to get the test results, and most hospital patients are released after four or five days. So by the time the test results are produced, the patients are usually released. As a result of this, the Comfort, which has a thousand beds and has been docked in New York harbour for three days, has possibly twenty patients. The medical staff within the city do not refer to this ship as the Comfort. They refer to it as the ”Floating Joke”.
The press reports that certain hospitals are filled to capacity and even overflowing, with patients being placed in hall ways. The doctors are referring to the situation as a ”medical war zone”. There is a palpable sense of despair and frustration within the medical community. The medical crisis is expected to intensify, as the infection rate has not yet reached a ”peak”, to use the popular term.
It is just a matter of time, and probably a short time, before the health care system in the country is overwhelmed. Even now, there are people who are infected and very sick, yet refuse to go to the hospital. They choose to remain at home and die surrounded by their families, as opposed to going to the hospital and dying alone. The sad fact is that people who are placed on ventilators have only a twenty percent chance of recovering. This means that of every five people placed on ventilators, only one is likely to survive. The other four can be expected to survive for days or even weeks, on ”life support”, but almost certainly die once the machine is removed.
This is not to say that patients should be denied ventilators, or anything else they need. It is to say that many of the ventilators which the federal government has in storage are in need of repair. The mayor of New York City is of the opinion that the federal government should ”step up” and provide more assistance, before more people die needlessly. As the highest single day increase in deaths and hospitalizations has just been reported, there is no time to lose.
As the ”federal government” to which he is referring is led by President Trump, no less, this ”assistance” is not about to take place. There are still ten states which have no ”stay at home” rules, so the folks in those states are continuing to travel and gather, to their hearts content, and spread the corona virus. These states are considered to be ”rural”, sparsely populated, so that the health care system in such areas are not on a par with that which is available in ”urban” centres. It is anticipated that any outbreak of the virus will quickly overwhelm the few hospitals which are available.
For that matter, it is just a matter of time before the medical system all across the country breaks down. In other parts of the world, there are reports of victims of the virus dropping dead in the streets, as the hospitals are filled to capacity. Now the press is starting to face reality and reporting that the virus is anticipated to be with us for months and not weeks. After that, it is the opinion of medical experts that we could then be faced with a ”second wave”. Possibly they anticipate that the virus could ”mutate”, and return with a vengeance.
It is worth noting that world wide, the death rate for those infected with the virus is roughly five percent, while in America the death rate is around half, at perhaps two point five percent. The medical care in the country is clearly superior to other parts of the world, and those who are kept alive on ventilators, if only for a few days, are not classified as fatalities. That helps to keep the fatality rate at an artificially low level. As the medical system in the country becomes ever more overburdened, we can expect that number to grow.
In the midst of all this devastation, President Trump has a well established set of priorities. He has called up the leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia and expressed his concern over the price of oil! He wants them to limit their production of oil, as the low price of oil is adversely affecting the stock market. Americans are getting sick and dying, and Trump is worried about the price of oil! It is strange, but perhaps not too surprising, that the Kremlin is not aware of this call!
The medical professionals, the ”first responders” and the delivery workers, those who are providing desperately needed equipment to those who are in need, in turn need our support. They are risking their health and even their lives, in order to assist those who so desperately require help. To such people I can only offer my most sincere thanks.
With that in mind, and considering the fact that we are now entering a depression, may I suggest that it is high time people take action. The internet and modern communications, by which I mean various digital devices, have provided us with valuable tools. We would be fools to not take advantage of them. We are not our grandparents, we are more aware now than they ever were, and we should act accordingly.
Recently, the American women and students have proven themselves to be excellent organizers. They have managed to arrange protests across the country. Those protests were mainly focused on Trump and gun violence. Now it is once again necessary to protest, the difference being that this time such protests must not be limited to one issue. People must ”broaden their horizons”, and focus on destroying the whole system of capitalism.
As for those who find that somewhat unreasonable, feel free to face the facts. The country is entering a depression, even broader and deeper than the Great Depression. The country is ”head over heels” in debt, and cannot possibly come out of it. Equally without doubt, the capitalists fully intend to try, possibly by provoking a war with Iran. Millions of working people, proletarians, are now losing their jobs. As well, millions more small business owners, middle class people, petty bourgeois, are losing their businesses, facing bankruptcy. They too are unemployed. All are about to also lose their medical coverage and their homes. Many will be forced to live in their cars and even under bridges. As Sargent Friday of Dragnet fame was fond of saying, these are ”just the facts”.
It is also a fact that there are over 600 billionaires in the country, and they are profiting from this depression! The ”Economic Stimulus Package”, otherwise known as ”Corporate Welfare”, has served to enrich them. The federal government has chosen to bless those chosen few, those who own businesses which are Too Big To Fail, with vast sums of money, hundreds of billions. This money was collected from American taxpayers, those who are Too Small To Succeed. Bear in mind that these Sacred Six Hundred are members of a class which are technically referred to as the bourgeoisie. They run the country, and are only concerned with ”lining their own pockets”. They can and must be destroyed.
With that in mind, may I suggest that the ”army” of women and students has just received ”reinforcements”, in the form of those who have recently been ruined by the bourgeoisie. Of course, I am referring to the former small business owners, newly created proletarians. No doubt many of them are quite bitter -who can blame them?- as their dreams of becoming successful and even of joining the ranks of the bourgeoisie, have been completely crushed. Practically overnight, their life savings, their years of hard work, have been flushed down the toilet.
Those same people are now being offered small business loans. To accept those loans would only prolong the agony, driving those people ever deeper into debt. This is a depression, and in a depression, there is no room for any small business. Further, there is no way out of this crisis in capitalism. Face the fact that your businesses are gone and not coming back.
Now is the time to cast away the dreams of success, to transform that bitterness into determination, to face the fact that capitalism has had its day, that revolution and socialism is on the horizon. The world will be a far better place without capitalism!
Join the ranks of the women and students, those who have marched for change, in the past. As formerly successful business people, you have valuable knowledge and skills, which can be of great service to the working class. Most of you are aware of the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin, especially that of the necessity of scientific socialism, which includes the smashing of the existing state machinery and establishing the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat. Feel free to bring this awareness to the working class. You can speak from experience, so working people are more likely to listen to you.
Time is not on our side, as the revolution waits for no one. It will break out when it breaks out. People are bound to rise up spontaneously, and are in desperate need of class consciousness. That is where middle class, conscious people can be of great service. As it is my most fervent belief that the best way to reach the vast majority of people is with slogans, may I suggest:
Workers of the World, Unite!
Scientific Socialism!
Dictatorship Of the Proletariat!
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 