Joe Biden is Replicating Donald Trump’s Covid Strategy of Doing Nothing
On January 4th, 2021 the United States announced it had reached over 1 million covid cases, a record number of cases to be recorded in a single day. Hospitals are being overwhelmed as ICU capacity in many states is at 100%. Schools are struggling to find enough teachers to keep schools open. Despite this, the Biden Administration has continued its push to reopen the economy at the behest of corporate interests.
The Trump administration failed to lock down all nonessential businesses in time, didn’t provide Americans enough financial support to properly lock down, heavily pushed reopening to save the economy at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives, failed to provide enough testing to allow health officials to trace the virus, and left responsibility to the states to figure it out for themselves. Now we’re starting to see something very similar but this time from the Biden administration. As omicron spikes, the response has been allowing covid unemployment benefits to expire, not locking down at all, no stimulus, attacking teachers unions, not providing enough testing, and allowing the CDC to pull back quarantine time in the middle of the largest Covid spike on record.
Under Trump, a disproportionate amount of the covid relief went to corporations while giving pennies on the dollar to workers. Biden allowed those benefits to expire and a senior official from the Biden administration was anonymously quoted when asked about the possibility of further stimulus:
“No. There might be something small for restaurants. But the economy is booming, there are millions of open jobs, and we do not believe people should be sitting at home if they are vaccinated and boosted, as most adults are,“…”So we are not going to write checks to incentivize people to sit at home, and we are not going to bail out businesses if the economy seems strong,”
With no stimulus in sight, it’s a big sign that there are no plans to shut down non-essential business in an attempt to avoid overwhelming the hospital system. States already have no ICU beds available. The lack of beds has downstream effects as patients who aren’t going to the ER with covid aren’t getting the care they need. The policy choice to have business as usual while people are dying of cardiac arrest in the waiting room will only lead to more deaths than necessary.
On top of not locking down, the CDC recently updated its guidance to shorten covid quarantine times from 10 days to 5 days. The change comes despite the CDC’s own data showing that about 31% of people who are covid positive can still spread the virus after 5 days. This decision came conveniently a few days after it was reported that the CEO of Delta had asked the CDC to reduce quarantine time so it could deal with staff shortages. This is not to say the CDC made its decision specifically for Delta, but is just one example of the pressure the institution has been receiving from the business community who has financial interest in keeping the economy open and their employees at work. The new guidance will only be abused by employers to force their employees to work sick in the middle of a pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci said just as much in his justification for the change.
“There is the danger that there will be so many people who are being isolated who are asymptomatic for the full ten days, that you could have a major negative impact on our ability to keep society running. So the decision was made of saying let’s get that cut in half.” so many people who are being isolated who are asymptomatic for the full ten days, that you could have a major negative impact on our ability to keep society running. So the decision was made of saying let’s get that cut in half.”
This quote gives the game away as it’s clear the change wasn’t made based on the data, but was a political decision to help businesses stay open. It will come at the expense of workers going to work sick and spreading the virus further, which only leads to more harm and suffering.
When it came to testing, Donald Trump actively tried to prevent testing as much as he could claiming testing ”creates more cases.” Joe Biden on the other hand hasn’t been much better. What little testing infrastructure that was built up in the early stages of the pandemic was rolled back and hasn’t been brought back. At-Home testing kits are nearly impossible to find yet Biden refuses to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production to meet demand. People are waiting in line for hours to get tested and in some cases it can take up to 5 days to get test results back. To add insult to injury, the Biden administration refused a plan all the way back in October 2021 to send every American at-home test in an attempt to prevent a holiday spike. Walmart and Kroger are price gouging at-home tests after Biden failed to renew a deal to sell them for $14. Other countries like the U.K. are having free covid at-home tests being delivered to their door while Americans have to buy them at cost and then negotiate with their insurance company (if they have one) to get a refund.
Now conservative democrats and corporate media have launched an attack on teachers unions. The unions want to go to remote learning because so many teachers are getting covid and schools don’t have the staff availability to teach. The CDC released a report that Covid significantly increases risk of children developing diabetes. Yet NYC schools are asking covid positive teachers to work while they’re still showing symptoms. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot threatened to withhold pay from Chicago teachers who want to teach remotely. Corporate media attacked teachers as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called them “ignorant” and suggested that they should “quit” if they don’t want to teach while they are sick with covid. Fox News attacked teachers for wanting to teach remotely while doing their own show remotely. Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that in-person teaching is safe. Joe Biden, who claimed he wanted to be the most pro-union president, has yet to show any support for teachers and he doesn’t seem to take issue with the anti-teacher sentiment in his own party.
All these moves align with corporate interests to keep businesses open and coercing workers to work sick. Ending unemployment benefits, making it easier to force workers to work sick and return to work earlier, allowing companies to price gouge, and the convenient opportunity to break the teacher unions. It seems at no point has the lives of vulnerable Americans been taken into consideration and the Biden’s administration’s only response seems to be to tell everyone to get vaccinated. But it is very apparent that just telling people to get vaccinated isn’t enough. We need to go back to the basics and have a real response, led by healthcare workers, to the current spike and then we can attempt some normalcy. However, it’s unlikely that we see the response that is necessary at this point.
Updated 1/10/22
