Coronavirus

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Biden blasts Trump administration's handling of vaccine program – video

      by

      Joe Biden has criticised Donald Trump’s handling of the US Covid vaccination program after confirming the country had ordered an additional 200m vaccine doses to be delivered by the end of July. Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, the president spoke of the efforts his team had gone through to ensure high vaccination numbers and criticised Trump’s strategy for distributing vaccines. ‘My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job,’ Biden said. ‘He didn’t order enough vaccines. He didn’t mobilise enough people to administer the shots’
      US finalizes order for 200m additional Covid-19 vaccine doses, Biden says More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

      by

      A week after taking office, US President Joe Biden made a point of breaking with the position of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who famously blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus. Trump insisted on calling it the Wuhan flu, Kung flu or any other xenophobic alternative. Coming to the defense of the entire Asian community in the United States, Biden issued a memorandum stating the following: “Inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.”

      The Iran Deal vs. the Logic of History

      READ MORE

      The World Health Organization (WHO) team conducting an investigation in Wuhan released its preliminary findings this week on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It maintained, as Reuters reports, “that the virus likely came from bats and not a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.” On February 10, an official of the US State Department announced what appeared to be a retreat to the Trump administration’s position: “The United States will not accept World Health Organization … findings coming out of its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan, China without independently verifying the findings using its own intelligence and conferring with allies.”

      One of the WHO inspectors, British zoologist and expert on disease ecology Peter Daszak, reacting to the State Department’s note, addressed this advice to Biden in a tweet: “Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Look tough:

      1. The principal action required to maintain the status of a bully, a person whose demeanor counts more than their substance
      2. The principal action required to maintain the image of the leader of a hegemon, called upon to make a show of being hyper-aggressive toward nations elected by politicians and the media as an existential threat  

      Contextual Note

      While the WHO team offered no definitive explanation of the origin, it focused on different possibilities of animal transmission requiring further investigation. When asked at a press conference on February 10 whether he had “any interest in punishing China for not being truthful about COVID last year,” President Biden cagily replied, “I’m interested in getting all the facts.” That answer leaves him free to look tough on China or, alternatively, to look tough at the intelligence that for the past four years has done what intelligence always does, responded obsequiously to the political solicitations of the administration in place.

      One American who, for the past four years, has made a point of looking tough and has been regularly featured in the media is Mike Pompeo, the final secretary of state under the Trump administration. In a desperate effort to keep the Trump mystique going to maintain its flagging ratings, Fox News brought Pompeo back to defend the Wuhan flu theme Trump consistently exploited for electoral advantage during last year’s presidential election campaign. In the interview, “Pompeo said ‘significant evidence’ remained that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, casting doubt Tuesday on the World Health Organization‘s assessment that it likely spread from animals to humans.”

      .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      Pompeo, a former CIA director, admitted in 2019 that his job at the Central Intelligence Agency consisted of lying, cheating and stealing. He implied that he was now telling the truth, a fact ironically borne out by his honest admission of duplicity while at the CIA. And yet, there may be reason even today to believe that Pompeo has retained something of his talent for lying, which he will be willing to use for what he deems virtuous purposes. 

      The language people like Pompeo use often reveals how they manage to bend the truth when they aren’t simply betraying it. In the Fox interview, Pompeo explains, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.” What can Pompeo possibly mean when he says, “I continue to know”? Is knowledge for Pompeo something that can appear and disappear? Knowledge is a state of awareness of truth, not an act of will, something one can decide according to the circumstances. 

      And because what someone knows must be a fact, what is the solid fact he says he continues to know? He tells us that it is the idea that the coronavirus “may have come from” the Wuhan laboratory. But something that “may” be true is at best a reasonable hypothesis and at worst a fabricated lie. Something that “may” be true cannot be called knowledge. Any honest speaker would use the verb “suspect.” But, in this age of conspiracy theories, people tend to suspect anything that is merely suspected. And Fox News has always preferred assertions to suspicions.

      In the same interview, Pompeo describes his recommendations for the US policy on China. He says the nation must “continue to make sure that the next century remains one dominated by rule of law, sovereignty and the things that the America first foreign policy put in place.” 

      Besides the fact that Pompeo offers another example of his favorite verb, “continue,” his odd assertion that “the next century” (the 22nd?) must be “dominated by rule of law” offers a curious yoking of two theoretically antinomic ideas: dominance and rule of law. The very idea of “rule of law” posits a relationship of equality between all concerned parties. It opposes the effect of domination. Rule of law is about level playing fields and fair play. Pompeo’s formulation reveals that he thinks of the rule of law as a specific tool of American domination. This is of course consistent with the facts, whatever the administration. The US still steadfastly refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Trump’s “America First” policy refused any law other than its own.

      For those wondering why Fox News has taken the trouble to interview the former secretary of state of a president now being tried for sedition, the journalists reveal the interest at the end of the interview. Fox sees Pompeo as a worthy contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He’s a cleaner version of Trump, but one who will always talk and look tough.

      Historical Note

      After the most contentious presidential election in its history, the US has been preparing to experience the transition from one radical style of hyperreality to another — from Donald Trump’s outlandish display of petulant rhetoric committed to reshaping the world in his image to Joe Biden’s reserved and fundamentally uncommitted avuncular manner. Just as in 2008, when they voted in Barack Obama after eight years of George W. Bush’s chaotic wars and a Wall Street crash, Americans are expecting a change of style and focus from the never-ending drama of the Trump years. 

      But just as the self-proclaimed change candidate Obama, once in office, showed more respect for continuity than commitment to renewal, on the theme of foreign policy, President Biden appears to be following Trump’s lead while simply reducing the tone. This phenomenon reflects a more fundamental reality at the core of today’s pseudo-democratic oligarchy. It is regularly masked by the transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa. The reigning political hyperreality, despite the contrasting personal styles of successive presidents, will always prevail. Continuity trumps change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden’s future policy on both China and Iran provides two cases in point. The clock is ticking on the need to recalibrate both of these relationships, more particularly on Iran, which has an election coming in just a few months. As the world anxiously awaits the new orientations of the Biden administration, the kind of continuity Pompeo appreciates may prove more dominant than the reversal people have come to expect. After all, Trump set about reversing everything Obama did, so why shouldn’t Biden do the same? The answer may simply be that that’s not what Democrats do.

      The average American has never been seriously interested in foreign policy. That very fact has consistently led to the kind of Manichaean thinking that dominated during the Cold War. In his 2000 election campaign, the inimitable George W. Bush summed up how that Manichaean system works: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” As John Keats once wrote, “That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      Is China the New Champion of Globalization?

      by

      On January 25, addressing a virtual World Economic Forum, China’s President Xi Jinping not only strongly advocated for a multilateral approach to the COVID-19 pandemic but insisted on the virtues and systemic benefits of free trade and globalization. Jeopardizing those elements may introduce conflict into the international system, Xi warned, clearly referring to, although not mentioning, the United States. This is not the first time Xi has credited himself as the “champion of globalization,” in particular when attending meetings in Davos. In 2017, in the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, with the long shadow of barriers to trade and isolationist policies just starting to appear on the horizon, China’s president made important remarks encouraging free trade and opening up the markets.

      However, with Trump out and Joe Biden now in the Oval Office, there seems little to suggest any substantial change in US policy, at least in the foreseeable future. If the US isn’t particularly eager to work with China toward free trade and multilateral cooperation, the European Union, and Germany in particular, quickly opted for a completely different approach, signing a key investment deal with Beijing at the end of last year. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) will grant a greater level of market access for investors than ever before, including new important market openings.

      Forecasting the US-China Relationship

      READ MORE

      Washington did not miss the opportunity to express its concerns about a deal that suddenly and unexpectedly sidelined the United States at a moment when, after four years of relative anarchy and opportunism, restarting transatlantic relations should be a priority. Writing in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman recently pointed out how little sense it makes to rely on a US security guarantee in Europe while undermining its security policy in the Pacific, considering how much Europe has benefitted from the fact that for the past 70 years, the world’s most powerful nation has been a liberal democracy. Germany, in fact, was able over the last decades to exercise a sui generis role of Zivilmacht (civilian power) by framing its national interest in geoeconomic terms, encouraging German exports worldwide while outsourcing its defense to the reassuring presence of US troops.

      To better understand Xi’s quasi-imperial stance at the World Economic Forum, it has to be placed not only against the backdrop of the recent investment deals with the European Union or with the 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, but on the big news that China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2028, five years ahead of earlier predictions, mainly due to the asymmetric impact of COVID-19. While it is clear that China has successfully contained the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak and the Chinese economy is now recovering at a higher speed than other countries, it is also true that a lack of transparency and delays in sharing information with the international community about the virus have contributed to an acceleration of the pandemic at a global level.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Nonetheless, in the current debate over shaping more efficient emergency policies, China is still emerging as the model to follow and imitate, despite being unpopular. There is little doubt that in the “social imaginary” of liberal societies, as reports from Europe and the US suggest, authoritarian regimes are seen by many as more efficient and better prepared to deal with crises than democracies. Yet we must not forget that this efficiency comes at the inevitable cost of political and civil rights.

      Xi Jinping is well aware that the Biden administration can finally change course for the US and its allies, forging a united and progressive front after years of populist, nativist and authoritarian politics. Perhaps this element can help understand Xi’s assertiveness at the World Economic Forum better than the recent economic successes. After all, political and civil rights are China’s Achilles’ heel. Criticism of the Communist Party, let alone advocating for basic human rights such as freedom of speech or the rule of law, inexorably leads to repression that falls with equal severity on the rich metropolis of Hong Kong and the poor areas of Xinjiang, sweeping up ordinary citizens and billionaires alike, from Joshua Wong to Jack Ma.

      Can China credibly profess the virtues of globalization to achieve harmony and balance in an international system if it doesn’t adhere to international law? Can Beijing speak of cooperation to solve global problems when it has withheld vital information about the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic? As Xi Jinping continues to steer the Middle Kingdom out of its historical isolation, avoiding challenging the United States for the position of world leader will be difficult, given China’s demographics and economic status. Will these two Weltanschauungen, two comprehensively different conceptions of the world, sooner or later present the international community with a choice?

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump's policies

      by

      The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.In seeking to respond to the pandemic, Trump has been widely condemned for not taking the pandemic seriously enough soon enough, spreading conspiracy theories, not encouraging mask wearing and undermining scientists and others seeking to combat the virus’ spread.Dr Mary T Bassett, a commission member and director of Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, told the Guardian: “The US has fared so badly with this pandemic, but the bungling can’t be attributed only to Mr Trump, it also has to do with these societal failures … That’s not going to be solved by a vaccine.”In a wide-ranging assessment published on Thursday, the commission said Trump “brought misfortune to the USA and the planet” during his four years in office. The stinging critique not only blamed Trump, but also tied his actions to the historical conditions which made his presidency possible.“He was sort of a crowning achievement of a certain period but he’s not the only architect,” said Bassett, “And so we decided it’s important to put him in context, not to minimize how destructive his policy agenda has been and his personal fanning the flames of white supremacy, but to put it in context.”The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasized that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure. Between 2002 and 2019, US public health spending fell from 3.21% to 2.45% – approximately half the share of spending in Canada and the UK.To determine how many deaths from Covid the US could have avoided, the commission weighted the average death rate in the other G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK – and compared it to the US death rate.In another comparison, the commission found if US life expectancy was equivalent to the average in the other G7 countries, 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018.The Lancet commission on public policy and health in the Trump era, launched in April 2017 to catalogue Trump health policies, examines the driving forces of his 2016 election win and offers policy recommendations. The 33 commissioners are from the US, UK and Canada and work in public health, law schools, medicine, unions, indigenous communities and other groups.The commission devotes as much time in the report to its namesake as it does to the conditions that made him possible.A line is drawn from neoliberal policies pushed in the past 40 years, such as those that intensified the drug war and resulted in mass incarceration, to health inequities Trump exacerbated while in office. Many of the connections date back even further, to the colonization of the Americas and the persistence of white supremacy in society.“I really think one of the accomplishments of the report is its historical truth-telling,” said Bassett, New York City’s health commissioner from 2014 to 2018.Trump’s response to documented health inequities and growing inequality was to attack programs and policies intended to make health insurance more affordable and accessible. In Trump’s first three years in office, there were 2.3 million more people without health insurance.Between 2017 and 2018, the health insurance coverage rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points for Latinos – roughly 1.5 million people – and by 2.8 percentage points for Native American and Alaska native people, while remaining stable for the white population, according to the commission.The report not only assesses health policy, but also includes lengthy sections on immigration, Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, racism and the environment. Dr Adam Gaffney, a commission member and Harvard Medical School assistant professor, said: “To only focus on medical care would neglect the many other inequities and injustices that produce health and sickness.”The commission said evidence is growing that Trump’s regulatory rollbacks have increased death and disease. Between 2016 and 2019, the annual number of deaths from environmental and occupational factors increased by more than 22,000 after years of steady decline.The negative consequences of the rescinded regulations disproportionately affected the states which most supported Trump in 2016. These are also states most affected by rollbacks in health insurance coverage, according to the report.The commission did identify a positive in Trump’s domestic agenda: his support for the First Step Act, a prison and sentencing reform bill which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug-related crimes among other things.The commission also noted that historical advances usually follow a period of conflict and struggle and included recommendations for healthcare workers to advance progress in the wake of Trump’s presidency.The report includes a list of policy recommendations to address the issues it raised, including providing compensation for descendants of enslaved Africans and indigenous people, raising taxes on the wealthy, reducing defense spending and adopting a single-payer, national healthcare system.Gaffney said: “I hope this report pushes those with power to pursue the necessary policies to make this a healthier and happier nation.” More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      CDC study recommends double masking to reduce Covid-19 exposure

      by

      The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found close-fitting surgical masks worn underneath cloth masks – known as double masking – can significantly enhance protection against Covid-19.This is the first CDC-backed research to recommend “double-masking”, although the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has recommended the public consider the measure in past briefings.“There’s nothing wrong with people wearing two masks,” Fauci said at a press briefing one week before the research was released. “I often myself wear two masks.”The CDC study found the most protective masks fit well around the face “to prevent leakage of air around the masks edges”, and also recommended knotting ear loops near the facial covering portion of the mask to contour the mask closer to the face.The study did not look at the effectiveness of respirators, like N95s, and most health authorities recommend the public continue to reserve respirators for medical personnel.This CDC study compared wearing no mask, a poorly fitted surgical mask, cloth-only mask and double-masking in a simulation of respiratory droplets between two people – a source and a receiver.The study found when people wear a well-fitted surgical mask covered by a cloth mask, they can increase their own protection from aerosol droplets by 90% or more, and that possible transmission is significantly reduced when both parties wore masks.“Universal masking is a highly effective means to slow the spread of Sars-CoV-2 when combined with other protective measures, such as physical distancing, avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces, and good hand hygiene,” the study found.Importantly, the study also had limitations. The findings are not generalizable to men with beards and facial hair, which can interfere with masks, or to children, whose faces are smaller. As well, the study did not compare two surgical masks or two cloth masks, and the study looked at only one type of cloth mask, though there are many types of mask on the market.Fourteen states and Washington DC have universal masking policies. The Joe Biden administration also recently ordered masks be worn on all federal grounds and on domestic transport. Biden called on all Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency, calling it a “patriotic duty”.Recent forecasts have also begun to take universal masking into account. If 95% of people wore masks in public, forecasters at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation believe more than 116,000 lives could be saved by 1 June, compared with the institute’s “worst-case” scenario, in which 702,000 people could die from Covid-19.The CDC first recommended the public wear cloth masks in April 2020, about one month after the American north-east was hit hard by the virus. At the time, those recommendations were vague, asking Americans to consider wearing masks, “fashioned from household items or made at home from common materials at low cost”.While the science on face coverings is “advancing rapidly”, a recent review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted face coverings have been worn to contain airborne pathogens since the 13th century. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Covid relief: ideologies matter in democracies | Editorial

      by

      When Covid struck, it was governments that decided people could not go to work and governments that took people’s money away. It is now down to governments to decide whether or not to return that money and when to open up the economy. In the US, Democrats want to give generously. While $1.9tn dollars is a lot of money – about the size of Canada’s GDP – it probably is not enough.As Randall Wray of the Levy Institute has pointed out, the US government is engaged in relief, not stimulus, spending. It is offering much-needed assistance to the devastated balance sheets of households, school districts and local governments. Rescuing public services, making sure people don’t starve and building Covid-testing systems is not an economic stimulus but a necessary antidepressant. Reducing the size of the relief package would prolong the recession, which, given the virus’s capacity to surprise, may last longer than the experts predict. President Joe Biden was right to rebuff criticism that Democrats risked overheating the economy, saying the problem was spending too little, not too much. There is slack in the US economy: 400,000 Americans left the labour market in January.Mr Biden aims to control the virus and then create jobs with infrastructure investments to reinvent the post-crisis economy for a zero-carbon world. Call it a spend-then-tax policy. If he succeeds, Mr Biden will go some way to repudiate the conventional economic wisdom that argues that if governments keep borrowing too much, they risk defaulting, will end up printing money and be forced in a panic to put up interest rates. The pandemic revealed this to be bunk. Central banks can keep interest rates low by buying government bonds with money created from thin air. Last year, they bought 75% of all public debt.Within days of assuming power, Mr Biden had a plan, and new thinking, to rebuild a Covid-scarred country. Boris Johnson has little to show after months. His government intends to cut universal credit, raise council tax bills and freeze public-sector pay, weakening household finances. Given this mindset, which has dominated policy since 2010, it is hardly surprising that the £900bn of Bank of England “quantitative easing” money sitting with banks can’t find profits in the real economy. The Bank has “knowledge gaps” about QE. Yet there is truth in the quote attributed to Keynes that “you can’t push on a string” – when demand is weak, monetary policy can do little about it.With interest rates low, no recovery to invest in and no new regulations, UK banks will turn inwards, not outwards. Instead of the City contributing to the productive economy and a just green transition, expect speculation and Ponzi-like balance sheets. It is lobbying to expand lucrative but socially useless activities. In January, Tory peers with City interests argued for a new finance regulator with a “competitiveness” objective – a Trojan horse for deregulation.Central banks are creatures of their legislatures, but have been permitted, for ideological reasons, to work without a social contract. In her recent paper, Revolution Without Revolutionaries, the economist Daniela Gabor warned that unelected technocrats must not be allowed to hand politicians reasons to adopt external constraints that can be blamed for unpopular policies. It is timely advice. The UK will have record peacetime levels of debt. Rishi Sunak says such borrowing is “unsustainable”. Yet UK gilts are a risk-free financial asset, which is why banks crave them.The inequality, financial instability and ecological crises have multiple causes, but their existence is built on radical, free-market economics. It is not the case that the government’s ability to spend is temporary while interest rates remain low, as Mr Sunak claimed. Bond-purchasing programmes can control yields. A system that benefits private finance but subordinates the state and threatens to expose it, post-pandemic, to austerity and elevated levels of unemployment must be resisted. Only those unable or unwilling to believe the evidence of their own eyes would say otherwise. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      California’s governor, once praised, faces backlash over pandemic response

      by

      California’s coronavirus death toll is continuing to climb. Its vaccination rates remain low. And some of its residents are losing faith in their governor.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has found himself in an increasingly precarious political position: a Republican-led recall movement is garnering support from far-right groups as well as mainstream Republicans and some Silicon Valley bigwigs. And while the effort is unlikely to succeed in unseating him, even long-term allies are publicly questioning his leadership through this latest, most deadly phase of the crisis.He was hailed as a national hero in the early months of the pandemic, but Newsom’s job rating has plunged in recent weeks. Just under a third of voters polled by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies rated the governor’s overall handling of the pandemic well, while 44% said he was doing badly. It’s a complete reversal from September, when 49% of those polled by the institute said Newsom was doing an excellent or good job – and 28% rated him poorly.Criticism has come from all sides. Legislators have been divided over his decision to lift regional stay-at-home orders a week after the state surpassed 3m coronavirus cases. Health workers have been dismayed that some of his recent health directives have diverged from established and emerging scientific research. He has bickered with teachers unions and parents over when and how to reopen the state’s public schools. Activists say he is failing Latino and Black residents, Californians with disabilities and essential workers who are dying at disproportionate rates. And jobless Californians, struggling to access unemployment benefits, have cursed the administration’s bureaucratic inertia.For many across the state, Newsom’s announcements on the economy, vaccine distribution or school reopenings have felt increasingly dissonant from their dire realities as the pandemic progressed.Amy Arlund, an ER nurse in the central valley , said she was enraged that hospitals continued to face staff and equipment shortages. “The trust has been broken with especially our government officials, our leaders and the organizations and the agencies that are meant to protect us,” Arlund said. “It feels like we’re expendable.”Four of her coworkers at the Kaiser Fresno hospital have died because of Covid-19, Arlund said, including a fellow nurse who contracted the virus last summer after the hospital ran so short on PPE and staff resorted to using homemade face shields made of plastic sheets and electrical tape.For Héctor Manuel Ramírez, a disability rights advocate in Los Angeles who had worked on a behavioral health taskforce the governor launched last year, a breaking point was Newsom’s announcement that in an effort to speed up vaccine distribution, the state would start prioritizing people by age, rather than a profession or medical history.The news came as Ramírez was preparing funeral arrangements for their brother, Eduardo.Eduardo was 35, and severely immunocompromised due to Aids, so Ramírez, their family and friends had anxiously watched the state’s chaotic vaccine rollout, hoping his turn would come in the nick of time.It didn’t. Eduardo died – the fourth of Ramírez’s family to have succumbed to Covid-19.Ramírez said Newsom had, unlike many of his counterparts in other states, made a strong commitment to addressing health disparities. “I listened to the governor’s coronavirus updates quite regularly, and his words had always brought hope. Now I feel misled, I feel used. I feel like I am without leadership,” they said.“There has been so much fear and desperation in my community,” they added. “Whether it’s intentional or unintentional, it feels like our leaders have forgotten about us.”I feel misled, I feel used. I feel like I am without leadershipCriticism has also mounted over the state’s handling of school reopenings and unemployment aid. As many of the state’s businesses reopen Newsom has found himself caught up in crossfire between parents of 6m public school students who are anxious to get their children back to class and teachers unions who are worried it’s not safe enough to return.Newsom late last year had proposed a $2bn plan to help schools reopen in the spring, but school leaders, unions and lawmakers have said it’s inadequate. In a heated meeting with the Association of California School Administrators last week, Newsom responded to demands that all teachers receive vaccines before returning to in-person schooling: “If we want to find reasons not to open, we’ll find plenty of reasons.”Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment agency has been under fire over a scathing audit last month, which found that as millions of jobless Californias are still to access unemployment benefits the agency paid out more than $11bn on fraudulent claims.At a hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers from both parties were furious that constituents were queuing in snaking lines at food banks and sleeping in their cars while the state held up aid. “Californians are frustrated, they are infuriated, they are fed up,” said Rudy Salas, a Democratic assemblyman representing parts of the rural Central Valley.Making life-and-death decisions about who should get the vaccine first, balancing the need to address the state’s economic crisis alongside its health crisis, discerning what is and isn’t safe amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, is of course, impossibly difficult, said Dr Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the UCSF medical center in San Francisco. Through much of last year, while Donald Trump denied the severity of the pandemic and hawked false miracle cures, Newsom and other governors became “beacons of leadership for the whole country”, Chin-Hong continued. Another poll, from Morning Consult, found that though Newsom’s job ratings had dipped in recent weeks, he’s more popular now than he was before the pandemic struck.As the pandemic has progressed, people have higher expectations“But as the pandemic has progressed, people have higher expectations,” Chin-Hong said – they expect leaders to explain the reasoning behind public health decisions.Newsom failed to do that two weeks ago, when he suddenly announced that he would be lifting the state’s most restrictive stay-at-home orders, Chin-Hong said. Even state legislators said they were taken off guard.“If you think state legislators were blindsided by, and confused about the shifting and confusing public health directives, you’d be correct,” said assemblymember Laura Friedman after Newsom’s announcement. “If you think we have been quiet about it in Sacramento, you’d be wrong.”Health workers said it doesn’t help that Newsom initially kept the data and reasoning behind the changing rules and guidelines opaque. “The reopening announcement was so sudden. People were so confused because outside hospitals there were mobile morgues full of the body bags of people who’d died from Covid-19,” said Chin-Hong. “It really made people feel unsafe.”“There’s definitely a communication problem,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. “We’re finding that about half of the public is saying that they don’t have trust in the governor.”Newsom’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on such critiques. Many of the groups questioning the governor’s recent policies said he could easily earn back their trust – if he’s willing to work with them.Christian Ramirez, a policy director for SEIU-USWW, a union that represents more than 45,000 service workers in California, said he was excited to hear Newsom announce last month a plan to send $600 to low-income Californians, including undocumented immigrants. “There has been a willingness from Governor Newsom to ensure that essential workers regardless of their immigration status are not left to fend for themselves,” Ramirez said. But the proposal has not yet been signed into law.Ramirez said he’d like for the governor to collaborate with unions and advocacy groups to deliver on his promises. “We know how to reach our community – we have mobilized a record-breaking number of folks to go to the polls and vote in recent elections,” he said. The union could easily leverage its network to help hundreds of thousands of workers quickly fill out the paperwork for unemployment benefits, or sign up for vaccination appointments. “We’re not expecting the governor to do it all alone – and we’re willing to stand with him,” Ramirez said. More