![The new COVID guidelines set by the CDC prioritizes capitalism over health. These are reckless policies that will cause unnecessary deaths.](https://san.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/image-206.jpg?w=1280)
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The day after the Center for Disease Control announced relaxed COVID-19 guidelines, polio was detected in New York City wastewater. Our nation has no business being chill about COVID-19 or any other communicable virus when it can’t even keep it’s eradicated viruses in check. We need to elevate the health of our people over the drive for capitalism. Let’s be real here: Polio should have stayed dead. We’ve had an effective vaccine since 1952, with mass vaccination underway across the US by 55, and global efforts to eradicate the virus by the late 80s. The disease was deemed dead. That is, before it showed up in the big apple a few weeks back. In late-July, a man living in Rockland County New York, just north of the city, was left paralyzed due to polio. Now they find it in the city’s drinking water. Many people, including myself were vaccinated from polio as children. But in the wake of it’s presumed extinction and likely the anti-vaxx movement, parents aren’t vaccinating children as consistently as they did in the past. This per the New York Times: “In New York City, the overall rate of polio vaccination among children 5 and under is 86 percent, and most adults in the United States were vaccinated against polio as children. Still, in some city ZIP codes, fewer than two-thirds of children 5 and under have received at least three doses, a figure that worries health officials.” This is scary… and it’s a reflection of societal failings. We’re not educating people, investing in ensuring they understand that the vaccines are safe and effective. Nor are we ensuring that they’re readily accessible regardless of income or geography, or even just providing them with universal health care. No, our nation elevates capitalism over care. We don’t encourage our society to put their health first. We’re seeing this reality play out right now with the CDC loosening COVID-19 restrictions, freeing businesses from the onus of requiring the infected isolate or work from home. We’re still very much in a pandemic. There have been more than one million Covid related deaths since this pandemic popped off. As of last week, there are at least one hundred and three thousand reported cases nationwide—including First Lady Jill Biden. Why are we rolling back precautions? Just because those in power want to act like the Novel coronavirus is just an aggressive flu doesn’t make it so—particularly when less than 70 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated and the plan for boosters is largely unknown. With the CDC relaxing guidelines, it’s clear that our government’s goal is to get the United States back in business even if that means infected people are free to infect others, some of whom may die. This type of reckless approach—that maximizes capitalistic gains and minimizes public health— fuels the reemergence of dead diseases among the masses. Just look at what we’ve already seen on Skid Row, the area of Los Angeles where thousands of unhoused transient people are forced to live in contaminated squalor and are neglected by our leadership. In 2019, just a year before the pandemic, Typhoid fever and typhus emerged in Skid Row. And we know that because LAPD officers working in that area were infected. Fortunately, they were able to access health care to get the help and knowledge they needed, hopefully stopping the spread of the diseases. But what about the people living on those streets? What about the parent who works multiple jobs trying to make ends meet? What about individuals who don’t have the wherewithal to navigate the misinformation and disinformation campaigns? Our society needs to invest in them—all of them, all Americans—rather than simply investing in that which directly generates wealth for corporate America. ………. Capitalism may be king but COVID-19 brought the king to his knees. We must learn from this pandemic by investing in the health of our people.
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Trump-Vance ticket will implement nationwide abortion ban
Donald Trump recently accepted the Republican nomination for president and named Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate. Vance has previously advocated for strict anti-abortion laws, in sharp contrast to Kamala Harris, the leading Democratic candidate, who went on a nationwide tour to mobilize pro-choice voters. Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News…
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End of Chevron is an open invite for corporate corruption
On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 40 years of “Chevron deference” in a landmark ruling that experts say will cause a “legal earthquake.” The 6-3 conservative opinion upends a long tradition of relying on neutral expertise to interpret and execute laws and regulations. Broadly speaking, the ruling empowers judges and corporations at the…
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American democracy cannot survive if Trump wins
Public alarm over the chances of democracy surviving in America has reached a new high-water mark in the wake of the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling in Trump v. United States, where the court expanded presidential powers for all current and future U.S. presidents. Among other things, the court may have granted U.S. presidents the…
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Talk to your kids about sextortion
The FBI is warning Americans of a growing threat called sextortion, where online predators pose as young, single individuals to lure their victims, primarily single teenage boys, into a blackmail trap. After soliciting sexual photos or videos of the victim, the predator threatens to release the images or videos unless the victim sends money and/or…
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Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law proves Gov. Landry is corrupt
On June 20, GOP Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana signed into law a new bill that requires all public Louisiana school and university classrooms to display a poster-sized printout of the Bible’s Ten Commandments. The law violates existing legal precedents regarding the First Amendment and is expected to be challenged in the Supreme Court, although…
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