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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently introduced new COVID-19 guidelines, relaxing quarantining and social distance precautions. Subsequently, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced a revamp of the agency due to missteps in its handling of COVID-19. Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence questions whether the new guidelines are putting the economy and corporate America ahead of public health:
There have been more than 1 million COVID-related deaths since this pandemic popped off. As of last week, there are at least 103,000 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 U.S. 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.
