The most jokes thing about this is that the general assumption is the military will have to step in with support staff like it did in New York. The hospital corps are terribly trained and way undermanned/underequipped in the best of times. My hospital could only fill like 40% of its billets, with none of the medics wanting to stay in because the job has no promotion potential, well before the military announced it was cutting a huge number of medical jobs: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/10/more-17000-uniformed-medical-jobs-eyed-elimination.html . Now their pay doesn't match the rate of inflation and their housing allowance doesn't cover rent in most places. When the cavalry comes over the hill to save the hospital system from the next waves, it will be a skeleton crew that can't even run its own hospitals.
Even without long-term collapse trends like all the rural medical workers moving to cities and all the staff nurses becoming mercenary travel nurses at twice the wage, I don't know what healthcare availability will look like a year from now or how that will contribute to the pandemic.
Of course USians would turn to our military to save us lol. We've spent all this money on it, hyped them up to be the most important shit on earth, surely they'll save us? RIIIIGGGHT??!!?? :kitty-cri:
Just a few decades ago, they probably would. But their domestic capacity has also been neoliberalized so the jingoists can't even get this easy victory.
If militaries must exist, that's how I want them to be used. A labour army like the Civilian Conservation Corps which can do public works that aren't profitable for businesses. Everyone from Italy to China has been using them in some capacity for pandemic response and the USS Mercy/Comfort hospital ships are the only two things about the US military I'd make a defense for.
In terms of capacity though, the military that's 0-3 against farmers in the past half century couldn't achieve a damn thing. A black hole for money.
The most jokes thing about this is that the general assumption is the military will have to step in with support staff like it did in New York. The hospital corps are terribly trained and way undermanned/underequipped in the best of times. My hospital could only fill like 40% of its billets, with none of the medics wanting to stay in because the job has no promotion potential, well before the military announced it was cutting a huge number of medical jobs: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/10/more-17000-uniformed-medical-jobs-eyed-elimination.html . Now their pay doesn't match the rate of inflation and their housing allowance doesn't cover rent in most places. When the cavalry comes over the hill to save the hospital system from the next waves, it will be a skeleton crew that can't even run its own hospitals.
Even without long-term collapse trends like all the rural medical workers moving to cities and all the staff nurses becoming mercenary travel nurses at twice the wage, I don't know what healthcare availability will look like a year from now or how that will contribute to the pandemic.
Why don't we ask Ratheon to send nurses, the military will save us :thonk-cri:
Of course USians would turn to our military to save us lol. We've spent all this money on it, hyped them up to be the most important shit on earth, surely they'll save us? RIIIIGGGHT??!!?? :kitty-cri:
Just a few decades ago, they probably would. But their domestic capacity has also been neoliberalized so the jingoists can't even get this easy victory.
If militaries must exist, that's how I want them to be used. A labour army like the Civilian Conservation Corps which can do public works that aren't profitable for businesses. Everyone from Italy to China has been using them in some capacity for pandemic response and the USS Mercy/Comfort hospital ships are the only two things about the US military I'd make a defense for.
In terms of capacity though, the military that's 0-3 against farmers in the past half century couldn't achieve a damn thing. A black hole for money.