The funniest part about going back and watching big catastrophe movies (Armageddon, Deep Impact, Independence Day, The Core, etc.) is how laughable it is to think we'd do anything about any of that shit.
I keep coming back to that realization. After the Cold War ended, there was this slew of "catastrophe" movies that came out. They often came out two at a time. Deep Impact and Armageddon came out together. Volcano and Dante's Peak came out at the same time. Capitalism was in full production creating new things for people to get scared/mad/and cheer at the destruction of since the Dreaded Communists were gone. They all had scientists as protagonists. People were going to listen to the scientists. The military was going to competently respond. People would unite. All of that so laughable now.
Conditioned for decades to fear what is tangible and then we get this invisible little virus that requires daily diligence and the entire fucking thing is flying off the rails. Meanwhile, the film that details an accurate American response to a runaway catastrophe that cannot be avoided is Doctor Fucking Strangelove.
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when....
We've known since the early 00's that shit would hit the fan and the government/nation wouldn't be prepared for it. Granted, this exercise was for a Biological Terrorist attack (Biowarfare) but the findings are still apt.
This is too sad to even dunk on the US for. Like how the fuck did we get here and what the fuck is wrong with us? It’s necessarily a rhetorical question, but goddamn is it just heartbreaking to consider the answer.
giving people money to stay at home would just make them dependent on the government, much better to stack up dead working class bodies like firewood
The boost in employment from having people pile up the bodies of their friends and family into mass graves will be good for GDP.
funeral homes are one of the main drivers of the economy and business is boomin
The boost in employment from having people pile up the bodies of their friends and family into mass graves will be good for GDP.
Would be if they weren't using slave labor for it, it's prisoners who are moving bodies into the mobile morgues
Dunking on America's COVID response is like dunking on the English response to the Irish great famine/genocide. It's not due to stupidity that countless preventable deaths among those most vulnerable are occurring (while the elites are kept out of harms way) it's because of deliberate decisions on the part of Capital.
Also keep in mind that it's not the Politicians, or the Bourgeois (those who actually guide the 'Great Satan') that are dying from COVID, it's the working class and the elderly in decrepit nursing homes. I'm sorry but to a certain extent dunking on Americas response to COVID feels like when Libs poke fun at people in Red States dying from natural disasters. Death to America of course; but never death to Americans.
The people you are rooting to die are lower class mostly black people, for one thing
Also performative gleefulness about people dying in real time is teenager as fuck
My friend who's wife is a doctor told me that the hospital she worked for (subsequently the chain of hospitals) forced her to go from working internal medicine to working COVID emergency room cases (did gastrointestinal stuff) and also made everyone renegotiate their contracts or be fired, while the executive/managers got millions in bonuses.
I've been lurking /r/medicine since this thing first started so nothing in this story is surprising to me. Lots of similar accounts, and worse, from the people on there. I wouldn't recommend it I'm anxious all of the time
Hearing in the early days that doctors and nurses in some hospitals literally weren't allowed to wear masks was one of those moments where it hit me just how bad this was going to be
Honestly, I feel bad for the doctors who have to fight with patients that refuse to believe they have covid.
The healthcare job market is beyond fucked. I originally chose going into nursing because it’s job stability, nurses are always in demand. Turns out they’re not. The hospitals aren’t making money like they used to and they also want to limit the spread to their staff to save on other costs so they cut hours and stopped hiring back in like April. At this point they made the choice to simply exploit the natural desire to help people in the nursing staff to run understaffed with dangerous patient ratios. I’ve been unemployed since a few months before the pandemic hit and in my big suburban hospital we were always understaffed running 7:1 very frequently. It’s best practice to have a 4:1 in the kind of care I was providing but the normal was 6:1. I’ve had 8:1 once and it’s literal hell where you lie about what you did because otherwise you get written up for not doing your job despite just running nonstop all day and skipping lunch because there was only a 30 minute break in the 12 hour shifts and if you tried to take a short break the manager would say that you should clean instead. Nursing is fucking toxic and being a trans nurse makes life even worse.
