It's because the pandemic has become an extremely inconvenient roadblock on the highway to the eventual privatisation of the remaining public services.
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States refusing to use existing Public Health vaccination plans, created for just this eventuality, in favour of vaccinations at Walgreens or whatever.
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Cuomo avoiding using the NY Public Health vaccination plan in favor of one created by him and his aides. He's had enough of experts apparently, and doesn't mind saying it. He put a donor in charge of vaccine rollout.
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The Conservative govt in the UK awarding 9 figure, repeat nine figure, PPE contracts to Conservative Donor-owned companies that only specialise in party supplies or something.
Anything to avoid reversing the trend of cutbacks to all public services.
Anything to maintain the march to privatisation.
Anything to avoid funding public services (that aren't cops), to avoid hiring people, and thefore empowering the unions.
Even in the middle of a global pandemic they will not reverse course and fund public services.
At the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Government buildings should be marched on.
That trans-tasman rivalry maybe. The big brother couldn't be seen to fail when the little brother is dealing with a pandemic so well.
They've always had decent public services and polity too. There are certain countries that are allowed to maintain a decent social democratic system. Wonder what they have in common?
They have also always had a culture of protecting from overseas pathogens. Mostly agricultural ones, but the culture was there.