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.
Yeah been there :doomer: I was at a similar thought process few months ago
I came to the conclusion if government successfully beat covid easily people would realize government could therefore successfully achieve other goals. And they can't let us proles get a taste of good government action
I came to the conclusion if government successfully beat covid easily people would realize government could therefore successfully achieve other goals. And they can’t let us proles get a taste of good government action
Hate when people summarize in a couple of sentences my paragraphs of ranting. o7.
I don't understand how Australia of all places didn't somehow fuck up on our level.
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.
Also why was NZ’s response so much better? Or did they have a better outcome just because they’re more isolated?
Listening to NPR leading up to the rollout, you had talking head after talking head from various states, cities, and municipalities speaking about how they were all very much prepared to go.
Since the vaccine "rollout" began, and they bring on talking head after talking head that will outright imply that the whole thing is too decentralized, which is why the rollout has been garbage ('slow' in their words). However, it always ends with them saying how things are looking up, and how it will get better. It's cool that thousands more will die while a bunch of disparate entities try and get their shit together instead of doing all this as a collective. But that's ok, this is the best we can do! say these talking heads.
The fact that in the US, the federal government has to BUY the vaccines from pharma first is insane to begin with. The fact that the federal government buying vaccines is an improvement over the private sector usually doing it is also insane.
Garbage ass country with garbage ass neoliberal ghouls at every level. Just get filled with rage hearing these "experts" talk.
"Competent government agencies? Can't have that. How we gonna justify continued privatization?"
I think you have it backwards.
The pandemic is a chance to engage in massive destruction of public services.
I mean, the slow destruction of public services has been the agenda since the eighties, imo. They want to privatise them.
There is however still the perception among the public that these services exist in some way, as if it's still the sixties or something.
The pandemic is inconvenient because it breaks the illusion. It shows people that cutbacks and austerity and neoliberal policies have eviscerated these services, to the extent that they cannot cope with a pandemic.
This just seems like a general justification for privatized health care tbh.
A privatized health care system is usually gonna appear superior on a topline analysis, compared to a deliberately underfunded and hamstrung public system. It's always gonna be better for people with money.
Don't really game. This is some kind of accelerationist thing?
So you're fully blackpilled then? There are probably better places to post if that's the case.
Fully agree, they've been dealing with it entirely rationally. Aus + NZ too.
Even now Lightfoot and Pritzker keep going on and on about shortages, but you'll fucking hear about how a bunch of vaccines are set to expire in a week or two in perpetuity
I think it's much easier and much less conspirational. The push for privatization wasn't even that strong in Europe these last years (in parts because almost everythin already is privat). The west had a shitty response to covid because it is utterly incapeable of action. Just look at the US or any given country in Europe. The late 90s early 2000 were the high point of neoliberalism the time of Clinton, Blair, Schröder. Now noone does big reforms in any direction. Trump has next to no legaslative legacy, the far right governments in eastern Europe have lost public support because save for some right idpol (like Roma-, Muslim-, Queerphobic policies) and attacking democratic institutions they also did next to nothing. It's the same with climate change, the sience is even more clear then with the virus but they just can't act. Profit rates are falling and they dictate the margin of action in a capitalist society. The west has entered the Breshnev era, utter stagnation awaiting multiple organ failure while the propaganda still sounds the same old platitudes.
The west had a shitty response to covid because it is utterly incapeable of action.
See I would say the state is utterly incapable of action because the apparatus has been hollowed out so entirely by neoliberalism, austerity and privatisation that it doesn't actually have the ability to act in an emergency. It's a facade, apart from the policing function.
Everything has been rationalised, streamlined and optimised, like a business, because everything is run by fucking MBAs. So there is no stock kept in reserve, no planning for eventualities. Except for the military.
The succdem elements, like schools, transport, prisons, hospitals, infrastructure still exist notionally. The resources are still there to restore them to their former glory if we immediately just went to a wartime footing. Resources that are currently going to the capitalists and then to tax havens. Because there is a war on. A war on two fronts - climate and viral.
Also a lot of old people dying alleviates the pressure to pay pensions...
What really radicalized me from Sucdem was watching Europe fuck up the pandemic as well.
I think that the most of the European governments did listen to their experts, the problem is that the recommendations of the experts is shaped by the society they live in. Any reaction that isn't too little too late is impossible in countries where the solution to every problem has been to kick the can down the road for almost every single issue.
