this incredible 7,000 word piece digs into every decision the biden admin made regarding covid and the reasons behind them. highly recommend it. some observations:
The
Biden administration, I argue, made a strategic decision to prepare for
one specific pandemic scenario. In that scenario, high levels of
disease and death would continue in early 2021, followed by widespread
population immunity from both vaccination and prior infection. This
population immunity would lower the death toll to manageable, ignorable
levels, like that of seasonal flu. In this scenario, the Biden
administration’s pandemic response would focus on vaccination and
medical treatment while largely rejecting other public health measures
– so-called “non-pharmaceutical intervention” policies ranging from
contact tracing to mass testing to temporary closures of non-essential
businesses.
Biden’s
gamble made sense on a political level, because a more comprehensive
public health response would have required new laws and regulations,
many of which are costly to business owners and run the risk of
energizing the far-right Republican base. Some of these measures would
require support from the Senate’s slim and unreliable Democratic
majority. Pursuing a comprehensive public health approach would have
also involved expending political capital, which ran the risk of
displacing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
Biden’s
advisors chose a narrow path of pharmaceutical intervention because
they saw the politics of a comprehensive public health response as a
losing proposition. The White House did not want the pandemic to define
Biden’s presidency. The virus, however, had other plans.
the far right discussed here isn’t the popular far right that we see on display during jan 6 or charlottesville, but it does overlap to some degree with them. rather, it’s the section of the american gentry that has adopted such wholesale class war as to refuse any and all compromise with labour. the former far right can only engage with the republican party on any level, and decidedly does not control it. the latter has enough power to sway both the democratic and republican party towards its will at times, as they are doing now with the covid response, by exacting a price in political capital from lawmakers during elections. it tends to be much less powerful in european countries and much more powerful in latin american ones, accounting for some of the differences you see in america’s approach to governance.
Biden’s transition team worked closely with the Rockefeller Foundation to develop a coronavirus mitigation plan for schools (it was never implemented)….
The White House has also been lobbied at various points by testing
experts who asked the federal government to order more tests, but they
were rebuffed. Administration officials did not want to request more money
for testing from Congress, and also believed that most people in the
parts of the US hit the hardest by covid (largely the South, at that
point) would not want to use tests.
US mask manufacturers
have lobbied the White House for the entirety of the Biden
administration to use federal resources to buy N95s for the general
population, and say that they are capable of producing hundreds of
millions per month. Their attempts have been ignored.
in a country purely controlled by lobbyists, you would have expected efforts like this to have borne fruit in the form of government spending. instead, lobbying in america fails more often than not when the product would have some sort of societal benefit rather than just being profitable for the lobbyists. american government officials are allergic to anything that might convince americans that their state has any obligation to them and that problems might be solved by society coming together and working them out, rather than by individuals making a profit.
and those two bring me to my third thought: in general, those involved in state management always take the role of enforcer for capitalists in class warfare until forced to do otherwise by popular struggle. however, they are also supposed to mediate among capitalists to ensure long-term positive growth, and situations where they don’t are typically referred to as “failed states”. i would suggest that the reason american politicians are more willing to adhere to political dictates from the aforementioned far right rather than the sections of the business class who want a managed end to covid that also allows them to profit is because many have imbibed the ideological framework of neoliberalism so deeply that they do this reflexively and without thinking. state spending on infrastructure can often generate economic activity that exceeds the original amount spent. mainstream economics holds that this is impossible (”crowding out”). biden was involved a fair bit in the neoliberal turn through the democratic leadership council, so he has those same instincts. this leads him and those he relies on for advice to believe that spending political capital is the same way. even though broad covid measures are popular among americans (as stated in the article, 64% support mask mandates), he believes that the cost he will incur from the far right is greater than any political goodwill generated among the rest of the country. this is of course profoundly incorrect, given the amount of people who want any excuse to vote for him again at all but who are being driven to despair over the complete lack of any real benefits to them from the regime. driven to its conclusion, it will ultimately deprive the democrats of wins in 2022 and 2024.
[ID: Tweet by Tracking Biden From The Left @BidenTracking from January 3, 2022 that reads: Breaking: US deportations of children increased by 30% in the first year of the Biden administration
19,793 minors were deported to Mexico, 15,688 (78%) were not accompanied by adults
2021 had the most deportations of children in 5 years. End ID]
[ID: Tweet by Vivian @MuchNerve that reads: landlords don’t provide housing. the entire point of landlording is to deny people housing by buying more housing than you need — thereby depleting the market supply — then renting your own hoarded excess back out to people who can’t buy housing because you drove prices too high. End ID]
His sectioning is subject to a rolling review and he can be discharged at any time by the doctor in charge of his care. It means the Priory, a private company receiving large amounts of NHS funding for his care, is also in charge of deciding whether he is fit for release. There is no suggestion that Patient A’s funding has had an influence on his care plan at the hospital…
Patient A is stuck inside a system the government vowed to fix in 2011, after the abuse of adults with autism and severe learning disabilities was exposed by the BBC’s flagship investigations programme, Panorama…
In 2015 NHS England launched its Transforming Care programme, which aimed to reduce the number of autistic people and those with learning disabilities in mental health hospitals. But while the number of people with learning difficulties in hospitals has fallen, the number of autistic people in mental health hospitals has risen by 59 per cent since 2015 to 700 (autistic people only), according to NHS figures. When taking into account autistic people with and without learning difficulties, the figures have risen from 1,100 in 2015 to 1,215 today.
“People can deteriorate because the environment is not right for them and that can make their behaviour worse,” said Dan Scorer, Mencap’s policy expert…
Experts say that for those with autism, being confined in a unit such as Patient A’s exacerbates aggressive behaviour. As a result they become trapped in a vicious cycle of overmedication and ever more draconian restrictions on their liberty.
“People with autism can have sensory problems. They need the right space to live in. A nice garden. The correct lighting. A comfortable home,” says Alicia Wood, who has studied the effects of long-term segregation on people with autism and learning disabilities for the government’s oversight panel, led by Baroness Hollins.
Some are left “traumatised” after long-term inpatient care. Moving out can initiate a period of three to six months in which “their behaviour can be extremely challenging.”
