Thread by @doctorow

Ohio is "re-opening," which is a euphemism for "deliberately risking lives to keep businesses solvent."

It is not safe to do so. Workers will sicken. Some will die. Customers will sicken. Some will die. The contagion will spread to states beyond Ohio.

1/

This is a catastrophically terrible decision. What's more, it's a decision that is apt to be rejected by large numbers of workers, who will refuse to show up because they don't want to die, and they don't want to risk the lives of their family and community members.

2/

This is actually happening in places that have declared the emergency to be over while the emergency is not over: workers aren't working, shoppers aren't shopping. No one wants to be thrown into the volcano to appease the economy gods.

3/

But Ohio has a plan. The state has set up a snitchline that bosses can use to narc out workers who won't risk their lives. Workers who are snitched upon lose their unemployment benefits and risk starvation and losing their homes.

secure.jfs.ohio.gov/covid-19-fraud/

4/

This is just a continuation of the path that the USG has followed from the start. Workers get a $1200 "liquidity bridge" that is supposed to tide them over for TEN WEEKS, while large businesses get unlimited billions in helicopter money.

pluralistic.net/2020/04/19/sha…

5/

Getting workers to risk their lives for the stagnated wages they pull down doesn't rely on carrots, it relies on sticks. The threat of starvation and homelessness is meant to terrorize them more than the threat of dying from coronavirus.

6/

If it works, we're all fucked. An America where SOME people are sacrificed to infection with a highly contagious disease is an America where EVERYONE gets the disease.

You can't have a swimming pool with a "pissing" and "no pissing" end.

eof/