Thread by @EvanBlake17

The 6th #COVID19 surge in the US is deepening each day, driven by the highly infectious Omicron #BA2 & #BA2121 subvariants, and the Biden administration has made clear that it will no nothing to slow or stop the spread. #CovidIsNotOver A🧵1/
wsws.org/en/articles/20…

On Wednesday the US recorded nearly 190,000 new cases, pushing the 7-day average of daily new cases to well over 100,000. According to the New York Times, hospitalizations now stand at 22,875, a 27 percent increase over the last 14 days. 2/

https://twitter.com/medriva/status/1527134976814338050

These figures are known to be significant undercounts due to the bipartisan undermining of testing & data reporting at the federal & state levels since January 2022. Only 4 states now report #COVID data daily, while 13 states report once/week or less. 3/

https://twitter.com/greg_travis/status/1527256011425325057

Testing has declined across the US and is near the lowest point reached last summer. At the same time, test positivity rates are climbing daily and now stand at an elevated 9.3 percent, indicating that the vast majority of infections are not being detected. 4/

In response to this escalating crisis, which has been building since early April, the only measure taken by the White House has been to give households the ability to request eight free at-home rapid tests, which only 8.5 million US households have ordered since Tuesday. 5/

Isolated from a broader strategy to use every available public health measure to identify and contain all infections, this at-home testing will do nothing to stem the growing tide of infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the US. 6/

After a 6-week hiatus, on Wednesday morning the White House COVID Response Team held a press briefing, in what amounted to criminals returning to the scene of their crime. Notably, it was held remotely to keep all participants safe. 7/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

The three spokespeople for the Biden administration present at the briefing, Ashish Jha, Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky, are deeply implicated in the homicidal pandemic policies that have killed over 420,000 Americans in the past year. 8/

While Jha was not an official member of the Biden administration until last month, he has spent the past year parroting all of its unscientific policies in countless television interviews. 9/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

None of the 3 even mentioned the tragic milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19 in the US, which was finally recognized by Biden last week. The performative lowering of flags to half-staff at government buildings concluded on Monday. #MarkedByCOVID 10/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

The press conference amounted to a mass of contradictions. Each of the speakers acknowledged the wave of infections and the potential for a major surge this fall/winter, but made no mention of the public health measures needed to stop this catastrophe. 11/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

While repeatedly referring to the “tools” at their disposal, the terms “mass testing,” “contact tracing,” “isolation,” “quarantine,” “mask mandates,” “airborne,” “aerosol,” “N95,” “lockdowns” and “school closures” were not uttered once by any of the so-called experts. 12/

Instead, they made clear that the Biden administration will maintain its bankrupt vaccine-only strategy, combined with the promotion of the antiviral treatment #Paxlovid. 13/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

Jha claimed that the US has ample supplies of Paxlovid to treat patients at present. According to @greg_travis, 75% of all counties lack sufficient supply of Paxlovid for 1 week of the average number of infections during the 3-month Omicron BA.1 surge. 14/

https://twitter.com/greg_travis/status/1527256016710258688

Jha emphasized that federal pandemic funding has completely dried up. He stated, “without additional resources, we will find ourselves in the fall or winter with people getting infected and no treatments available for them because we will have run out.” 15/

Dr. Jha remains unphased by this looming catastrophe, as he has “been spending a lot of time with our friends in Congress on making sure that we have the resources we need to continue to protect the American people.” 16/

He concluded, “I remain very, very confident that Congress will step up and protect the American people.” He went on to reiterate this delusional “confidence” three more times in the course of the press briefing. 17/

The “friends” to whom Jha is appealing and is “confident” will “protect the American people” are the fascistic Republicans who orchestrated a coup to overthrow the US Constitution on January 6, 2021, whom Biden then referred to as his “colleagues.” 18/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

Dominant sections of the Republican Party, led above all by Donald Trump, have propagated far-right conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic and mobilized fascist forces to oppose masking, vaccinations and all other public health measures. 19/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

In her remarks, Dr. Walensky highlighted the flat-lining of vaccination rates among elderly Americans, despite the Biden administration’s single-minded focus on promoting vaccines as a magic bullet to save lives. 20/

Fully 57% of people >65 and 62% of those aged 50-64 received their latest vaccine over 6 months ago, indicating that the majority of the elderly population has waning immunity and faces a growing risk of severe infection and death from #COVID19. 21/

Walensky then shamelessly presented the CDC’s latest Community Levels data, which claim that only 32 percent of Americans live in areas of “medium” or “high” risk from COVID-19, a rose-tinted view of the darker reality of widespread community transmission. 22/

The White House press briefing amounts to the total abrogation of the most basic duties of public health. These “experts” have again proven to be dutiful servants of the ruling class, prioritizing the profit interests of American capitalism over the health of the population. 23/

The refusal of the US government to do anything to stop the latest COVID surge underscores the basic truth that the fight to end the pandemic will only develop through an independent struggle of the international working class & principled scientists. 24/ wsws.org/en/articles/20…

The @SEP_US is fighting to build networks of rank-and-file committees at every factory, school and workplace, in the US and internationally, to build a mass movement fighting to stop the pandemic and save lives. Sign up to get involved! 25/25 wsws.org/en/special/pag…