Thread by @RickyJMarc

1/There’s a lot of stuff here that contradicts a lot of what they’ve been saying re: COVID the last few months. I get the measures being mentioned, but they were all strutting just the other day like they had conquered COVID. A lot of this is empty rhetoric, unfortunately.

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https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/1549046502458269701

2/While a lot of what is being said above is rather empty by most standards, it doesn’t make preventive measures any less effective. Wearing KN95 masks, getting vaccinated [now available to kids], and occasional testing are important. We all have that responsibility. COVID sucks.

3/As for what’s empty—many people have faced issues with COVID testing as of late, with insurance companies and pharmacies like Walgreens attempting to charge the uninsured $100+ for a PCR test. Infrastructure isn’t magically changing to improve ventilation overnight.

4/It’s been over a year since anyone’s received COVID relief chèques, and a total of $3,200 in survival stimuli from the federal government since March 2020 is insultingly low. Paid COVID leave is largely nonexistent, and people are being forced to either work or starve now.

5/Were it not for this country’s slave-like loyalty to capitalism, the easy option would have been to pay everyone to stay home and shut down, but that’s not what happened. One letter from the airlines and the decreasingly-credible CDC lowered infection time to five days.

6/There are issues all around with COVID, but not without solutions. We can fix a lot of these problems, even as we stare down the barrel of a brand-new, even more infectious variant. There are solutions, and a lot of them involve making sure the whole world is vaccinated ASAP.

7/We can lift sanctions on countries like Cuba and Venezuela, partnering with them to revolutionize vaccine treatments and distribution all around the world. Cuba’s SOBERANA vaccine was able to vaccinate the entire island within months, averting untold COVID catastrophes.

8/We can release the patents for Pfizer/Moderna’s vaccines, ensuring that they can be manufactured and distributed en masse throughout the Global South, particularly throughout Latīn America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The more immunized people, the better.

9/We can establish a real national health care system that works to reverse the American reluctance to seek treatment due to a lack of wealth. We can change health care from a profit-driven industry to a public service as it is meant to be. We can build a healthier society.

10/We can transition to a #GreenNewDeal for the environment’s sake, reducing pollutants in our air and water, particularly in low-income areas where children are more prone to health issues that COVID exacerbates due to poor health care and nutrition. More fruits, less chips.

11/We can raise wages to a living standard to help undo the economic catastrophe that COVID caused millions of Americans. The wealthy class saw their coffers triple in value during the darkest days of the pandemic, while the rest of us fought for scraps and lost our homes.

12/We can focus more on eradicating COVID than restoring profits to those that don’t need any more than the billions they already hoard. We can reduce economic anxiety being suffered by millions of Americans, essentially forced to work or die. We can invest in community clinics.

13/Under our national health care system, we can use these community clinics to accustom whole new generations of Americans to preventative health care, addressing serious issues early before they severely impact quality-of-life later on. These all have a role in fighting COVID.

14/But if we are not truly willing to take the revolutionary step to address the ills being revealed by the COVID illness itself, we are only fooling ourselves. A better world is possible, necessary, and imminent, so long as we fight hard enough for it. Voting alone isn’t enough.

15/We can and must beat COVID, but first, we must overcome the feudalistic dominion that western capitalism holds over our collective lives. This is the way. 🌹