From a Reader:
State of Emergency in COVID-19 Crisis Grows More Dire!
| revcom.us
Editors’ Note: The following is from a letter from a reader, who is a healthcare provider.
U.S. hospitals are currently facing an unprecedented crisis related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the uncontrolled pandemic that is affecting the entire country, rural areas as well as urban areas, hospitals are facing an acute and sharp shortage in hospital beds and staff to take care of the patients. Having a hospital bed is meaningless if there are no staff to take care of patients, clean the rooms, run the labs, etc. There was already a significant nursing shortage in the U.S. before the pandemic, and due to the pandemic, many skilled nurses and other healthcare workers are leaving now in droves and will not return.
The fascist, anti-science Trump/Pence regime has openly said that it won’t even attempt to control the pandemic, with Mark Meadows saying in October, “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations and ‘...It is a contagious virus, just like the flu....’”
The fascist governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, has recently allowed healthcare workers who have tested positive for COVID to continue to work due to the fact that there is not enough nursing staff. This decision has nursing and other medical workers up in arms as this would only increase the possibility of more people becoming infected. The fascist governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, and other fascists have refused to issue mask mandates in their states to try to slow down the spread of the pandemic. Even worse, doctors, healthcare ethicists (people who give advice over the morality of a healthcare decision), and many other healthcare workers are looking at the possibility of having to “decide” who will get treated and who won’t as the numbers of patients with COVID-19 rise.
This type of decision-making has severe genocidal implications—Black people, Latinx people, and Indigenous people have the worst access to healthcare and tend to be sicker than the white-majority population as a whole. For any doctor, nurse, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, respiratory therapist, and others, to lose a patient under their care can be devastating. For healthcare workers who dedicate their lives to taking care of people, being “forced” to decide who will live and who will die is “soul-destroying.” This will add to the already severe PTSD that many healthcare providers have from working months on end trying to take care of patients who are dying in droves. There have been doctors, RNs, and other healthcare providers who have committed suicide because the strain of working under such horrible conditions finally got to them. Dr. Lorna Breen, who was the Medical Director of Emergency Services at a major New York City hospital, killed herself in April 2020 while on a short vacation, home with her family. Other healthcare providers in other parts of the world have also killed themselves due to the stress. (Dr. Poulami Saha, a pediatric resident who had depression and worked in India, killed herself at a hospital in May; Daniela Trezzi, an ICU nurse who worked in the hard-hit region of Lombardy, Italy, killed herself in March.)
Urgent care doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners at the MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care Clinics in over 20 clinics in Washington State have been on strike since November 22 over the lack of PPE and long hours that they work in these clinics. The strike was precipitated by “a coronavirus outbreak at MultiCare Auburn Medical Center that resulted in the death of two patients. More than a dozen patients and 12 staff members tested positive for COVID-19 between Nov. 5 and 20 in the outbreak in the memory care unit of Behavioral Health. ‘The recent outbreak of COVID-19 within MultiCare’s hospital system should have been a wake-up call, but it was not,’ Dr. Stuart Bussey, union president, said in a statement....”
The recent Thanks-taking holiday weekend with people traveling all over the country by air, is projected to make the pandemic much worse, going into December. “Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease expert, warned that the travel-heavy Thanksgiving holiday could make the current surge in Covid-19 cases even worse as the nation heads into December...” This is due to the fact that many people will be indoors, not social distancing, mask wearing, etc.
The pandemic has taken its toll on people in healthcare in the U.S., many of them Black, indigenous and Latinx. According to a report from the organization National Nurses United in September, more than 1,700 health care workers had died up to that point from COVID-19 and related complications.
Even though Trump was dealt a resounding defeat at the polls by Joe Biden, it does not mean that things will be OK under this system. Joe Biden is a representative of this capitalist-imperialist system who wants to go back to “normal,” but there can be no “normal” as long as this system exists. Biden is not a fascist like Trump, which will give people a little breathing space, and there is the possibility of opposition to this system continuing to build and some small chance at trying to control the pandemic. Biden, however, has signaled that he is ready to conciliate with the fascist regime and may actually be blocked by the fascist Republicans from trying to implement any changes. The great danger lies, though, in Trump’s fascist base desiring to get revenge and wreak havoc on people that they see as enemies and less than human.
This is why getting this fascist regime out of power now—meaning that we have to be in the streets and stay there until it’s gone—has such tremendous importance. Overall, we need to build and strengthen the movement for revolution and bring into being a socialist society so that humanity and the planet can benefit.
Sources:
Covid Overload: U.S. Hospitals Are Running Out of Beds for Patients, New York Times, November 27, 2020
North Dakota allows Covid-positive healthcare workers to stay on job as nurses warn it’s ‘irresponsible’, NBC News, November 11, 2020
Rising Covid cases means Americans may face health care rationing. Here’s how they view that, NBC News, November 9, 2020
Physician Suicide Is a Daily Occurrence, Dr. Jeff Livingston, September 30, 2020
How the Revolution Would Deal with Health Care, Including Epidemics, revcom.us, March 16, 2020
Fauci warns Thanksgiving travel could make current Covid surge worse, NBC News, November 29, 2020
These GOP governors long resisted mask mandates and coronavirus rules. Now their states are in crisis, CNN, November 17, 2020
Doctors Call on DeSantis to Allow Tougher Local Restrictions as COVID-19 Cases Rise, Spectrum News, November 28, 2020
November 19, Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. (Photo: AP)
How the Revolution Would Deal with Health Care, Including Epidemics
Excerpt from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
H. Health and Medicine.
1. The goal of the New Socialist Republic in North America with regard to health and medicine is to promote the all-around health and well-being of the people and, as one key dimension of this, to provide the people in society as a whole with access to medical care–at low cost and eventually free of cost–and to continually develop and improve this medical care. The government of this Republic also acts to ensure that the food and nutritional needs of the population are met.
Research and other work will be done to anticipate, as much as possible, and to prevent to the greatest degree possible, outbreaks of disease and epidemics, and to detect and treat such outbreaks and epidemics as quickly and effectively as possible where and when they cannot be prevented.
2. In line with this overall orientation, while due attention will be paid to the treatment of disease, including highly specialized treatment, and to medical research (and in this regard the basic principles discussed above with regard to science and scientific endeavor will be applied), the emphasis will be placed on prevention of disease, through the promotion of healthy nutrition and exercise, as well as other means, and on early detection and treatment of disease, to the greatest degree possible.
3. In keeping with a scientific approach, as well as an internationalist orientation, research and development, and practical developments, in the field of medicine shall be shared, as fully as possible, with people in this (and related) fields in other parts of the world, and cooperation shall be promoted and effected in detecting, combatting and preventing outbreaks of disease and epidemics, as well as in the treatment of disease, and the all-around development of medical science and its practical application, throughout the world.
4. The orientation that shall be promoted, and established as the standard, for professionals and others in the field of medicine shall be to serve the people. In the treatment of disease, and in other aspects of medicine, the sensibilities, as well as the experience and knowledge, of patients, and of the people broadly, shall be taken into account and drawn on fully as a basic requirement and a basic resource in the practice of medicine and the development and application of medical science.
Above excerpted from:
CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America
(Draft Proposal)
Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP
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