At the same time that the Biden Administration and the slim congressional majority are studiously doing nothing to keep millions of people from being kicked off their unemployment benefits, kicked out of their homes, protected from predatory Covid hospital billing even as the Delta variant has created a surge in cases and deaths, the New York Times cynically assures us in a front page headline that "From Cradle to Grave, Democrats Move to Expand the Social Safety Net."
They seemingly forgot to insert the word "holes" after "safety net."
Millions of people, many with no insurance, will be forced to go back to their miserable minimum wage jobs just to barely survive. But we should take heart knowing that Bernie Sanders is out there in Iowa, fighting his lonesome heart out to expand Medicare coverage to dental, hearing and vision benefits for the lucky few. Mothers facing eviction. frantic about their unvaccinated kids returning to school and day care only to be quarantined once the inevitable virus outbreak occurs, should be grateful that at least they'll continue to get their temporary $300 tax credits to tide them over, regardless of having no safety or stability in their actual housing situations.
This mere promise of a few relative crumbs in the face of overwhelming mass misery depends, of course, upon the whims of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and his moll Kyrsten Sinema of New Mexico as they threaten to side with the Republicans against this looming scourge of socialistic humanism. It also hinges upon such powerful lobbies aa the American Dental Association, which will fight tooth and nail against older people keeping their teeth by way of "onerous" Medicare coverage for their mouths. Besides, with the emergency increase in SNAP (food stamp) benefits also expiring in many states, to coincide with the forced return to school and work, people simply won't have any more time to waste on chewing nutritious food. (The Biden administration's modest increase in permanent SNAP benefits, to an average of $157 per eligible person per month beginning in October, still will not offset the expiring benefits for many recipients, which were raised to maximum levels under the Families First Act of 2020.)
If you really must persist in wasting your time worrying about your next meal or getting sick as you're forced back to work, and the kids are forced back to school, here comes the Times's resident centrist economist, David Leonhardt to tell you that your fears about Covid are not only totally overblown, they are wildly misplaced. Although there are 160,000 new cases and 15,000 deaths from Covid occurring every single day, Leonhardt looks on the bright side. "Only" one out of every 5,000 vaccinated Americans is testing positive for breakthrough cases on any given day, based upon one sampling conducted in a whopping three whole communities. These studies, by the way, were conducted when most kids were not yet in school. And they only apply to adults.
Leonhardt blithely writes:
In Seattle on an average recent day, about one out of every one million vaccinated residents have been admitted to a hospital with Covid symptoms. That risk is so close to zero that the human mind can’t easily process it. My best attempt is to say that the Covid risks for most vaccinated people are of the same order of magnitude as risks that people unthinkingly accept every day, like riding in a vehicle....
What about children? I’ll dig into that question in a coming newsletter.
Well, meh. Collateral damage in the weak, unproductive and non-voting population can be counted once the service economy is back up and humming and neoliberal capitalism is saved.
I am certainly no epidemiologist or statistician, and the following factoid is admittedly anecdotal, but at the State University in New Paltz where I live, where students had to show proof of vaccination before they were allowed back on campus a couple of weeks ago, there are already 56 active student cases out of 1,626 individuals tested - an increase of 10 cases since last week and a positivity rate of 3.4 percent. Since Aug. 23, there have been 76 infections and 20 recoveries. Three percent of on-campus students have been exempted from vaccination for medical or religious reasons.
