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(Forwarded from Anthony Boynton, who accidentally posted to marxism-owner.)
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area which has imposed the strictest
public health measures of any place in the United States. The public
health officers of Six Bay Area counties, now 10 Bay Area counties,
imposed strict regulations closing all bars, movie theaters,
conventions, schools, and non-essential businesses. Non-essential travel
is prohibited as well. Grocery and drug stores remain open, public
transportation continues (although less BART trains are running). Social
distancing, by which is meant staying a distance of 6 feet or two meters
from the nearest person, is strongly encouraged.
People had been told by authoritative figures in the local and national
media to avoid buying and wearing garden variety surgical masks
allegedly because they do no good, but really because they were in short
supply. (They reduce but do not eliminate the risk of infection.)
These measures have been taken because the United States, including this
area, does not have the capacity for massive testing and tracking down
the histories of people who are found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2,
the virus which causes COVID-19.
China combined the type of measures implemented here with massive
testing and epidemiological tracking throughout Hubei, and they added
travel domestic and international travel restrictions.
South Korea was able to used massive testing because its pharmaceutical
industry began stock-piling test kits before the epidemic hit that
country. It devoted the resources to use epidemiological tracking
combined with social distancing and massive use of other measures such
as the wearing of surgical masks which were given away free to bring the
first wave of contagion under control.
Unfortunately, places like the United States reacted slowly and have not
yet developed the capacity for massive testing. Trump's announcement of
a massive testing program in his declaration of a national emergency has
yet to materialize and has no real date set for it to be implemented.
Here in the Bay Area, Kaiser hospitals - the most important HMO in the
USA, has set up drive through testing centers. Sounds great, but they
are by appointment only, and tests are being rationed because they have
so few testing kits. Only people who have serious symptoms and to people
who have been in contact with a person who is already known to be
infected are given appointments.
The point of the measures taken in the Bay Area is not to treat the
virus, not to prevent deaths, and not to reduce the number of people
infected.It is to delay and slow down the spread of the infection to
prevent the hospitals, particularly the Intensive Care Units, from being
overwhelmed by a massive influx of acutely ill patients.
In the absence of medical capacity, the Bay Area's public health
measures make sense. They should be supported.
At the same time, the absence of capacity to test, to track, to provide
surgical masks, and above all to provide ICU care to large numbers of
people is a scandal and an indictment of the for-profit medical care
system not to mention the Democrats who lead California and the
jackasses in Washington.
As for as the concern for the mass movement that the comrade from RKOB
has expressed, I think it is misplaced, but not entirely misplaced.
Every good measure taken in a capitalist society can be twisted to
attack the working class and oppressed, and this certainly applies to
measures that restrict freedom of movement and expression.
In Bogotá and elsewhere in Colombia, efforts to do exactly this by
president Duque have been met by renewed "cacerolazos" (mass banging of
pots and pans) and strong resistance from local governments led by the
reformist left. Duque seems to have backed down for the moment.
IMHO, the shit has really hit the fan, and we are just seeing the
curtain open. It should get a lot messier in the next couple of months.
Anthony
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