Covid-19 Shows America's Class Divide Is Untenable

[BeckyDem]

The disparity in who has access to coronavirus tests is just the beginning.


By Shuja Haider
Today 5:59 am

“Anyone who wants a test can get a test,” President Trump said in early March, encouraging the country to remain calm over the coronavirus pandemic during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta. We know what happened next: The threat began to proliferate exponentially, and most people who wanted tests couldn’t get them. The CDC’s early attempts to distribute them were disastrous, and they have continued to be strictly restricted. “It is a failing,” said White House Coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci at a congressional hearing, a week after Trump’s remarks.

The sudden spread of the virus is so alarming that it has had many observers reaching for the comparison to science fiction, to disaster movies, to apocalyptic horror. “There can be no more divisions among the living,” says Dr. Millard Rausch, the fictional scientist in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, as a zombie pandemic spreads. A virus is a kind of zombie, an undead contagion that reproduces itself without distinguishing between its hosts. But among the living, divisions already exist. In Romero’s vision, human victims become exposed in the most commonplace site of consumerism: the mall. It’s in precisely this kind of space that public assembly, and our participation in the national economy, is no longer possible. But the economic structures this space embodies stubbornly persist.

Dystopian fiction is often characterized by societies with rulers in remote locations, securing protection from the threats of both nature and the global masses. As it happens, that is the world we already live in, one where eight men own as much wealth as half of the world’s population. Needless to say, this divide affects our access to security and safety in the midst of crisis. As Americans isolate themselves in fear and uncertainty—in some cases, exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms but being told to stay out of the ER unless they can’t breathe—reports have poured in about certain citizens’ getting tested. Ostensibly, these tests are unavailable to those who cannot supply direct contact tracing. Yet supermodel Heidi Klum, online influencer Arielle Charnas, Senators Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham, and other high-profile figures have flaunted their results. Some have been positive, some not, some are even asymptomatic. At a press conference, NBA player Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz jokingly touched all the microphones within reach, echoing the president’s insouciance. The next day, he tested positive.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-19-wealth-divide-tests/

[msongs]

1. I get all my opinion from the elitist upper class people at the nation nt

[appalachiablue]

2. More important points:

In The Atlantic, Adam Harris writes that a former insurance industry executive offered him a stark explanation for this disparity: “the health-care system in the United States is built for the elite.” Wendell Potter, once a communications director for industry giant Cigna, is now an advocate for universal health-care. “We hear politicians say all the time that we have the best health-care system in the world,” he told The Atlantic. “We have fabulous doctors and health-care facilities, but they’re off-limits to a lot of people because of the cost.”

..The wealthy are already more able to stay home from work, and to live while sheltering in place. But a crisis of these proportions brings us, again, to the realm of science fiction. The most absurd features of this kind of imaginary future appear to be playing out in reality, with the richest among us not only securing exclusive access to medical care, but plotting their escape. Some have alighted to summer homes, risking carrying the illness to small towns with less reliable health care infrastructures and more limited supply chains. A few have gone to further extremes. The founder of a California-based manufacturer of underground concrete bunkers told The Guardian that his firm “had seen a surge in inquiries and sales since the crisis took hold.”..

But the lifestyles of the rich and famous are not characterized by self-sufficiency, and the luxury of mobility is cold comfort against nature’s imposition of both contagious illness and a rapidly encroaching climate crisis. This has always been the ominous truth underlying the apparent security of the ruling classes, who rely on the labor of others to produce their conditions of affluence...

[BeckyDem]

3. +1

There are numerous stories out there yet untold how wealthy people use the less fortunate to protect themselves. Been going on for centuries.

[MosheFeingold]

4. The Elite were also the vectors

One of "Ground Zero" points of infections was a swanky party in CT. Some rich cat from South Africa brought an uninvited guest.

And ski resorts in Colorado and Utah, notably Aspen.

And rich spring breakers who CHARTERED A FLIGHT. (Who has that kind of money as a college student?!)

Heck, Prince Charles has it. Talk about an elitist pig.

They fly around in private jets and spread diseases. (And tell us not to fly commercial because of global warming.)

Sick of the rich hypocrites.

[BeckyDem]

6. The inequity is stunning and hurting millions.

I am sick of the hypocrites too.

[marble falls]

5. Change is coming. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.