<
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/4/29/america-going-maskless-is-nothing-to-celebrate>
"Through a combination of ideology, political self-interest, racism, structural
inequalities and next-level idiocy, the US has had one of the worst COVID
outcomes in the world. President Trump made fun of evidence-based measures to
control the pandemic – such as mask-wearing – and touted quack advice like
using hydroxychloroquine or injecting disinfectant. He publicly contradicted
his own government’s public health experts, encouraged protests against other
elected officials’ public health measures, and he did effectively nothing to
support essential workers on the front lines of the crisis. After he, himself,
was hospitalised and provided a treatment for COVID which was unavailable to
nearly everyone else, his advice to his compatriots was to not let COVID
“dominate [their] lives”.
After President Joe Biden, a Democrat, took office, the federal government
dramatically improved its communications on the pandemic and public health and
pushed robust economic measures, however many of the new president’s policies
have been stymied by Republican-appointed judges.
For example, the CDC’s moratorium on landlord evictions of tenants in areas of
the country with high COVID rates was blocked by the country’s Supreme Court,
where six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
The Supreme Court also blocked a rule that compelled large employers to require
workers to either get vaccinated or test weekly and wear masks at work. The
essence of the court’s reasoning in that case – that the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) couldn’t regulate COVID as a workplace issue
because it’s also a non-workplace issue – strained judicial credibility to the
extreme."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
