THE DEATH OF AMERICA - COVID SPREADS ACROSS THE MIDWEST

Coronavirus surges across US Midwest

30 September 2020

Wisconsin is emerging as one of the major hotspots for the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, with an average now of more than 2,000 new cases each day. This is more than double the rate of new cases during the first week of August and a sharp increase after the drop in new cases seen throughout that month.

Similar increased trends have occurred in other states in the region. North and South Dakota collectively have more than 800 new cases each day, almost four times the daily case rate two months ago. Cases in Missouri spiked after its reopening in June and July, going from less than 200 cases a day to now more than 1,500 and the number of new cases in Illinois is now above 2,000 per day for the first time since late May.

Nationally, there are on average more than 40,000 reported coronavirus cases each day, a value which was declining after its peak in July and now seems to have stabilized, adding to the nearly 7.4 million total infections the United States has so far suffered. And while daily deaths continue to decline, at least 750 die each day from the pandemic, a tally that now exceeds 210,000 lives lost.

A child receives a COVID-19 test (Credit: Envato)

The pandemic is also moving away from major urban areas into smaller cities and towns. In Wisconsin, some of the most impacted areas are Green Bay and Fox Valley, where hospitals are nearing capacity. Moreover, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, new cases are not just being mostly reported among college-aged students as a consequence of reopening in-person instruction at universities across the country.

The spread at universities and the surrounding communities is especially damning in light of documents recently obtained by the New York Times which show that Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, and Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to downplay the threat of the coronavirus to young people.

In particular, White House staff repeatedly asked the CDC for reports cherry-picking data to show that cases among young people were going down. They also asked for “snazzy, easy-to-read” material showing that children and teenagers have the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates. No consideration was given to the numerous accounts of severe illness among children or their ability to spread the pandemic to others, much less the actual mortality rate itself.

Now, middle-aged adults are dealing with the brunt of new infections, which was predicted by health experts who warned against campus reopenings during the summer. As colleges brought students back, the pandemic spread among them. As those students interact with the broader community, the pandemic spreads even further. It should be noted that while the percentage of young people reporting new infections has gone down in places like Green Bay and Fox Valley, this is largely because the number of new cases in this age group is staying constant, while the number of cases in older groups is going up.The Times also reported that, just before the CDC issued guidance regarding school reopenings on July 23, numerous White House officials edited the document to include information the agency explicitly objected to in order to suggest that the coronavirus was less deadly to children than the seasonal flu.

Wisconsin also continues to report new deaths, the total of which now stands at 1,283.

The number of people testing positive is also increasing across the Midwest. In seven states—Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin—at least 10 percent of those who get tested for the coronavirus test positive. In Wisconsin, the positivity rate is 18.7 percent, according to the website CovidExitStrategy.org; in Iowa, the positivity rate is 25.3 percent. In all of the aforementioned states, the positivity rate is increasing even as testing is also increasing, indicating that the pandemic is fully entrenched in these areas and spreading fast.

The surge in cases where there are school and university openings is a national phenomenon. In New York City, where cases were suppressed after being the world epicenter of the pandemic in April, the daily positivity rate has now reached 3.25 percent for the first time since June, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is after a week of initial school reopenings and just as limited indoor dining is beginning.

Reopenings elsewhere are continuing apace. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered all restaurants in the state fully open and has threatened municipalities that attempt to make their own restrictions on businesses. DeSantis has been justifying his state’s reopening by noting that the number of new cases is relatively stable. Such arguments hide the reality that there are currently more than 2,000 new cases each day in the state, and that this is more than twice the new case rate before Florida’s large spike in new cases in June and July.

Texas has followed an only slight less aggressive plan. With still more than 3,000 new cases each day, Governor Greg Abott recently announced that most of the state’s restaurants, retail outlets and office buildings will be able to operate at 75 percent of normal capacity. This is, as in Florida, less restrictive than during the initial stages of the pandemic in March, while the state faces nearly four times as many daily new cases. Similar processes are happening in California, setting the stage for a resurgence of cases across the country.

The coronavirus also continues to spread in various Native American communities. A two-week stay-at-home order was issued yesterday to the Blackfeet Reservation outside of Great Falls, Montana, after a spike in cases over the past two weeks has brought the total number of active cases on the reservation to 150. A variety of $500 fines have been imposed on anyone who violates the order or any of the social distancing guidelines set in place.

 

Desperation swells among millions of unemployed in the US as layoffs mount and aid dries up

30 September 2020

Over six months after pandemic-induced lockdowns went into effect in the US—before being quickly abandoned by Democratic and Republican governors at the insistence of President Donald Trump and the financial oligarchy—the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression shows no signs of abating.

While the March-April crescendo of job losses of over 11 million has not been repeated, talks of a “V-shaped” recovery in the jobs market have been put to rest as ongoing layoffs in transportation, entertainment and hospitality sectors are adding tens of thousands more to the unemployment rolls every day. The Department of Labor (DOL) reports that 28.4 million workers are currently receiving unemployment benefits or are waiting for approval.

At the same time, small business owners who took advantage of loans offered through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, are teetering on the brink of collapse as Small Business Administration data revealed this week that less than one percent of the over 5.2 million loans granted through the program have been turned into grants. Since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed, with many still on the hook for outstanding PPP loans.

The combined economic squeeze on workers and small businesses has led to growing food insecurity and a rise in evictions. Despite the growing indicators of widespread social displacement, hunger, and mental anguish, including 40 states reporting an increase in opioid-related mortality, the US Congress, overwhelmingly comprised of millionaires, many of whom withheld information on the danger of the pandemic to increase their stock portfolios, continues to feign interest in a fifth coronavirus relief bill while accomplishing nothing.

The latest DOL report states that the US unemployment rate stands at 8.4 percent. However, economists estimate the number to be above 11 percent due to the fact that millions of workers have given up on securing employment as demand for work outstrips available jobs, with 2.5 workers per every one job, according to the DOL, for July, the last month data is available.

Despite the coordinated abandonment of any health and safety guidelines as part of the ruling class’s homicidal “back to school” and “back to work” campaign, which has led to a resurgence of the coronavirus cases across the country, millions of people continue to stay at home and spend what little money they have on essentials.

The reduction of travel, and with it, consumer spending, like all aspects of the pandemic, will be another burden the working class will be forced to shoulder. On Thursday, domestic airline carriers American, United and Delta are set to lay off up to 40,000 workers unless more government bailout funds are secured. As part of the CARES Act, the major airlines received $25 billion in government funding on the condition that they would not lay off workers prior to October 1.

The reduction in travel is hitting entertainment sectors particularly hard. The unemployment rate in central Florida, already 15 percent in Osceola County and nearly 12 percent in Orange County, is expected to balloon once the data is released for the month of September following multiple large-scale layoff announcements from several major resorts.

The Swan and Dolphin hotels, which are located at Disney World in Orlando, but not owned by the company, also announced 1,100 layoffs at the beginning of September. Shortly thereafter, SeaWorld confirmed that it would be terminating 1,900 workers at its Orlando location, while Universal Orlando Resort also announced in September that it was extending furloughs for nearly 5,400 workers through “at least” the end of the year.On Tuesday, Disneyworld and Disneyland resorts announced 28,000 layoffs, affecting workers at the California, Florida, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong locations. Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro said in a statement that the “difficult decision” to eliminate thousands of jobs “will enable us to emerge a more effective and efficient operation when we return to normal.” D’Amaro estimated that “67 percent” of those laid off are part-time, meaning they will not be eligible for full unemployment benefits, which in Florida is capped at an insulting $275 a week for 12 weeks.

Audits conducted within the last month in California, Wisconsin, Florida and Nevada reveal dysfunctional call centers in which millions of calls from claimants went unanswered, with backlogs growing day after day. Laid-off workers report calling unemployment offices hundreds of times a day for weeks on end, only to be hung up on or, if they do get through, their issue is not resolved.

In Florida, where last month Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump acolyte, admitted that the unemployment system was designed to pay out the “least number of claims ,” claimants still report not receiving funds even after sending in the requisite documentation.

As of September 18, more than 152,000 Floridians were waiting to be paid, according to the state’s own dashboard, while an estimated two thirds of the state’s unemployment funds have already been depleted, leaving many new applicants without access to funds without new legislation or until next year. DOL data for Florida shows that for the month of April only 36.44 percent of approved first unemployment payments were made within 14 to 21 days after the claim was approved. In May this decreased to 31.7 percent.

For those workers who have managed to get through annoying phone trees and have had their claims successfully processed, the expiration of state unemployment benefits, which is capped at 26 weeks a year in many states, combined with the ending of the Lost Wages Assistance Program (LWA), administered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, portends more hardship.

While nearly every single US state and territory was approved for the $300 weekly payment meant to last six weeks, at least 15 states will end the program this week, or have already ended it, including: Arizona, California, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Conversely, states such as Michigan that were approved weeks ago to begin distributing funds have yet to send funds to most of those who are eligible, while in Nevada, where the unemployment rate in Las Vegas is above 16 percent, Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) Administrator Elisa Cafferata still does not expect LWA payments to begin depositing into workers accounts for at least “another four to five weeks.”

DETR is currently in the process of phasing out a privately run call center, Alorica, which was awarded a $5 million contract in April to assist with handling the deluge of unemployment claims. However, after months of complaints and a backlog of more than 80,000 unpaid valid claims since March, the state terminated the contract. Cafferata admitted that the department is still “chipping away at the backlog” and claiming to have resolved an estimated 18,161 claims in the last two months, leaving more than 60,000 waiting.

In Wisconsin, a recent analysis from the Legislative Audit Bureau found that fewer than one percent of calls directed to the Department of Workforce Development unemployment call centers between March 15 and June 30 were answered. Approximately 93.3 percent or over 38 million calls placed during that time period were blocked or callers received a busy signal, while roughly 6 percent of callers hung up before reaching someone, leaving only .5 percent of calls answered.

Speaking to a local Fox affiliate, Kathleen Meachem of Appleton, Wisconsin explained the mind-numbing tedium of trying to get through the lines. “I would sit somedays and literally just hit repeat dial to unemployment,” Meachem said. “There were some days that I had 500 calls to them and was unable to get through.”

Last month, Sharon Hillard, Employment Development Director (EDD) for the state of California, told lawmakers that the state had a backlog of 1.6 million claims, which Hilliard estimated would not be resolved “until January 2021.” The state is currently not accepting any more applications to address the backlog and to prevent what it says are “fraudulent claims.”

As in Wisconsin and Nevada, long wait times and unanswered phone calls to EDD have left millions frustrated and without funds. In addition to long wait times, the state’s unemployment website itself was not optimized for mobile devices, forcing millions to access it on a desktop computer, something hard to come by for low-income workers, especially with the pandemic closing down public libraries.

Speaking to the Sacramento Bee, Pearl Jow, a 53-year-old resident of Palm Desert, spoke on the hardships she faces, now that the state will be ending LWA payments next week for her and some 3.2 million people who had been receiving payments. Jow lost her job at a logistics company at the start of the pandemic in March and has been receiving $110 a week in unemployment benefits.

“How am I supposed to cover basic bills on $110 a week?” Bow wondered. “Literally, I’ve been living on oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches.” Speaking on congressional inaction, Jow remarked, “They act like they have all the time in the world. Twenty-four hours is a life-or-death situation, and no one cares, and no one is listening.”