Ignoring the “science,” Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to travel to Las Vegas on July 3 as part of the administration’s “America’s Back Together” tour, which is “celebrating” the alleged progress of the government’s response to the pandemic, which has resulted in over 620,000 deaths, the most in the world.
Joe Biden Keeps Focus on Pandemic with Underwater Polling on Crime, Immigration
President Joe Biden is focused on the pandemic while negative polling reflects voter dissatisfaction on surging crime and illegal immigration at the southern border.
“This year the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration, for we’re emerging from the darkness of a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain fear and heartbreaking loss,” Biden said as he highlighted the coronavirus during his July 4 speech.
“Today we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That’s not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over. We’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Biden did not mention his position on defunding police, how to mitigate the surging crime rate, or what actions he will take to stop illegal border crossings, areas in which he has poor polling numbers.
The Washington Post revealed Saturday only “33 percent of Americans say they approve of how he is handling” illegal immigration on the southern border. Among Democrats, only 63 percent approve of his handling of immigration.
The Post also indicated only 38 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of crime, while 48 percent disapprove.
The Associated Press offered Monday the July 4 speech “was a long-awaited opportunity to highlight” coronavirus during the “largest” event “yet of his presidency, the clearest indication yet that the U.S. had moved into a new phase of virus response.”
“Biden wanted all Americans to celebrate, too, after enduring 16 months of disruption in the pandemic and more than 605,000 deaths. The White House encouraged gatherings and fireworks displays all around the country to mark — as though ripped from a Hollywood script — the nation’s ‘independence’ from the virus,” the AP continued echo Biden’s hyper-focus.
But Biden’s hyper-focus on the pandemic does not hide the evidence illegal border crossings are up nearly 700 percent from last May, while crime is surging in Democrat run cities amid calls to defund police.
Breitbart News reported June 23 that homicides have increased 58 percent in Democrat-run Atlanta, 533 percent in Democrat-run Portland, and 37 percent in Democrat-run Philadelphia.
Shootings are up 54 percent in Democrat-run New York City, 51 percent in Democrat-run Los Angeles, and 18 percent in Democrat-run Chicago.
US coronavirus cases rise as Biden, media declare pandemic over
Confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States rose 17 percent during the two weeks leading up to the July 4 holiday weekend, figures which belie the ongoing campaign by the Biden administration and US media to declare the country’s “independence” from the pandemic.
As in numerous other countries, including Russia, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the renewed spread of the disease in the US has been caused by the Delta variant. An analysis from the Financial Times notes that an estimated “three out of five cases nationally” are from infections of the new variant. In some states, the proportions are even worse: 90 percent of cases in Missouri are from the Delta variant, 89 percent in Arkansas, 87 percent in Utah, 79 percent in Kansas and 78 percent in Colorado, as well as 72 percent in California, 69 percent in Texas, and 65 percent in New York.
In the words of World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “We’re in a very dangerous period of this pandemic. … Delta has been detected in at least 98 countries and is spreading quickly in countries with low and high vaccination coverage.”
Such comments are in sharp contrast to Biden’s actions over the weekend, which have been to visit the Traverse City National Cherry Festival and then to stop for ice cream, all while promoting the lie that “America’s Back Together” and that the pandemic is essentially at an end. The president is also hosting a 1000-person event at the White House, giving an implicit go-ahead to other such events across the country. First Lady Jill Biden declared at a rally, “Doesn’t the air just smell so much sweeter without our masks?”
Biden’s Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients had a particularly callous comment, claiming that the country has “a lot to celebrate.” No doubt Wall Street oligarchs and corporate executives will be celebrating the stock market, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average has increased by about 5,000 points since January. The working class on the other hand, whatever immediate celebrations that are being held, is remembering the nearly 35 million cases of the pandemic in the United States and the more than 621,000 dead.
Moreover, the spread of the Delta variant has raised many concerns about the decrease in vaccination rates across the country. The CDC estimates that 156 million people are fully vaccinated in the United States, just under 47 percent, and that about two-thirds have received at least one dose. And a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report found that very few who haven’t gotten vaccinated currently plan to do so.
In other words, through a combination of the fact that the pandemic was allowed to spread so far and mutate so much in the first place and the anti-scientific conceptions and cultural backwardness in the population engendered by the American ruling elite, coronavirus vaccines will not be enough to halt the pandemic.
The spike in Missouri in particular underscores the dangers of the Delta variant as hospitalizations in some areas have increased by as much as 225 percent since June 1. Of those hospitalized, 37 percent are less than 45 years old, and daily new cases have doubled since May. “Missouri is pretty much the epicentre of the Delta variant in the US right now,” Alexander Garza, health official for the St. Louis area, told the Financial Times. Only 39 percent of the population in Missouri has been fully vaccinated.
And as the international situation shows, what is happening in the US now is only the precursor of what is to come. There are now more than 23,000 daily cases in the United Kingdom and rising, more than 10 times the case count before the Delta variant began spreading. Deaths in Britain have also begun to rise, doubling over the past month to 17 every day.
Hospitalizations in the UK are also rising. Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding noted on Twitter that, “hospitalizations in England due to #DeltaVariant are now accelerating upward even faster than before, according to new data compiled by @COVID19actuary.” Hospital admissions spiked above 250 a day at the end of June, the highest levels since March, despite about half of the population being fully vaccinated.
In Russia, new cases have tripled since the beginning of June, and deaths have spiked to 654, nearly double what they were, in the sharpest increase in known deaths in that country since the pandemic began. As a result of the spread, the country has begun to require vaccinations for those that work in government offices, health care, education, retail and other service industries.
The surge in cases in South Africa is among the most troubling. Daily case counts since April have increased almost 19-fold and have exceeded the peaks in January. An increase in deaths followed, with daily fatalities currently at 247, four times what they were in April and May. Less than one percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.
Many other countries face a similar predicament, which led Dr. Tedros on Friday to renew his call to “equitably share protective gear, oxygen, tests, treatments and vaccines” in order to save lives around the world. He also made clear the continued necessity for fundamental epidemiological measures. “Public health and social measures like strong surveillance, strategic testing, early case detection, isolation and clinical care remain critical as well as masking, physical distance, avoiding crowded places and keeping indoor areas well-ventilated are the basis for the response.”
Such measures continue to be critical, especially as scientific research continues to show that the coronavirus is airborne and spreads easily. An article in Infection & Chemotherapy traced transmission through two people that visited the same unventilated bathroom 40 minutes apart and followed up with CCTV footage and genomic sequencing of the virus, further confirming just how infectious the coronavirus is, particularly the variants, and how necessary public health measures are to save lives.
Workers and youth must take heed, especially as they are forced back into workplaces and schools in the final phases of the reopening drive of governments in the US and the world over. The coronavirus pandemic is far from over and the official celebrations this weekend are aimed at both papering over the immense suffering of the past 18 months and concealing the dangers of the weeks and months to come.
Las Vegas single mother charged with murder, child abuse, after five-year-old daughter found dead in hot bedroom
In a tragic incident on Monday in Las Vegas, Nevada, a five-year-old girl was found dead in a sweltering and allegedly locked bedroom. Her two-year-old sister survived and was taken by Child Protective Services.
Kemaya Taylor, 23, the mother of the two children, was charged by prosecutors on Thursday with one count of open murder and two counts of child abuse. “The two children were found locked inside a bedroom,” Clark County Prosecutor Steven Rose asserted in a Thursday morning court hearing.
Four days after the tragic incident, Rose could not confirm to Las Vegas Review-Journal reporters if the air conditioning in the house had been disconnected by the utility company. Rose also could not confirm the cause of death; the Clark County coroner’s office is still investigating. According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, (LVMPD), the temperature in the room where the body of the deceased child was discovered was 101 degrees Fahrenheit.
Like much of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, which have been experiencing deadly triple-digit temperatures leading to hundreds of deaths, in the desert city of Las Vegas on Monday, temperatures exceeded 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the deadly heat, utility companies such as Nevada Energy have been disconnecting “delinquent” customer accounts since October 2020 after a brief coronavirus-induced hiatus.
Speaking to reporters Monday evening, LVMPD stated they received a phone call at 7:02 p.m. requesting assistance at a home in the Silverado Ranch southcentral Las Vegas subdivision. According to local CBS news reporters, neighbors called police after witnessing a clearly distressed Taylor outside her house, throwing rocks at parked vehicles.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday, the landlord of the property, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that after not receiving June’s rent payment from Taylor, the landlord, in her words, “texted her to make sure she was ok.”
“She put her notice in, saying she would be leaving in another month after [Taylor] paid in full,” the landlord told the newspaper. The landlord then said she decided to “check on” Taylor again and stopped by the residence.
“[Taylor] was in a mess,” the landlord continued. “Her hair was all a mess, the whole house was a mess, and she was packing. That’s when I said, ‘You know, I think it is not good. You are all by yourself with two kids. You should get in touch with [y]our family,’ and she said, ‘I have no one.’”
In addition to resuming utility shutoffs as part of the ruling class’ homicidal drive to “move on” from the pandemic, Nevada Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak lifted a statewide eviction moratorium on May 28, leaving only the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) federal eviction moratorium, which is set to expire at the end of the month. A June 24 analysis from Zillow estimated that 35,147 renter households in Nevada are at risk of eviction. The online real estate marketplace company reported that of those behind on rent, “23.9 percent believe they are very likely and 28.3 percent somewhat likely to be evicted.” A University of California, Los Angeles study last year estimated that unnecessary evictions during the pandemic led to nearly 11,000 preventable deaths .
The landlord also claimed that Taylor’s neighbors had informed her that Taylor was acting strangely before police arrived. “(The neighbors) saw her out front, all her clothes out in the driveway,” she added.
While there are many unanswered questions about this terrible episode, the instantaneous response of the authorities, as in every social tragedy in America, unless it involves the very rich, is to throw someone in jail—in this case, the clearly mentally distressed Taylor. In any event, one fact is indelibly clear: that economic stress exacerbated Taylor’s mental health issues.
Like Taylor, there are millions of workers, single parents, students and retirees struggling to keep the utilities on, a roof over their heads, feed their families and maintain their sanity during the worst biological disaster to impact the working class in over 100 years. For broad layers of the population, the pandemic has meant mass death, unemployment and deteriorating mental health.
Last December, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that within the first six months of the pandemic, between 2 and 3 million people lost their health insurance. And some 16 months after, over 22 million jobs were wiped out following brief pandemic-related lockdowns. Roughly 6.8 million jobs have yet to return, according to June’s job report.
As of May 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Nevada has the 5th highest unemployment rate in the country at 7.8 percent. This figure is a gross underestimation as thousands of hotel, entertainment and casino workers have been laid off for more than six months and therefore do not count in the official government statistics.
Exacerbating the mental anguish of millions of people has been the steady rise in consumer prices, which has cut into workers’ stagnant wages and poverty-level unemployment benefits, which for thousands have taken months to arrive, if they have at all.
In Nevada, where casinos posted a single-month record in May of $1.23 billion in gaming revenues, the Delta variant has continued to spread unchecked, becoming the most dominant strain in the state as of June. According to the Nevada Health Department, June coronavirus hospitalizations nearly doubled from 266 to 424, and on Thursday, the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory identified three cases of the “delta plus” strain. This new strain features an additional spike mutation and is expected to be categorized as a “variant of concern” by the CDC shortly.
Ignoring the “science,” Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to travel to Las Vegas on July 3 as part of the administration’s “America’s Back Together” tour, which is “celebrating” the alleged progress of the government’s response to the pandemic, which has resulted in over 620,000 deaths, the most in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment