Witnessing the pandemic
New Yorkers suffered through the same months of lockdowns, fear, and sickness as the rest of the country. Images and reports of the suffering have been endless.
Yet there were countless moments of people helping others, of caring, of reaching out and offering hope. Moments of courage and moments of trust in God. Moments of transcendence and prayer.
Now the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, Manhattan, is presenting a photographic exhibit that highlights and honors that spirit. Portraits of Grace: Honoring Heroes of the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic showcases the human and the divine present in the pandemic experience.
From September 14 to October 4, the Sheen gallery, in collaboration with America Media and the National Review Institute's Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society, with support from the Anglosphere Society and the Knights of Columbus, will host the exhibit. The presentation is intended to capture New Yorkers challenged in ways no one expected while offering the living witness of the Gospel message in action.
Board member of the Sheen Center Amanda Bowman had the idea of a photographic project to bring the positive and the heroism of the pandemic in New York. It would prominently feature the Catholic response but not be limited to it. It would present the Church's outreach alongside others and present a picture of how coming together worked to bring grace, healing, and hope to a suffering city.
When photojournalist Jeffrey Bruno was asked to be the curator, he didn't realize how few pictures had been taken during the peak of the pandemic. He found that few photographers had taken pictures of how the coronavirus was impacting the city. In addition to many photographers being out of work, hospitals and other venues were not allowing anyone in, many churches were closed, and some photographers didn't want to be out and about during the coronavirus. His role involved countless hours of photo research, speaking with photographers, and combing galleries to compile the photos needed.
Bruno found one photographer who did have hospital access because he worked for a medical company, Northwell. Lee Weissman's photos gave a glimpse of what it was like emotionally for health care workers who kept showing up, not knowing what toll the virus could take on them or their families if exposed. "A portrait of courage emerges," Bruno says. "That's selfless heroism. I developed a richer understanding and appreciation for those who showed up on the battle lines."
Heroes of the pandemic were not only medical personnel. Priests, consecrated women and men, and dedicated laypeople stepped forward to bring the Gospel's message of hope. The images honor those who were there to meet the physical and spiritual needs of a people in crisis.
The words of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, are intertwined among the photos.
No matter how dark some days seemed, we remained united in our unwavering faith in God, knowing that He would bring light out of the darkness, hope from despair, life from death.
The exhibition is free of charge and marks the grand reopening of the Sheen Center.
'Re-entering His Presence'- A young man from St. Francis House in Brooklyn prays quietly on May 26, 2020; the first day that churches in NYC reopened after being closed for a year.
'Portrait of Grace'-A nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in Manhattan brings hope and encouragement to a patient suffering from complications due to COVID-19.
by Lee Weissman/Northwell
'A World Mourns'- Jorge Islas Lopez, consul general of Mexico in New York, joins his staff in carrying the cremated remains of 250 Mexicans who had died from COVID-19, from St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC. The ashes were blessed by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. by Gregory Shemitz
Images courtesy the Sheen Center. Used by permission.
JOBS, HOMELESS, HOUSING CRISIS AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
FOR OPEN BORDERS
Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year — more than 1.5 million annually — are low-skilled foreign nationals who go on to compete for jobs against working class Americans.
Kamala Harris: Medicare for All Includes Illegal Aliens
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/viva-la-raza-supremacy-hispandering.html
Harris, a guest on CNN's "State of the Union," said "I support Medicare for all. It is my preferred policy." She said she supports the bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
MICHELLE MALKIN
15 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN TAX-FUNDED MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “The Race” NOW CALLING ITSELF UNIDOSus.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/michelle-malkin-15-things-every-legal.html
White House: Illegal Aliens Do Not Need Proof of Vaccination Because ‘Not Intending to Stay’
The White House conceded Monday they were not requiring border crossers to show proof of vaccination, even though the government requires proof of a vaccine or a negative coronavirus test for other travelers into the United States.
When reporters asked about the apparent double standard on vaccination requirements, White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued that illegal immigrants and migrants crossing the border were not intending to stay in the United States.
“They’re not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time,” she said, referring to migrants. “I don’t think it’s the same thing. It’s not the same thing.”
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 20: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki takes questions during the daily press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House September 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. Psaki held the briefing to answer questions from members of the White House press corps. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Nearly 15,000 immigrants, mostly from Haiti, have created a makeshift camp under the Del Rio International Bridge on the border of Texas and Mexico as they seek entry to the United States.
On September 10, Psaki admitted there was a double standard for migrants crossing into the United States and American citizens working for private businesses with over 100 employees under the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates.
“That is correct,” she said when a reporter pointed out the double standard.
In this Dec. 15, 2020, file photo, a droplet falls from a syringe after a person was injected with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
Psaki repeated her prepared talking points about the coronavirus process for migrants crossing the border and “the intention” to quarantine individuals demonstrating symptoms of the virus.
About 30 percent of migrants held in detention facilities have refused vaccines, according to reports.
She said the United States continued using Title 42 authorities to expel some of the migrants from Haiti crossing the border into Texas.
“We want to prevent a scenario where large numbers of people are gathering, posing a threat to the community and also the migrants themselves,” she said.
‘A sea of misery of biblical proportions’
“A sea of misery of biblical proportions” is how Steve Bannon described the humanitarian crisis on the southern border.
Within hours of his inauguration, President Biden stopped the building of the border wall and made it clear to all comers around the world that our border was open. He invited all those migrants who have arrived from all over the world to enter what the left swears is an irreparably racist nation. Hmmm.
The nearly twenty thousand Haitians now baking in the Texas sun were invited, too. More are said to be on their way. Babies are being born in what is a nightmare of “Bidenvilles,” our very own refugee camps with all the filth and hunger that implies.
Most of those stranded there paid the cartels thousands of dollars to get here; the women and girls are routinely sexually abused on the journey and in the camps. Over a million people, 200k per month, have entered the US since Biden took office; who knows how many escaped notice, the “gotaways”?
As Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki confirmed, these migrants are not tested for covid nor are they required to be vaxxed. The American citizens of Del Rio, the Texan town under siege, are quarantined if they test positive but the illegal aliens are free to spread out into the interior of the country at taxpayer expense. The same goes for the soon-to-be hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees who are being brought here unvetted, unvaxxed, un-covid tested. They are bringing diseases long ago eradicated here in the US.
There are hardly words to adequately describe the damage done to America since Biden took office, both here and among our soon-to-be former allies. It sure seems like he is doing China’s bidding. He gave up Bagram Air Base, one of the largest and most important for American security, left $90b worth of high-tech weaponry to the Taliban thus creating the biggest and best-armed terrorist state on the planet.
He may have committed treason with those ill-conceived moves as well as by opening the border. What does Blinken care about? If the Taliban government will be “inclusive and diverse.”
It seems like every member of this administration is both malevolent and incompetent, a lethal combination of character traits. Biden, Harris, Blinken, Sullivan, Mayorkas, et. al. are each mediocrities who have no business running anything, let alone the US. Between the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Mogadishu on the border, they all have much blood on their hands. And having promoted the Camp-of-the-Saints invasion on the southern border and the complete takeover of it by the drug cartels, they are responsible, too, for the flood of Chinese-made fentanyl that is killing millions of Americans and the horrific abuse suffered by those girls and women who embark on the journey. Again, these people are truly malevolent and incompetent. They do not care about the lives they are destroying, those who have come hoping for permanent residence in the US and those whose towns and cities are being overrun by migrants determined to stay no matter what crimes they may feel entitled to commit.
“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”
― Euripides, Orestes
The damage done to this country from the moment Biden took office is too terrible to contemplate. He has purposefully ended the energy independence Trump had achieved. He ended the sanctions on Russia re: Nord Stream. He has encouraged migrants from all over the world to come; no covid conditions are required or noted, no vetting. The border is a free-for-all nightmare for those being overrun and for the migrants themselves. Women are giving birth in the most unsanitary conditions imaginable. Biden wants amnesty for them all upon entry.
Biden is by design importing what the left believes will be a permanent Democrat voting bloc.
What else explains the administration’s obsession with vaxxing all Americans, even those with natural antibodies? Perhaps the covid fear-porn is all about culling the population as Dr.Michael Yeadon has been warning for over a year. What could be better for the Democrats than to replace an independent, freedom-loving population with millions of illiterate humans from the third world? These arrivals will provide cheap labor for our largest corporations, will take the taxpayer funded benefits they expect and have been promised, and leave the American middle class as bereft as the former middle class of Venezuela is bereft.
That is their plan and they are sticking to it. Sadly, the Republicans in Congress are, but for a few heroes, a waste of the space they were elected to fill. Clearly Biden deserves to be impeached for his numerous high crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated upon the American people, but the Republicans sit on their hands hoping their boat won’t be rocked, that their privilege will not be disrupted or their access to wealth interrupted.
In these past months the Biden administration has created many “seas of misery,” the cataclysm at the border being only one of them. The situation in Afghanistan is easily as horrific as what is happening here; the deaths of those thirteen young soldiers are on him as are the deaths of the people killed in the botched drone strike. Hundreds of thousands of businesses have been shuttered.
As Biden mandates vaccines for all and urges discrimination against the unvaxxed, hundreds of thousands of vaccine-related deaths and injuries are occurring but news of them is suppressed. Biden-caused inflation has made gasoline, meat and other food necessities unaffordable for millions of Americans. Several of our allies have been ill-treated to the point of estrangement. Foreign terrorism has been reinvigorated and armed. One wonders if the people who engineered Biden’s illegitimate win in 2020 are proud of themselves. Do they actually think their Cloward-Piven tactics will leave them unscathed? They probably shouldn’t rest on their laurels just yet.
“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and their ilk have made obvious their contempt for the American people and their willingness to strip them of their constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms. They seem unconcerned by our contempt for them but they be surprised by our resilience. It is true that far too many of us have succumbed to their carefully contrived fear of Covid, but people are waking up to their duplicity. The fact that these hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees are arriving without any covid restrictions says it all. None of this is about anyone’s health. It’s all about power and control. May the left soon find itself in a sea of misery.
Phptp credit: YouTube screengrab
Hospitals throughout US South remain inundated with COVID-19 patients as Delta variant surge continues
The Southern region of the United States is continuing to see an explosive growth of hospitalizations and deaths which is being fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19. The latest wave of virus is taking a dangerous toll on hospitals in multiple states, as the enormous influx of sick patients is causing strains on hospital staffing and placing untold pressure on health care workers.
While states such as Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia have seen slight declines in their hospitalizations since the initial onset of the Delta wave in August and early September, deaths in all four states have shot upward in recent weeks, demonstrating that fatalities are catching up with the monstrous rise in infections which has been driven by the bipartisan push to reopen schools and lift all pandemic restrictions combined with low vaccination rates.
In Georgia, daily deaths from COVID-19 have risen nearly ten-fold since August 1, according to data from the Georgia Department of Health. An average of 93.7 Georgians a day are currently dying of the virus, which represents a 977 percent increase since the beginning of August.
The disaster facing the South has been one of the main contributors to the catastrophic resurgence of the pandemic in the US since early July. The country is now averaging over 2,000 COVID-19 deaths and about 150,000 new infections every day, the highest levels since the deadly winter surge.
Despite the Biden administration’s recent announcement of a vaccine or testing requirement for business with more than 100 employees, about 770,000 shots per day of the vaccine are being dispensed nationwide, well below the peak of 3.4 million a day in mid-April. The slow rate of vaccinations has also rendered a large chunk of the population vulnerable to the Delta variant, with 46 percent still unvaccinated—including all children under the age of 12.
In Tennessee, intensive care units remain dangerously full and have begun to create disruptions in hospital systems across the state. Hospitalizations have plateaued at well over 3,000 since the beginning of September. West Tennessee Healthcare, a critical access hospital in Bolivar, east of Memphis, currently has at least a dozen patients admitted into its facility, five times the two or three patients that the facility usually sees. Half of them are sick with COVID-19, according to Hospital CEO Ruby Kirby.
Conditions have worsened to the point where the hospital’s health operators are being forced to transfer ventilated patients to intensive care units (ICUs) in larger cities like Memphis or Nashville, which also have a very limited number of open beds. “We’re managing them, but it is putting a strain on the system, trying to hold these patients in these hospitals until we can get them moved,” Kirby told WKU Public Radio. While COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide have declined slightly over the last week, more than a thousand COVID patients remain in ICUs across Tennessee.
Like many states that have become epicenters for the latest Delta wave, staffing has reached dangerously low levels at hospitals which are flooded with COVID-19 patients. Many hospitals in Tennessee are now receiving help from the state’s National Guard, while the state has even offered money to help pay for travel nurses.
In eastern Tennessee, hospital operators say even offering high pay isn’t enough to fill all the openings left by nurses who’ve left the COVID-flooded ICUs due to working arduously long hours and suffering burnout. One chief medical officer, Dr. Harold Naremore of Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville, told WKU the challenges the hospital is facing are “very frightening” because “there’s no more staff to bring in.”
At North Carolina’s Duke University Hospital in Durham, 99 percent of adult inpatient beds were occupied on average each day in the week ending on September 11—the ninth-straight week that the hospital has been at 98-100 percent capacity. According to the data, an average of 81 of those patients had confirmed or suspected COVID-19, meaning COVID patients filled about one out of every nine beds on average each day. In the intensive care unit, all ICU beds were occupied on average each day last week.
At the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Hospital, 86 percent of adult beds were occupied on average each day that same week, and 83 of those beds were filled with COVID-19 patients. About one in seven beds were filled with a COVID patient each day. At WakeMed in Raleigh, 88 percent of inpatient beds were occupied on average each day. Of those beds, more than a quarter were filled with COVID-19 patients—a daily average of nearly 150 suspected and confirmed COVID patients.
In Kentucky, at least 70 percent of hospitals are facing critical staffing shortages, with health and political officials issuing dire warnings of an imminent collapse of several facilities. Staffing shortages have been reported in 66 of the state’s 96 hospitals, the highest level yet throughout the pandemic. Governor Andy Beshear along with Kentucky’s public health commissioner Dr. Steven Stack admitted last week that the latest surge in COVID-19 is straining the entire health care system.
“Our hospitals are at the brink of collapse in many communities,” Stack noted. According to health experts, the highly contagious Delta variant has exacerbated the crisis. Dr. Ryan Stanton, an emergency room physician in Lexington, Kentucky said he’s seen the virus spread to whole families, especially if older members are unvaccinated. “Now in Kentucky, one-third of new cases are under age 18,” Stanton said in a recent Newsweek interview.
Contrary to the lying claims made by the Biden White House and entire political establishment that the reopening of K-12 schools can be done safely, one of the main facilitators for transmission are now children, with small children and youth participating in in-person learning and other face-to-face activities spreading the virus to the rest of their families. Stanton pointed to the reopening of schools and classroom learning, a reckless and homicidal policy that’s been pursued by every governor nationwide and the Biden administration, as directly responsible for the catastrophe. “Between daycare and schools and school activities, and friends getting together, there are just so many exposures.”
Perhaps the greatest indicator of distress from the Delta-fueled upsurge are intolerable conditions that health care workers in Kentucky and nationwide have been forced to endure. More than 400 members of the Kentucky National Guard, as well as strike teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s emergency medical services, have now been deployed to help struggling hospitals across the state.
In an interview with ABC News, Kerri Eklund, a nurse working in Elizabethtown at Baptist Health Hardin Hospital, relayed the tragic burdens facing nurses. “I would honestly say it’s at least three times worse than what it was the first time. We’re seeing a lot of people getting really sick. There are patients that will come in and they’ll be doing okay for a few days and then, in the blink of an eye, they go downhill.”
Many health care workers have described the current wave as unexpected after brief relief in the spring and early summer, with infections and deaths slowed to their lowest numbers during the pandemic. Central blame for the resurgence, however, lies with both corporate-controlled parties and institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which in May dropped all national health mandates, above all social distancing and masking, in order to greenlight in-person learning in schools, as demanded by Biden, and ensure no restrictions remained on profit making.
With the pandemic escalating at break-neck speed, frontline health care workers are seeing the consequences of the deadly policies pursued by the ruling class in intolerable working conditions. Medical professionals from nurses and physician assistants to respiratory therapists have reported feeling stretched so thin that many are experiencing exhaustion and burnout.
In Kentucky, which has become an epicenter for the new surge, health practitioners have reported seeing highly experienced and exceptional colleagues walk away from their profession in droves because of the stress and anxiety they are having to deal with. Many front-line workers are fearful of yet another surge as the current fall season stretches into the winter months without any serious effort to suppress the pandemic and eliminate COVID-19. In the same interview with Newsweek, Eklund said, “I’m really worried that it’s just going to keep getting worse...because we all know that winter is the worst time for health issues all together.”
Three children dying of COVID-19 every day in the US
According to the latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) another 225,978 children were officially infected with COVID-19 and at least 20 died in the last week alone. Since July 1, a staggering 1.47 million children have been infected, 4,561 have been hospitalized and 145 have died.
Over 100 children have died from COVID-19, or roughly three children a day, in the last five weeks in the US. The time period coincides with the forced reopening of K-12 schools and college campuses throughout the country.
Perhaps even more alarming, the latest AAP data shows that multiple states have quietly changed their parameters for tracking child infections, hospitalizations and deaths in order to obscure the data. Alabama, for example, changed their definition of “child cases” from ages 0-24 down to 0-17. In Missouri and Hawaii the definition for “child cases” was adjusted from ages 0-19 to 0-17. Similar changes were made in other states.
Florida has stopped reporting child hospitalizations altogether. Arkansas has stopped reporting child deaths and hospitalizations. Nebraska has completely removed their COVID-19 dashboard from public view—that is, the state is no longer reporting child cases, hospitalizations, or deaths.
In other words, the available data for how the new Delta variant is affecting children is being manipulated to under-report the severity of the situation.
Even with the efforts to play down the impact on children, the available data is incredibly damning. Over two weeks, from September 2 to September 16 there was a 9 percent increase in the cumulated number of child COVID-19 cases. Local reports reveal devastating stories of the young lives unnecessarily taken by the pandemic.
On Thursday, September 16, 17-year-old Alexia Garrison, high school senior from Illinois passed away from COVID-19. Alexia’s father, Jason Garrison, told WCIA that his daughter had not been vaccinated, and she had no pre-existing conditions.
Her father reported that his daughter had mild symptoms throughout her quarantine period after catching the virus. After she was no longer showing any symptoms, she returned to school. Alexia collapsed in her home late Wednesday night and was pronounced dead early Thursday morning. The family is being told that COVID pneumonia was the cause of death.
On September 14, 13-year-old Danny Rees from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin died after testing positive for COVID-19. Danny’s mother, Tammy, told Channel3000 that her son had been congested for two days prior to his death. His mother thought he only had a cold before he suddenly stopped breathing while resting at home.
The Fort Atkinson School Board approved a mask mandate Thursday night following his death.
On September 12, 17-year-old Justin Leming, a high school student from Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, died from COVID-19. On September 4, Addison Wishart, only 4 years old, from Evans, Georgia, was recovering from abdominal surgery when she contracted COVID-19 and died.
The deaths of these children are beyond tragic. Their families and friends are dealing with unimaginable grief and pain from the loss of their loved ones at such a young age. It is hard to overstate the impact that such tragedies are having on society. How does a parent of elementary school youth explain the death of a friend, a teacher or a bus driver? How do they promise their children that they are safe after such tragedies?
Parents and workers are being put in impossible situations. The forced reopening of schools has purposefully coincided with the cutting off of federal unemployment benefits and the scrapping of the eviction moratorium, threatening millions of families with destitution and homelessness unless they send their children to unsafe schools and return to unsafe workplaces.
This campaign to reopen schools has been spearheaded by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party with the full backing of the Republicans. The ruling class is carrying out this campaign in direct opposition to science, which clearly shows that the reopening of schools is not safe under the current conditions and children are susceptible to contracting and spreading the virus. Closing schools and non-essential businesses for a relatively brief time is one of the key tools for stopping the spread of COVID-19 and saving lives.
While it is true that children die at far slower rates than adults, children are dying every day from the virus.
For those children who contract the virus but do not die, there is mounting evidence of long term symptoms and complications from the new variant. Innumerable stories are emerging of severe cases among children. Just a brief review of some of the more harrowing cases include the following:
- Eduardo Cortes, 8, from San Diego, California, contracted COVID-19 from his parents, who were unvaccinated. Both parents had contracted the virus several weeks prior. Cortez was hospitalized a month later with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MISC). According to reports from the family, Cortes’ fever reached a staggering 106.1 degrees.
MISC has affected about 4,000 children since April 2020. There have been 80 cases diagnosed in San Diego alone. Doctors do not know why some kids are susceptible to MISC, while others are not.
- Elijah “E.J.” Johnson,18, has been admitted to a pediatric ICU in Missouri just one month after he scored two touchdowns in his first high school football game of the season. His mom told local reporters that he is now fighting to breathe due to COVID pneumonia complicated by blood clots.
Elijah was not vaccinated. His mom has been vocal on Facebook about Elijah’s situation, “because the youth are being exposed and transmitting the virus more and more. ... his school doesn’t have a mask mandate, it’s optional.”
- Christian Davila, 17, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was placed on life support due to COVID-19. Davila has been at MUSC’s Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital for three weeks. According to local reports he’s only been awake for the last week and a half of his stay. He is now regaining strength. “To walk into a hospital and see your son laying on a ventilator and nothing you can do about it, it floors you,” his dad told ABC-4 News.
“When we first heard about this Covid, you know, I thought it was nothing serious, nothing more than just the flu, you know, media hype whatever, but after watching what my son’s gone through over the last month, it’s totally changed my mind,' his father added.
Pediatric cases are on the rise in South Carolina. As of Thursday, there were 36 children hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide, 16 in the ICU, six on ventilators and two on life support.
- 1-year-old Ava Amira Rivera was placed on life support due to COVID-19 after being airlifted to a Texas hospital 150 miles away from her home because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area. “My heart sank to the floor,” her mom told reporters.
The Biden administration, union bureaucrats and politicians on both sides of the aisle have repeated the chorus ad nauseam that “we must learn to live with the virus.” But this is a lie. All of these deaths and infections were preventable. Had the proper measures been taken at the start of the pandemic, the virus could have been contained and eradicated. Now, due to the negligence and criminality of the ruling class, both Democrat and Republican, much more dangerous strains of the virus are developing.
The fact of the matter is that all factions of the ruling class—from Republicans, who are demanding an end to every mitigation measure, to Democrats, who claim that reopening can be carried out safely through “mitigation”—are opposed to the measures that are necessary to eradicate the virus, including the shutdown of schools.
In the country's largest school district, New York City, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio unilaterally announced on Monday that unvaccinated children who are known to have been exposed to COVID-19 in classrooms will no longer be required to quarantine. These moves come just one week after schools reopened in the largest district in the US with roughly 1.1 million students.
The Democrats are working closely with the trade unions, and in particular the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in every state, to keep the schools open no matter the cost. AFT President Randi Weingarten has declared that “the number one priority is to get kids to be back in school.”
These efforts have been accompanied by a massive campaign in the corporate media to downplay the dangers posed to children and to promote the idea that things are “back to normal.”
There is, however, nothing “normal” about child deaths and infections from COVID-19. Opposition to these deadly policies is brewing among workers, parents and students across the country and in fact, internationally.
What is necessary is a common fight to close all K-12 schools, universities and nonessential workplaces with full compensation for those affected, in combination with a mass vaccination campaign, universal testing, contact tracing, isolation of infected patients and other public health measures, as part of a broader strategy to eradicate COVID-19 on a world scale.
This strategy will not be implemented by the political establishment or the trade unions, but must be fought for by the working class organized independently from both parties and the corporate controlled trade unions.
Study: Over Half of Migrants Are on American Taxpayer-Funded Welfare
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
2 Sep 20210
3:09
More than half of the nation’s non-citizen population — including legal immigrants, foreign visa workers, and illegal aliens — use American taxpayer-funded welfare after arriving in the United States, a new analysis reveals.
Research by Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota finds that about 55 percent of non-citizen households in the U.S. use at least one form of welfare compared to just 32 percent of households headed by native-born Americans.
Camarota’s research analyzes the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation data from 2018, showing that 49 percent of households headed by foreign-born residents, including naturalized American citizens, use at least one welfare program.
In 2017, economist George Borjas called the U.S. immigration system “the largest anti-poverty program in the world” at the expense of America’s working and middle class.
(Center for Immigration Studies)
Specifically, foreign-born residents used vastly more Medicaid compared to native-born Americans and food stamps. For example, while 33 percent of foreign-born residents use Medicaid, just 20 percent of native-born Americans do so.
Likewise, while 31 percent of foreign-born residents are on food stamps, only 19 percent of native-born Americans use the program.
Camarota’s research reveals that even after years and years of residing in the U.S., foreign-born resident households continue to use high levels of welfare.
About 44 percent of foreign-born residents who resided in the U.S. for 10 years or less use at least one form of welfare. Roughly 50 percent of those who resided in the U.S. for more than 10 years are on welfare.
When naturalized Americans are excluded from that count, the level of welfare use rises significantly for those who have resided in the U.S. for a while. For example, among non-citizen households who resided in the U.S. for 10 years or less, 40 percent use welfare. For those in the U.S. for more than 10 years, about 62 percent are on welfare.
The latest data comes after similar numbers were released in March 2019 that showed that, in 2014, non-citizen households used nearly twice as much welfare as native-born Americans.
Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year — more than 1.5 million annually — are low-skilled foreign nationals who go on to compete for jobs against working class Americans.
At current legal immigration levels, the Census Bureau projects that about 1-in-6 U.S. residents will be foreign-born by 2060 with the foreign-born population hitting a record 69 million.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Wealth-X report: Billionaire wealth surged during pandemic
A new report from research firm Wealth-X found that the global COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the growth of social inequality and witnessed an unprecedented accumulation of wealth among the most privileged layers in society. For the first time in human history, the world had more than 3,000 billionaires in 2020.
This amounts to a 13.4 percent increase in billionaires since 2019, currently totaling 3,204 individuals, with a median wealth of $1.9 billion. Billionaires’ collective wealth swelled to $10 trillion, a 5.7 percent increase from 2019.
“Viewed in aggregate, the global pandemic delivered a windfall to billionaire wealth, boosted by the flood of monetary stimulus and swelling profits in key sectors that coined a new wave of younger, self-made billionaires,” the report said.
Billionaire wealth has increased steadily since 1990, but one-third of these wealth gains have occurred during the pandemic. US billionaire wealth increased nineteen-fold over the last 31 years, from an inflation adjusted $240 billion in 1990 to $4.7 trillion in 2021.
The parasitic growth in wealth was most pronounced in the United States, the center of world capitalism. The ranks of billionaires in all of North America grew by 17.5 percent from last year. In fact, North America’s 980 billionaires account for 30.6% of the world’s billionaires.
The US was the top billionaire country in 2020. According to a report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS), American billionaires have seen their collective wealth surge by 62 percent, approximately $1.8 billion, since March 18, 2020. Following North America, Asia saw its number of growing by 16.5%, for a grand total of 883. Asia’s billionaires saw their collective net worth grow to $2.6 trillion, a 7.5% increase.
The good fortune of this tiny layer of the world’s population over the past 18 months is all the more appalling when contrasted to the growing immiseration and impoverishment of billions of workers around the globe. As a few thousand billionaires amassed enormous sums of wealth, workers around the world lost $3.7 trillion in earnings during the pandemic, according to a report from the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The report estimated an 8.8 percent year-by-year decline in global working hours from 2019 to 2020, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs. This is approximately four times greater than the recorded loss during the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
The lost working hours were due to massive cuts in working hours and unprecedented levels of job loss, impacting some 114 million people and their families. Significantly, 71 percent of these job losses came from “inactivity,” meaning at least 81 million people around the world left the labor market because they could not find work.
Women have been more adversely affected by the pandemic than men. Globally, employment losses for women stand at 5 percent, versus 3.9 percent for men. Women were much more likely than men to drop out of the labor market, most commonly due to childcare concerns. Younger workers have also been devastated. Employment fell by 8.7 percent among workers aged 15-24 years old, compared to 3.7 percent for adults. Generation Z, the oldest of whom is 23, has become the most unemployed generation and is on track to experience the same financial struggles as millennials.
In the US alone, the official poverty rate rose by 1.0 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the US Census Bureau. The poverty rate grew to 11.4 percent, marking the first increase in the official poverty rate after five years of consecutive decline. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019.
At the same time, median household income in 2020 dropped by 2.9 percent from the previous year. This is the first statistically significant decline in median household income since 2011.
Over 86 million Americans have lost jobs, almost 38 million have been sickened by the virus, and over 675,000 have died from it. Between 2019 and 2020, the real median earnings of all workers fell by 1.2 percent. The total number of people reporting earnings decreased by about 3 million, while the number of full-time, year-round workers decreased by approximately 13.7 million.
The chief obstacle to solving the world’s burning social questions—whether the devastating impact of COVID-19 or the widespread growth of poverty—is the private profit interests of the capitalist ruling class. Every action these vultures have taken in response to the pandemic has been driven by the effort to protect the wealth and privileges of a few. To save lives and avert even further disaster, workers must fight for a policy based on the interests of the working class, the vast majority of society.
Ingraham: Biden 'flooding America' as thousands of Afghans
DeSantis Team: More than Half of Those Seeking Lifesaving Coronavirus Treatment ‘Fully Vaccinated’
More than half of the individuals seeking life-saving monoclonal antibody treatment are “fully vaccinated” individuals — news that comes as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Biden administration cut the supply of the treatment to Southern states.
“Florida is above average in vaccination rate. More than half of the patients in south Florida getting monoclonal antibody treatment are vaccinated and have breakthrough infections. Vaccinated or unvaccinated -Denying treatment to Covid patients is wrong,” DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw said on Thursday following the governor’s press conference, where he vowed to “work like hell” to get people the antibody treatment they need, regardless of the Biden administration’s actions.
On Friday, responding to critics, Pushaw reiterated that “[m]ore than half the patients getting the monoclonal antibody treatment in south Florida are fully vaccinated,” debunking the left-wing narrative that it is unvaccinated individuals, primarily, in the Sunshine State who are the primary reason for the demand:
This week, the Biden administration and HHS announced plans to slash the supply of the lifesaving treatment, citing the need for “equitable distribution.” Yet, last week, President Joe Biden promised to “increase the average pace of shipment across the country of free monoclonal antibody treatments by another 50 percent.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) addressed the administration’s “very, very problematic” decision during a press conference on Thursday, warning it will hurt patients. He ultimately said his administration will “work like hell” to make sure people get the treatment they need, despite Biden’s cuts. He also told reporters that he already spoke to GlaxoSmithKline executives, expressing hope the state will be able to order treatments directly from the company.
“The clinical data on that was even better than the clinical data on Regeneron – 85 percent reduction in hospitalizations,” DeSantis said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the opening of a monoclonal antibody site on August 18, 2021, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
“It is not approved for subcutaneous injections, so if we get it, and we use it at our sites, we have to expand the amount of IV treatments that are available, which we are going to be willing to do,” he said, noting it does not have a purchasing agreement with the federal government, as Regeneron does.
“The federal government has bought all the Regeneron. They just upped it for another shipment. We are not able to buy it directly from Regeneron,” DeSantis added.
Biden, however, has continued to complain about Republican governors such as DeSantis and Greg Abbott (R-TX), asserting they are “doing everything they can to undermine the life-saving requirements that I have proposed.” Yet, it is his administration slashing lifesaving treatments from Southern states. In fact, his administration sent less than half the needed doses to Florida this week alone.
President Joe Biden speaks about combatting the coronavirus pandemic in the State Dining Room of the White House on September 9, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The move follows Biden’s divisive coronavirus speech this month, where he vowed to use his power as president to get certain governors opposing his edicts “out of the way.”
More than 1 in 500 people in the US have died from COVID-19
Numerous media reports have emerged noting the latest macabre milestone of the coronavirus pandemic, that COVID-19 has killed more than one out of every 500 people in the United States since the virus first emerged in the country in January 2020. The total tally currently stands at 42.5 million confirmed cases and more than 685,000 dead.
The last such milestone occurred in mid-December of last year, when one out of every 1,000 people in the population had died. Nine months later, the number of deaths has doubled. Virtually everyone now knows a friend, colleague or family member lost to the deadly contagion.
In marking the premature passing of so many lives, CNN noted that, “It's a sobering toll that comes as hospitals in the US are struggling to keep up with the volume of patients.” An age breakdown in the Washington Post revealed that those aged 40-64 have a death rate of 1 in 780 and those aged 65-84 have a death rate of 1 in 150. Those aged 85 and older have a truly staggering death rate of 1 in 35, amounting to a total of 171,000 lost human lives.
The pandemic has ravaged both the elderly as well as those caring for them. The AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard reports that, as of September 15, at least 186,000 nursing home residents and staff have been killed by the pandemic. AARP’s data implies that tens of thousands of nursing home and long-term care facility workers have died alongside those they were working to care for. Nursing home deaths are also on the rise, particularly in Alaska, Florida and Montana.
Comparisons to wars and past pandemics are increasingly apt. In absolute numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more Americans than total US combat and non-combat deaths in World War I and II combined. The coronavirus pandemic has also now killed about the same number of Americans as the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 500,000 to 850,000.
There are also many indications that the coronavirus pandemic will surpass or has already surpassed the grim milestone set by the 1918 flu. Excess death estimates from the Economist place the true death toll in the US closer to 900,000, while the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation place the total toll from COVID-19 at more than 1 million.
Official figures are equally macabre. There are currently an average of more than 1,600 people dying each day, a number which has been trending upwards since July.
What none of the media reports seriously probe, however, is the source of the immense amount of casualties. At most, there is a despair that “not enough people have been immunized” with coronavirus vaccines, as put by the Post. The Biden administration itself has remained silent on the figure. More generally, the deaths have been treated as “no longer a matter of if … but a matter of when” they would occur, as if the pandemic is some sort of unforeseen natural disaster and that we must simply accept the consequences.
Instead, the decreasing cases were seen as an excuse to more fully open the economy. July 4 was celebrated as a day of “Independence” from the virus and plans were made to fully reopen schools come the fall. Warnings of numerous scientists about the dangers of a surge of the new and highly infectious Delta variant, which had ravaged India for months, went totally unheeded. Decisions were made to prioritize the interests of Wall Street investors over human life.
The consequences have been catastrophic. There are now nearly 153,000 new cases reported daily in the US, a figure which is again rising after the dip in reporting over the Labor Day weekend. Cases are also increasing across all parts of the US, not just the American south where cases have been concentrated over the past few months. Data from the New York Times shows that states including Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have some of the highest case rates in the nation.
Montana and Idaho also have some of the highest increases in hospitalizations in the country. Montana leads the entire nation, with a 47 percent increase in hospitalizations over the past 14 days, while Idaho has suffered a 29 percent increase over that same period. Other states with similar high changes to their hospitalization rates include Ohio, West Virginia, Alaska, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
As a result, hospital systems are increasingly overwhelmed. Nearly 100,000 people are hospitalized from COVID-19 on a given day. One in four hospitals currently reports that more than 95 percent of their intensive care unit beds are occupied, and there is at least one such overwhelmed hospital in nearly every state. And many hospitals, such as those in southern Illinois and southwest Montana, have reported zero ICU bed availability.
The surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths since mid-summer is a damning indictment of the policies of the Biden administration. Since he took office, Biden has banked on vaccines being enough to slow the spread of the disease, promoting the false claim that it was safe to reopen workplaces and particularly schools since February. Other public health measures, including testing, contact tracing and isolation have been largely abandoned. Closures of businesses and schools have been rejected outright.
In doing so, Biden has adopted the policies of his predecessor and the entire US ruling establishment. While the media and various other representatives of the capitalist class may momentarily note the scale of the ongoing disaster, no solution, especially not one which impinges on the profit interests of the banks and corporate elite, is presented.
It thus falls upon the other major social force in society, the working class, to fight for a policy of eradicating COVID-19. This requires the closure of schools and non-essential businesses, together with massive investments in testing, contact tracing, and other vital public health measures.
Globalists Unite: Clinton, Bush, Obama Team Up with Biden to Import Afghans
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THESE ARE SOME OF THE MOST EVIL AND SELF-SERVING PEOPLE AMERICA HAS EVER BEEN VICTIMS OF Globalists Unite: Clinton, Bush, Obama Team Up with Biden to Import AfghansSW Border Apprehensions in August: More Russians, Turks, Indians, HaitiansBy Patrick Goodenough | September 16, 2021 | 4:39am EDT  A U.S. Border Patrol agent searches a group of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Sunland Park, New Mexico in July. (Photo by Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images) (CNSNews.com) – The number of “encounters” with migrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border and coming from countries other than Mexico and the “northern triangle” climbed to a new high of 61,484 in August – a 1,690 percent increase from the same month last year. Although some of last year’s figures would have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the August figure for this cohort of apprehended migrants is still up 456 percent from the same month in 2019, and up 1,258 percent from the same month in 2018, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures released on Wednesday. The majority of migrants apprehended along the southern border while trying to get into the U.S. illegally come from Mexico and the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But when those numbers are excluded, the number of apprehensions of migrants originating from all other countries has reached 308,294 so far this fiscal year, which runs through the end of September. That’s an increase of 188 percent over the number of encounters for the same 11-month period in FY 2019 (Oct. 2018 - Sept. 2019), when 107,117 were recorded.  (Graph: CNSNews.com / Data: CBP) This calendar year has seen consistent month-on-month increases in the number of apprehensions of migrants from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, with the increases growing more steeply after February: 9,671 in January, 11,909 in February, 25,123 in March, 33,899 in April, 40,675 in May, 47,224 in June, 59,006 in July, and now 61,484 in August. Migrants from Colombia accounted for one of the larger increase in the number of encounters last month, more than doubling from 751 in July to 1,563 in August. The number of apprehensions involving Russians, Turks, and Indians also increased month-on-month, from 702 to 757 (up 7.8 percent), 150 to 251 (67.3 percent), and 126 to 374 (196.8 percent), respectively. Among countries accounting for larger numbers of migrants being apprehended, encounters with migrants from Haiti were up 37 percent, from 5,510 in July to 7,580 in August, and from Cuba were up 26 percent, from 3,557 to 4,494.  (Graph: CNSNews.com / Data: CBP) The number of encounters with migrants from Venezuela rose slightly, from 6,126 to 6,296 (2.7 percent), from Brazil the increase was from 8,643 to 9,098 (5.2 percent), while encounters with migrants from Nicaragua dropped, from 13,456 in July to 9,948 in August (a 26 percent decrease). Overall, the CBP reported a total of 208,887 encounters on the southwest border in August, making it the second highest monthly number since fiscal year 2000. The highest was recorded just one month earlier, at 213,534. Since the beginning of 2021, the number of encounters along the southwest border climbed steadily each month – 78,414 in January, 101,099 in February, 173,281 in March, 178,799 in April, 180,563 in May, 189,020 in June, 213,534 in July – before dropping slightly to August’s 208,887. The CBP said 25 percent of the August encounters involved individuals who had had at least one prior encounter during the previous 12-month period. Globalists Unite: Clinton, Bush, Obama Team Up with Biden to Import Afghans5:23 President Joe Biden is looking to team up with former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as well as multinational corporations, to bring Afghans to the United States for permanent resettlement. This week, former officials with the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations launched the organization Welcome.us which will work with multinational corporations like Airbnb, Walmart, Starbucks, Instacart, Facebook, Microsoft, and Chobani to provide financial support to Afghans arriving in the U.S. as part of Biden’s massive resettlement operation. Biden has said he hopes to resettle about 95,000 Afghans across the U.S. over the next 12 months. In a 21-day period from August to September, Biden brought more than 48,000 Afghans to the U.S. for resettlement — a population more than four times that of Jackson, Wyoming. Instacart is donating 25,000 “culturally appropriate grocery meals” to Afghans arriving in the U.S. while Walmart donates $5000,000 in grant money to Welcome.us. Facebook is giving Welcome.us $150,000 in ad credits. Starbucks has pledged $350,000 in grants to “nonprofit organizations supporting Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and refugee resettlement” while Microsoft executives have said they will give $1 million in “cash, technology, and services to support the evacuation and resettlement of refugees.” “America is at a critical moment in our history — it is our duty to recognize our common humanity and welcome refugees from Afghanistan with open arms,” Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said in a statement. Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as former First Ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama, are serving as honorary co-chairs to Welcome.us. The organization is being backed by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors which has ties to billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.  (Screenshot via Welcome.us) The Bushes said in a statement:
The launch of the organization comes as Biden readies a plan to hugely open the routes by which refugee resettlement is bankrolled. Specifically, the Biden plan would privatize refugee resettlement so that corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can bring refugees to the U.S. Axios reports:
Welcome.us, according to Axios, is providing a gateway for the Biden administration to set up a privatized refugee resettlement operation where corporations can seek out refugees to fill American jobs. As Breitbart News reported, the Afghan population in the U.S. has exploded in recent years. Before the Afghanistan War began in 2001, just 44,000 Afghans resided in the U.S. By 2019, that total had more than tripled to 133,000. While the Afghan population in the U.S. has grown significantly, so has the number of Afghans living on welfare and near the poverty line. For instance, more than 65 percent of households headed by Afghan immigrants use at least one major form of welfare. Likewise, the number of Afghan immigrant households that live in or near the U.S. poverty line is close to 51 percent. This is significantly higher than that of households headed by native-born Americans, where about 27 percent live in or near poverty. Over the last 20 years, nearly a million refugees have been resettled in the nation — more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and it would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida. Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to research, and each refugee costs taxpayers about $133,000 over the course of their lifetime. Within five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. |
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