https://journal-neo.org/2020/04/10/how-organized-crime-is-spreading-covid-19-and-raking-in-cash/
Once word got out that Covid-19 coronovirus had spread to the USA most people knew deep in their guts that it would get very big and very ugly.
Their ruling class has fought tooth and nail for decades against setting up a universal health scheme for the American people. Its private medical services are amongst the finest in the world. But people often have to sell their house to pay for major operations. Private hospital emergency services regularly dump uninsured sick people at bus stops and homeless shelters.
With this scenario Covid-19 was going to be a disaster for the American people. The constant vision of Trump dissembling, boasting and lying at his press conferences. Blaming China, saying its like the flu and thinking that it would be over by Easter. We had Norman Swan giving calm scientific analysis. He could see the coming U.S. train crash.
Daily and weekly the statistics for cases and deaths started getting exponential very quickly. There weren’t enough ICUs, not nearly enough respirators or safety equipment. How did this happen?
Gordon Duff is a Vietnam veteran and commentator on U.S affairs, looks for answers in the cesspit of the U.S. ruling circles.
* Norman Swan (with Alan Kohler March 9 2020)
America is a worry because you haven’t got a clue what’s going on. We’re kind of patronising when we say we don’t know what’s going on in Indonesia and we don’t know what’s going on in Iran, it’s been a total mess in the United States. Going back to 2016-17 with the Trump administration coming in, and as they did with other bureaucracies, with the federal health bureaucracy, they gutted it and they gutted expertise, and they gutted expertise in the population health and in this infectious disease prevention area and in biosecurity before they did anything else. The CDC, the Centre for Disease Control, and to some extent the Food and Drug Administration, don’t have the expertise internally to deal with this whereas they had it before. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is they’re in command and control of the messaging and make the analogies you want with that, but they had the testing centralised on a supply kit from the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the beginning of last week there would only be 450 tests done in a country of 300 million people. The test kit was faulty, it was contaminated. The last few days they decentralised the testing kits and the manufacturer thereof and you’ll start to see it, and in that period of time what’s happened is that according to a genetics study in Washington State it’s been spreading in Washington State under the radar, well if you’re not testing you don’t find out.
It’s been quietly just under the radar spreading in Washington State under cover of influenza because there’s an influenza epidemic going on in the United States at the moment. Our seasonal flu epidemic is starting a little bit early here too so you’re getting that mix up, it’s hard to actually say what’s COVID-19 and what’s influenza, and if you haven’t got a testing kit available or you have to pay $3,200 US to be seen in an emergency department and you don’t have sick leave there are several factors conspiring to a real problem in the United States which we have got no visibility on.
Do you think it’s possible that at some point the United States will overreact as opposed to underreacting as they’re doing now and the whole place shuts down?
It’s possible, it’s not in the DNA of the Trump administration to do that because they’re more worried about the stock market, business and investment, and so on. It won’t work because I think the cat is out of the bag there and there are a lot of things they’ve actually got to do which don’t fit with the US system which is you’ve actually got to make it possible for some people to turn up and not be charged to be seen if they think they’ve got coronavirus, you’re not going to charge for the test, you’re not going to disincentivise people to be off work and isolate themselves. It’s hard to see how those fundamental themes can work. What Trump is talking about is well, we need to build a wall to stop the problem from Mexico, well if you’re the Mexicans and you look at your low rate of COVID-19 and you look at America maybe you want the wall built to stop Americans coming in.
