Our Political Leaders Could Have Prevented Mass COVID-19 Deaths. They Chose Not to.
The US has never seriously considered far-reaching responses to the coronavirus pandemic like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to stay at home without immiseration. The result: unnecessary mass deaths, with more on the way.
A paramedic takes a patient from an ambulance to an emergency arrival area at Elmhurst Hospital during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Queens, New York. (Ninian Reid / Flickr)
Last night, on the fiftieth day of his presidency and the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic, President Biden addressed the nation and announced, “America is coming back.”
Among the first steps of that return will be ensuring that nearly all schools return to normal in the next two months. Thanks to $125 billion in the new $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill dedicated to the effort and an aggressive vaccination push for teachers and staff, Biden declared “the number-one priority of my new secretary of education” will be “opening the majority of K-8 schools in my first hundred days in office.”
To imagine what it might be like in those schools, the country could turn to teachers like Mary.
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