Stop hurting the working class
The lockdowns that we’ve seen from this pandemic have been the worst assault on the working class in the United States since segregation and the Vietnam War.
We are protecting lower- risk college students and professionals like lawyers, journalists and scientists who can work from home, while older working- class people, who are high risk, have to be out there making a living — driving a bus, a cab or working in supermarkets. Highrisk people are being exposed to the virus and they are the ones who are building up the immunity in the population that will eventually protect all of us.
So we have actually been extremely successful in shifting the risk of infection from the professional class to the working class.
The key feature with COVID-19 is that there’s a 1,000- fold difference in risk in mortality and deaths between the oldest and the youngest. That’s something we have to utilize as we fight this enemy.
Children have less risk from COVID- 19 than from the annual influenza. At the same time, the burden of the lockdown is enormous on children and young adults because of the collateral damage in other aspects of public health. So what we proposed, and which is part of the Great Barrington Declaration that was signed six weeks ago, is we have to be much better at protecting older people.
It is possible to shift this risk and the way to do that depends on the living situation of these older people. There are a lot of things we can do to better protect the nursing homes and I think it’s a scandal that we’re not doing them.
A second group are older people who live at home who we need to help with groceries and other necessities so that they don’t have to go and expose themselves in the supermarket. We can use pension and disability funds to let older working adults be protected during the height of the transmission so that they can stay home, so that they don’t have to drive that bus, they don’t have to do that janitorial work, which they are now forced to do just to survive.
The damage from the lockdowns to date is something that we’re going to have to live with and die with for many years to come. Childhood immunization rates have plummeted. In some parts of the world we have measles outbreaks. People are dying from cardiovascular disease when they shouldn’t be. You have less cancers this year because they have not been diagnosed. Mental health has deteriorated and is devastating in all age groups. There have been over 200,000 deaths in the United States, many of which could have been avoided if we had taken a more basic public health approach to this pandemic.
I think every politician should have to understand and demand from their advisers the three principles of public health: it’s not just short term, it’s long term; it’s not one disease COVID-19, it’s public health as a whole; and it’s not only the safety of professionals, it is the safety and well- being of the whole population including working class, inner cities and the poor around the world.