Covid Journal, May 27, 2020

The Military Exposes Criminal Behaviour

(I know the image above is about Trump and his response to Covid, but it still captures the sentiment concerning right-wingers and their misguided views on life and liberty when it comes to ‘acceptable’ levels of death.)

Ontario should be embarrassed about the treatment of elderly in this province.

To date, 85% of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths are linked to outbreaks at long-term care facilities, with private, for-profit homes seeing up to four times as many deaths.

As a result of Covid-related deaths, the Canadian military presence at retirement and nursing homes has exposed a fraud that will likely be met with severe punishment, possibly even jail time for those in charge.

Or will it?

Press Progress has presented data showing that most of the management of Canada’s biggest for-profit nursing homes have no medical qualifications.

Former Conservative Ontario premier Mike Harris serves as Chair of Chartwell, while former premier Bill Davis is chair emeritus of Revera.

It’s likely that the higher-ups will find scapegoats and people lower on the rungs to blame for the mess that management has created.

A Wealth Tax?

Leadnow.ca has generated some interesting stats through survey.

As putzes like Stephen Harper threaten us with austerity, it’s time to consider viable options in the other direction: making the country’s wealthiest people pay their fare share, if not more.

Groundbreaking new polling released over the weekend shows that a super majority of Canadians support a wealth tax on multimillionaires to help pay for the pandemic recovery and reduce growing inequality. [1]

While half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, just 87 families own over $259 billion — over half the country’s wealth. [2] Without proper and fair taxation, these fortunes continue to skyrocket as our wages stagnate, our jobs disappear, and our public services crumble.[3]

But right now, we have an opportunity to re-build Canada’s economy in a way that works for everyone — not just the wealthy few. Trudeau’s Liberals are planning how to recover from the COVID19 crisis — and they’re paying close attention to what the public wants.

If we all come together to demand the ultra wealthy pay a fairer share of tax, we can raise much-need billions for stronger social safety nets, public services, and jobs. We can make Canada more fair.

Of course, it’ll be important to close loopholes, eliminate tax havens and have our police/security forces focus on money laundering and wealth stashing.

As I’ve said before, the right can come at us hard with stringent fiscal and monetary punishment, but the rest of us can respond and be prepared with a more civilized action plan that involves everyone, especially those on the top, paying their fair share.

Masks

I wear a mask most times now when I’m shopping.

I observe most other people wearing masks. It’s pretty easy to stereotype those who don’t as the same kind of people that would yell at someone to play ‘Murican Music’ when in a park.

What I don’t see is service people of all stripes wearing masks. The woman who sliced some deli meat is asking me questions while standing two inches away from the product that she just weighed and is exposed to her breath. The man who stocks bags of products into the shelves of a store isn’t wearing protection of any kind. And he will then proceed to another location or town and do it all over again.

Have either of these people and many others like them been tested on a regular basis? These are the people who might be carriers of disease, but who are also defying all requests for protection because their employers probably aren’t providing them.

We need an urgent and mandatory requirement that all people with direct contact with essential services, food and other retail services wear a mask and/or a face shield.

Without these precautions, social distancing and self-isolation aren’t going to do anything to change recurring numbers with Covid.

Suicides Starting to Exceed Covid Deaths

A mental health pandemic is growing beyond the wake of Covid-19.

Unemployment, poverty, depression and social isolation are unfortunately pushing people to the brink and making them consider suicide as an ‘option’ with this mess.

In California, suicide rates under lockdown have exploded to unprecedented levels. By late March, more people had died in just one Tennessee county from suicide than had died in the entire state directly from the virus. Data out of Arizona show a similar trend. These reports expose the frivolity and absurdity of the knee-jerk global lockdown to prevent Covid-19. Could anything have been done to save these people?

What’s the tipping point for logic to confront logic and bring about a solution other than the heavy-handed thuggery that we’re experiencing on a global level?

Obviously, a treatment is required, but we need a LOT more data and knowledge about different environments (eg. retirement homes, work environments, etc), reactions (eg. cleaning) and preventative measures (eg. wearing more masks in public, especially mandatory for people who are in frequent contact with the public such as essential workers and employees of retailers).

Our life-size, global version of ‘hit and miss’ Battleship approach is starting to feel awkward at best and dangerous as more and more evidence works against the strategy of universal lockdown.