Reopen Economy

Trump Administration Tells States To Yank Benefits From Those Who Won’t Return To Work

May 15, 2020 Arthur Delaney, Portside. Educate! COVID-19, PPE, Reopen Economy, Unemployment

Congress created special unemployment benefits so that laid-off workers could stay home while the coronavirus pandemic rages outside, but the Trump administration wants states to make sure that nobody’s getting benefits if they could be at work. The U.S. Department of Labor has told states, which implement unemployment insurance programs according to federal rules, that they should ask employers to notify the state if someone turns down an offer to come back to work. In a guidance memo on Monday evening, the Labor Department said “states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits.” The guidance comes as President Donald Trump is calling on states to lift restrictions on commerce so that the economy might get back on track ahead of the November election, even though the national death toll from COVID-19 is still rising at a brisk pace.

Worker Advocates Condemn Virginia’s Plan To Reopen

May 15, 2020 Ally Schweitzer, The DCist. Resist! COVID-19, Essential worker, Reopen Economy, Virginia

Immigrant advocates, progressive groups and NAACP chapters in Northern Virginia are calling on Gov. Ralph Northam to cancel his plans to partially reopen the state on May 15. Reopening too soon, advocates say, imperils black and Latinx workers on the front lines. In a remote press conference Thursday, the coalition demanded extensive COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, free medical services, hazard pay, ample personal protective equipment and other protections before workers are called back to their jobs across the state. Their demands are outlined in a new open letter to the governor. Latinx and black Virginians have been hardest hit by the pandemic in the commonwealth. In Fairfax County, Latinos make up nearly 60% of the jurisdiction’s known cases, but approximately 16% of the population, per Census data.

Trump’s ‘Reopening’ Is A Red Herring

May 15, 2020 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Public Health, Reopen Economy, Trump

When President Trump, Republican leaders, right-wing think tanks and billionaire CEOs aggressively push to send people back to work before the coronavirus is contained, this is not a “reopening.” It’s the opposite: an unraveling of the conditions that we need to safely and sustainably reopen our society. While the red herring of a “reopening” has dominated news cycles and Trump administration press conferences, the United States has moved ever further away from what we all desperately seek: a point at which this all ends, and it’s safe to go to the library, stroll maskless through a park, eat dinner with a loved one, and go to work without fear. The Right doesn’t own the “reopening” terrain—it has forfeited it by barreling down a road that leads to mass death, suffering, and more and more closures down the road.

To Re-Open Safely We Need A ‘Health Force’ Of Disease Detectives

May 14, 2020 By Sandy Smith-Nonini, PhD, Portside. Create! COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health, Reopen Economy

Conservative governors are now openly at odds with epidemiologists as plans move ahead for more than half the states to loosen social distancing and permit many businesses to re-open this month despite none of them meeting White House Coronavirus Taskforce guidelines. Unlike re-openings in China, Hong Kong and South Korea where new cases fell rapidly after aggressive containment efforts, the United States, with nearly 1.4 million cases and over 81,000 COVID-19 deaths (as of May 11), must follow a different model. Many critics blame the Trump Administration’s laggard scale-up of testing for the dilemma. But studies of past emerging disease epidemics have taught us that testing alone will not prevent new outbreaks. To re-open the economy we must undertake the most massive effort to trace and isolate new infections in history.

The COVID-19 Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them

May 13, 2020 Erin Bromage. Educate! COVID-19, health, Pandemic, Reopen Economy

It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That's what's going to happen with a lockdown. As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off. I understand the reasons for reopening the economy, but I've said before, if you don't solve the biology, the economy won't recover. There are very few states that have demonstrated a sustained decline in numbers of new infections.

China, South Korea And Germany Report New COVID-19 Outbreaks

May 12, 2020 Bryan Dyne, WSWS. Educate! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, Reopen Economy

China, Germany and South Korea have all reported substantial new outbreaks of COVID-19 after they eased lockdowns, sparking warnings that efforts to lift lockdowns in Europe and the United States risk a major new resurgence of the disease. There are now nearly 4.2 million reported infections of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus worldwide, and just under 284,000 deaths caused by the resulting disease. The number of daily new cases has risen from a two-week low on April 27 of about 66,000 to more than 80,000 yesterday, as the pandemic continues to spread from its current epicenters in Western Europe and the United States to Africa, South America, South Asia and countries of the former Soviet Union. Two new clusters of coronavirus cases were reported in China over the weekend, as well as a single larger outbreak in Seoul, South Korea. Concurrently, the German government reported that outbreaks had begun to grow exponentially again.

Are Armed Right-Wing Protests A Harbinger Of Fascism?

May 8, 2020 John Leslie, Socialist Resurgence. Educate! Anti-vaccine, COVID-19, Fascism, Reopen Economy

Protests continue to call for the reopening of the economy, with demonstrations in Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, California, and other states. Many of the protesters are armed with rifles and handguns. In Michigan, for the second time in two weeks, an “American Patriot Rally” took place on the state capitol steps on April 30. The event was initiated by Michigan United for Liberty and joined in by other right-wing groups. The thuggish Michigan Liberty Militia provided “security” for the action. Hundreds of armed protesters moved into the halls of the statehouse and crowded into the gallery of the state Senate after first demanding to be allowed on the House floor. At a May 2 protest in Boise, Idaho, militia extremist Ammon Bundy compared government quarantine measures to the Nazi holocaust against Jews and called such government intervention “tyranny.”

Reopening The Economy Will Send Us To Hell

May 6, 2020 Mike Davis, LA Progressive. Educate! COVID-19, Recession, Reopen Economy, Working Class

As we head into the fifth month of the outbreak, millions of working families feel like they have been kidnapped and sent to hell. As unemployment (officially reported) soars toward 30 percent or more, an estimated 20 million more people will fall helplessly below the poverty line. In a recent Pew poll, 60 percent of Latinos reported losing jobs or wages, as did more than half of all workers below the age of 30. In addition to their jobs, millions will lose everything they had spent their lives working for: homes, pensions, medical coverage, and savings accounts. Most of us have already lived through a brutal preview of economic collapse: the 2008-09 “Great Recession.” In a span of 18 months a majority of Black and Latino families lost all their net wealth and college grads from non-privileged backgrounds found themselves marooned, seemingly for life, in the low-wage service economy.

ALEC Leading Right-Wing Campaign To Reopen The Economy

May 6, 2020 David Armiak and Alex Kotch, Exposed CMD. Educate! ALEC, COVID-19, Reopen Economy, State Government

Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show that a powerful corporate lobby front group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is playing a leading role in the right-wing movement to push for early reopening of the economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic that has cost the United States 61,680 lives to date. ALEC is a corporate pay-to-play operation where legislators and corporate lobbyists vote behind closed doors to adopt model legislation on a broad range of public policy issues. At a time when many hard-hit states and medical experts are lamenting the lack of federal leadership in dealing with the health crisis, the ALEC documents call for action to “bring the economy back to life through a free market approach that gets big government out of the way.”

Physicians Demonstrate Support For Targeted Health Department Director

May 4, 2020 Jane Morice, Cleveland.com. Resist! COVID-19, Ohio, Public Health, Reopen Economy

Columbus, Ohio - The Physicians Action Network held a socially distanced demonstration Sunday at the Ohio Statehouse, showing their support for Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. The demonstration comes one day after another small group gathered outside Acton’s home in the Columbus suburbs, lamenting the state’s stay-at-home order and pushing for the state to re-open in full. About 25 physicians donned their scrubs and lab coats Sunday and stood a safe distance apart as a show of support for Acton, a video posted on the Physicians Action Network Facebook page shows. In the video, one masked physician - Anita Somani, an OB-GYN based in Columbus - notes that many doctors are in similar positions to those protesting the stay-at-home order that’s kept hundreds of thousands of Ohioans out of work for weeks. Not all doctors work in hospitals, and some own small businesses too.

Reopening Day 2020? Spectator Sports Are The Last Thing We Need

April 25, 2020 Robert Lipsyte, Tom Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, health, Reopen Economy, Sports

If sports don’t trump religion as the opiate of the masses, they have, until recently, been at least the background music of most of our lives. So here’s my bet on one possible side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic to put in your scorebook: if the National Football League plays regular season games this fall, President Trump stands a good chance of winning reelection for returning America to business as usual -- or, at least, to his twisted version of the same. That’s why he announced at a recent daily coronavirus briefing-cum-rally his eagerness to bring professional sports back quickly. Though it was Major League Baseball that he mentioned -- “We have to get our sports back. I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old” -- the sport that truly matters to him is football, the only major mass entertainment (other than Trumpism) that endorses tribalism and toxic masculinity so flagrantly and keeps violence in vogue.

Coronavirus Advice From Abroad

April 22, 2020 By Stephen Engelberg, Caroline Chen and Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica. Create! COVID-19, health, Recession, Reopen Economy

After insisting that he had absolute power to decide when to reopen the American economy, President Donald Trump has turned over to all of you what he initially called “the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make.” Trump is often guilty of hyperbole, but he’s right in this case. Figuring out how and when to let people go back to work during an outbreak of life-threatening disease is the most consequential decision any of you will ever face. You’ve already seen the stakes in New York, New Jersey and Michigan. Get this wrong and thousands of people in your state will die. As the presidential election campaign heats up, count on the president to blast you for high unemployment rates in your state (you lifted restrictions too slowly) or clusters of deaths (you went too far, too soon). To help you and your aides think about this decision over the next few weeks, we’ve interviewed experts and frontline officials from Italy, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.

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