General Discussion

SoonerPride

(12,286 posts) Thu May 7, 2020, 10:32 AM May 2020

There Is Still No Plan (NY Mag article)

There is still no plan for the end of the coronavirus crisis, for all intents and purposes.

A month ago, on April 5, I wrote that, weeks into what was initially intended to be a short lockdown, there was no clear vision of an endgame from the White House. In theory, the lockdowns were designed to slow the spread of the disease to give us time to catch up and prepare for what would happen when restrictions were relaxed. In the month since, we’ve had a lot more action at the state and local level, though that action has moved in different directions at once — Los Angeles rolling out free universal testing and Massachusetts building out a contact-tracing army while Texas reopens dangerously close to its own peak and Georgia leans into its own coronavirus surge. That disarray is because, in the White House and throughout the federal government, there is still nothing like a vision or concerted effort to coordinate a national response. On Tuesday, it was even reported that the president was disbanding the coronavirus task force, though on Wednesday the president somewhat walked that back on Twitter in a thread that was really more a self-congratulations on a job very well done. Thursday, the Associated Press reported that guidelines prepared by the CDC to inform state and local officials in managing their own re-openings were abruptly shelved, with agency scientists told the plan “would never see the light of day.”

snip

On Twitter, Jeet Heer went even further: “I cannot underscore enough that the plan is to make the working class into human sacrifices on the altar of capitalism,” he wrote.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/white-house-plan-for-ending-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders.html

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Long and insightful article. Free to read because, you know, coronavirus and all that.