Covid 19 coronavirus: One death every 30 seconds when the US healthcare system ‘Crushed’

The coronavirus situation worsens in the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of new cases are reported every day.

In several days this month alone, the US has recorded more than 3,000 deaths from coronavirus, surpassing the 2977 death toll in the 9/11 terrorist attacks that changed the country forever.

On Wednesday of last week, the United States reported a record 3,611 deaths – one every 23 seconds.

Between Saturday, December 12, and December 19, the US recorded 17,373 deaths: one every 34 seconds.

And things keep getting worse.

“We are still experiencing the outcome of Thanksgiving parties and gatherings,” Moncef Slaoui, chief scientist for the US government’s vaccine initiative, said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday as the United States approved the Modern vaccine distribution.

“And unfortunately, there may be more during the Christmas holidays. So there will be a continued increase.”

Across the country, with the exception of Kentucky, every state has more occupied intensive care beds than three months ago.

In California, the situation is rapidly deteriorating and there are fears that the state will become the next epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.

“I’m not sugarcoating this, they’re crushing us,” Los Angeles County Medical Director Dr. Brad Spellberg said at a news conference Friday.

Hospitalizations in California have doubled in the past three weeks. Last week, the southern part of the state reached zero percent capacity for patients needing intensive care.

On Thursday of last week, Providence St Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California, had 60 patients in the ICU. The hospital has 20 ICU beds.

California has activated its “mass fatality” program – stocking up an additional 5,000 body bags and providing 60 additional refrigerated storage units to support overflowing morgues.

“I don’t want people to scare people, but this is a deadly disease. And we must be aware of where we are on this current journey together, towards the vaccine. We are not at the finish line,” said the Governor of California, Gavin. Newsom said.

Thanksgiving trips and family gatherings are a factor in addition to “covid fatigue,” as people become complacent about taking the same precautions they had been taking to protect themselves against the virus in previous months.

According to Dr. Emma Shortis, who follows the US as a researcher at RMIT’s Center for Global Social Studies, there are other factors as well.

First, there has been a “completely inept response from the Trump administration basically from the start, a refusal to really address the problem and develop a coordinated response, and honestly a lack of attention and a lack of interest in fighting the virus and the way in which it is spreading. “

But problems with fast-filling hospitals and access to care go back further than Trump.

“The healthcare system in the United States, if you can call it a healthcare system, is set up almost entirely for profit and it just isn’t equipped to deal with these kinds of things,” Shortis said.

Systemic factors, such as people’s health insurance being tied to their work, also pose a problem when a pandemic leaves millions of people out of work.

“They also lose their health insurance, which makes getting medical care extremely difficult when going to the hospital can bankrupt you in the United States.”

The US is often touted for offering world-class healthcare, and while that is true “for some people,” there is a problem.

“If you are the president of the United States, you get the best care in the world, but it is tied to money. Money buys you great health care in the United States, but if you don’t have that much money, I don’t have access to that. type of medical care. “

Shortis said part of the reason for this is America’s political culture, but also because the federal government does not have the general powers over the states that it would need to build a better healthcare system.

Money flowing into political parties from lobbyists representing pharmaceutical and insurance companies doesn’t help either.

The United States is based on ideologies centered on individualism and the free market, but according to Shortis, “the markets are not oriented to solve global health crises.”

Neither is the current administration.

“(Trump) is not interested in tackling this problem,” Shortis said. “He’s interested in pursuing election conspiracy theories and holding onto power in any way he can. The way the system is stuck between the House and the Senate.”

Although Joe Biden will take office on January 20, he is not going to flip a switch and solve America’s problems.

“Biden represents getting back to ‘normal,'” said Shortis. “America cannot go back to ‘normal’, for many people ‘normal’ was not good either. The deep systemic changes it needs to make, I’m not sure it has the appetite or the ability to make those changes.

“All these crises in the United States have taken a long time to develop. Donald Trump has made these things worse, but he didn’t create them. I don’t think Biden is in a position to really address those systemic crises in the way that they need to be approached, I think the signs point to a continuation of this stalemate in American politics. “

Biden comes to the White House with a plan for his first 100 days in office that would involve a national mask mandate (which the Federal Government does not have the power to enforce) and a goal of vaccinating an average of one million. of people every day. .

Whether he can do that “will depend largely on the cooperation he can get from Congress and the Senate,” Shortis said.

“Certainly there is some goodwill coming from the first 100 days in office that Biden hopes to build on, but also, more than 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. They voluntarily came out and voted for Donald Trump, so I think that Biden is going to meet a significant amount of opposition. “