U.S. COVID-19 POLICY: PRISONERS OF FEAR—THE ELDERLY, THE SICK, AND VULNERAB

U.S. COVID-19 POLICY: PRISONERS OF FEAR—THE ELDERLY, THE SICK, AND VULNERABLE
The Covid-19 pandemic has added another tragic reality, a tidal wave of FEAR. Allowing the pandemic to spread uncontrolled through the population has now robbed those 65 and over of the gold in their ‘Golden Years”

Covid-19 is “so contagious and widespread, it can infect even those people with robust immune systems”. “Do we have any hope of protecting our vulnerable friends, family members and neighbors and allowing them to live fully.”? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/omicron-immunocompromised.html

The Supreme Court has refused to allow a “vaccine or test” mandate for private businesses, allowing the virus uncontrolled spread.

The Center for Disease Control (C.D.C.) has cut the isolation days for infected people to 5 days from 10, allowing workers to spread the virus at work.
The California Department of Public Health has authorized Covid-19 infected health care workers to return to work in hospitals if they are asymptomatic, allowing the virus more opportunity to spread to co-workers and patients.

Dr. Fauci said, “Omicron will find just about everyone.”

C.D.C. Director Walensky noted that 75% of the recent deaths among fully vaccinated people had other health conditions, diseases, or risk factors. Those most likely to die are the elderly, the sick, and the immune-compromised.

Allowing the virus to sweep, unhindered through the population has caused the greatest anxiety among those in their “Golden Years”, the group in which 75% of the deaths have occurred. Due to fear, the vulnerable have become more isolated and afraid to seek medical care in Covid infected health care systems.

There are now no safe places free from the risk of infection. We are all now prisoners of fear. This is the dangerous, deadly, and intolerable position in which we have been placed.

Americans have witnessed decades of cuts and underfunding public health departments, and the closing of over 170 hospitals in the last fifteen years, while the rich on Wall Street get tax cuts and bailouts. The science of public health has been dismissed, denied, and attacked, allowing the virus to ravage the population as workers and students are forced into unsafe conditions. We have been abandoned by our Public Health Systems and the government to a raging, preventable disease.

A successful Zero Covid policy to eliminate Covid-19 exists in at least three countries—Taiwan, Cuba, and China where any outbreaks are eliminated using public health mandates and vaccines. This has been successful over the last two years. Politics and economics prevent this Zero Covid strategy from being implemented worldwide.

The U.S. government has rejected its responsibility to protect the people, placing the impossible burden for safety on the individual. If the virus is everywhere, we are now ALL at risk for infection.

Governmental and Public Health Policy has created an epidemic of fear, isolation, and loneliness among those most vulnerable to the dangers of Covid-19.

Are you furious about the catastrophic spread of Covid-19 that has caused almost one million deaths? It is past time to get angry at the infected, malignant political economy driven by profit not the health needs of the people.

1/17/22
Dr. Nayvin Gordon, gordonnayvin [at] yahoo.com