Eulogy to the COVID-19 Holocaust

“We have to live with COVID-19.” That is the new mantra from the corporate politicians and their mass media flunkies regarding the ongoing pandemic.

What they are really saying is that they are willing to sacrifice frontline and essential workers, the poor, the Black, the Brown, the Yellow and the Red – as well as the old, the disabled, the ill and those with weakened immune systems – all on the altar of capitalist greed.

Politicians lie, but numbers don’t lie. Nearly two thousand are dying in the US every day from COVID-19. Every two days there is a slaughter that adds up to another 9/11. Every week a death toll like all the US soldiers killed in the entire Iraq war. Every month nearly enough deaths to fill up another Vietnam war memorial.

We are rapidly approaching one million COVID-19 deaths. ONE MILLION! That is more than twice the number of US combat deaths in World War II. And it won’t stop there.

“We have to live with COVID-19.” Those near-million deaths are just the numbers in the US. Around the world COVID-19 is surging up and down like a roller-coaster of death. Some call it “vaccine apartheid.” Some call it “vaccine imperialism.” But those descriptions don’t tell the whole story. In the numbers of dead, it is equivalent to a Twenty-First Century Holocaust. Recorded COVID-19 deaths are now more than SIX MILLION, and we all know that the real number is much, much higher.

“We have to live with COVID-19.” This Holocaust, unlike the Nazi Holocaust, is not aimed at Jews, communists, socialists, trade unionists, prisoners of war or other “undesirables.” It is a Holocaust against all those who are of no use to the criminal class that views the world through the lens of its insatiable need to increase their obscene wealth through the ruthless exploitation of the labor of working people.

“We have to live with COVID-19.” For this Holocaust, there is no gas. No deliberate murder. Just deliberate neglect. Is there a moral distinction between shoving people into the ovens and just watching people being shoved to their death? Let the millions sicken and die. Let their families sicken and die. There are always enough left to put to work in the factories and the fields and the mines and the stores so the profits can keep rolling in.

“We have to live with COVID-19.” Because the orders from on-high are to Return to Normal. So the little Eichmanns load the trains. Some will survive the journey, and some won’t. Those are the breaks. We are just following orders, sir. We are good Germans – we see and know nothing. What’s that smell?

“We have to live with COVID-19.” But the Royal We get their vaccines and boosters, congregate in their exclusive and gated communities, and hide behind their masks of paternalistic concern, safe from those cases of COVID-19 that they say they can’t stop.

“We have to live with COVID-19.” Because providing vaccines, public health services and decent medical care to the people of this world would cut too deeply into their bottom line. Because providing decent jobs and housing and education is a pipe dream of a bunch of crazy radicals and revolutionaries. Because We have ours, and that’s the best that You can hope for.