Dude was chill, growing and using cannabis in his 80s. A master gardener, he kept cacti alive for 40 years in Canada through nasty winters. He was kind, generous intelligent and thoughtful.
His son caught covid at his workplace, and passed it on to my FIL. FIL was hospitalized around December solstice due to complications of that covid, and other non lethal problems He passed on a couple of days ago.
He did not die, he was killed by capitalism.
Capitalism requires people to work or starve, so they have to be on the job spreading diseases when they should be at home fighting them.
Capitalism rewards the pharmaceutical companies that decided it was more profitable to treat Covid than to eliminate it, attenuate it rather than eradicate it.
The oligarchs that use capitalism to enrich themselves turned precautionary measures that would slow the spread of Covid into ammo for the culture wars that keep the working class fighting each other instead of slitting the throats of the oligarchs.
Yes, I am very angry.
At the current rate and even with the changes in reporting requirements, it’s still about 40,000 deaths a year in the US.
It just seems much lower when you’re going from a 9/11 a day to a 9/11 a month