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The coming epidemic

DCblogger's picture
Submitted by DCblogger on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 12:20am
Thread: 
In Sickness and In Health
Tags: 
shock doctrine

I have been meaning to write a post about the coming epidemic. We have millions of people with either limited access to health care or no access to health care. They are living in overcrowded conditions as family members take in relatives who have been unemployed for a long time.

And who are these workers? They work in food service, janitors and sanitation workers, hotel maids, hospital workers, in other words the kinds of jobs where they are most likely to spread infection to others.

We also have a large population of malnourished because the have limited income and live in food deserts where they don't have access to grocery stores.

They also live in poor housing with vermin and mold.

It is only a question of time before a major epidemic hits, I am sure that the powers that be have a response planned and it has nothing to do with limiting the spread of the epidemic.

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Submitted by libbyliberal on

tonight. She needed medical help but has no insurance. She has had a critical operation today and doctors say her chances are 50/50 survival as the family prays desperately around her bedside. If she survives the critical operation on her heart will she be able to survive afterward with no insurance? Why she became so ill was because of no health care, and now that she is critical where does she go from here? She is a long-suffering and devoted mother in desperate economic times. Congress & Obama administration are the death panels as more of us will be finding out as personal tragedies continue to strike our family networks.

badtux's picture
Submitted by badtux on

The biggest reason we're going to have an epidemic is not because of the poor living conditions and poor nutrition of our poor. The poor in hundreds of other countries have it even worse. It's because we give them just enough healthcare to stay sick, whereas in other third world countries they die. This provides an incubator for mutation of germs to resist antibiotics and antivirals, since the poor cannot afford a full course of either.

The GOP solution: If you're sick and you're poor, die quickly.

The Democratic solution: If you're sick and you're poor, patch the current broken system with band-aids and rube goldberg contraptions and pretend it works, except it won't and can't, so nothing changes.

The solution if you're not a sociopathic lizard person: Free access to healthcare for all, paid for by a payroll and/or income tax dedicated to healthcare. This solves the problem of access, mostly.

But we are ruled by cold-blooded lizard people from Planet Sociopath, so that last one -- the solution that any caring human would support -- will not happen.

And lest the rich think they can simply stock up on antibiotics and antivirals and survive the epidemic -- the whole point is that the epidemic bug will be resistant to any existent antibiotic and antiviral. So they'll get sick and die just like everybody else. But because lizard people have lizard brains, apparently they think being cold-blooded sociopaths will save them. It is to laugh.

- Badtux the Warm-blooded Penguin

nomad2's picture
Submitted by nomad2 on

Their immune systems are being compromised by chemtrailing just like the rest of us.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

And the nut graf:

I am sure that the powers that be have a response planned and it has nothing to do with limiting the spread of the epidemic.

Submitted by cg.eye on

It concentrated on the travails of high-level folk, instead of reporting on the ground on how an entire generation of janitors, support staff and healthcare workers would die out, because they'd be expected to work even though the best practices of quarantine would demand isolation. Also, how low-wage jobs don't have paid sick leave, so the epidemic would keep going and going because businesses wouldn't cross their insurers by telling their employees to stay home, and thus deliberately causing business losses....

The film's subplot about the shutdown of Chicago, as if it would happen without massive leaks stemming first from the financial sector, who'd leak to gain the most profit, took me out of the story. There would be class-based chaos and even war, and yet all we see is Matt Damon being fool enough to A) live in the same home where Patient Zero lived, and expect not to get lynched, and B) Go shopping during a state of martial law, where he endangered himself and his daughter by getting mixed up with looters.

How come any zombie spectacular can manage not to underestimate the social damage any major epidemic would cause, and CONTAGION can't? I suspect it was Soderbergh still wanting to show that Government Can Work -- but he biases his argument so strongly in favor of The Best People Knowing What's Best that he bleeds the drama dry.

< /soapbox >