Tue 25 Aug 2020, 09:14 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour member
The RT documentary series called Covid versus the USA reported that the number of deaths had risen to over 150,000, but in fact today the latest figure is over 177,000. Konstantin Rozhkov, the RT correspondent, visited New York and interviewed a nurse who believed that the high loss of life was a result of a lack of preparedness and slowness in locking down.
Like other aspects of life, Covid is proving to be a class issue. The Coalition for the Homeless noted that the rate of death among homeless people was 61% higher than in the general population.
The authorities decided to clear the subways but the 20 homeless shelters in the city became overcrowded. The New York Post reported that homeless people were sleeping on stairs, barely inches apart. The New York Times described the shelters as a Covid ‘ time bomb’, following a report that twenty-three had died due to the virus. Rozhkov interviewed a homeless guy who explained that social distancing was not possible.
One nurse at the Mount Sinai West Hospital was told that staff shouldn’t wear masks because they didn’t want to ‘waste’ them. Staff were seen wearing trash bags because of a lack of proper PPE. The hospital declined to give RT an interview. The same nurse, incidentally, noted that the riot police were always kitted out with appropriate PPE.
Rozhkov travelled to Florida, which by then had overtaken New York with the highest number of Covid cases. In Florida alone there have been 400,000 infections, which is five times greater than in the whole of China. Florida Governor Ron Desantis, came under fire because his state was the last to lockdown and the first to try to re-open. Rozhkov interviewed some tourists who thought that Covid was just a scare story and were therefore opposed to wearing masks.
Returning to New York, Rozhkov interviewed a funeral home proprietor in one of the worst affected areas in Queens, where there had been over 300 deaths. “Believe me”, the proprietor said, answering the conspiracy theorists, “it’s real.”
RT’s Rozhkov also interviewed a Covid survivor who had been presented with a bill of $400,000. Although she has a job and therefore had some insurance, she still faced a bill of between $6,000 and $16,000. Each department at the hospital send her bills, so she was unsure of the final tally.
Around 137 million Americans have debt because of medical care and failure to pay on time often results in preventing people getting mortgages or rent. In the US, it is not a health system but a profit system.
