Outrage grows as Amazon workers die for Bezos’ profits

Nick Barrickman

Amazon workers across the United States are outraged at news that an Amazon employee working in Hawthorne, California died last month from COVID-19 and that workers only now were being informed of it.

The lives of Amazon, United Parcel Service, United States Postal Service, FedEx and other essential logistics workers are being sacrificed for corporate profit. Nothing demonstrates this more than the news that the personal fortune of Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos grew by $24 billion during the first three months of 2020, primarily due to the rush of business the company saw as millions were forced to shelter in place as a pandemic swept the planet.

“This is not surprising, he is capitalizing off of this crisis, INSANE!!,” wrote an Amazon worker to the International Amazon Workers Voice. “To add to this, we are ‘essential’ and that means we are less like trash [to the company]. [Bezos] should be arrested along with his cronies for conspiracy to commit murder... CRIMINAL!!”

The news of Bezos profiting while workers die exposes the lie in his open letter last month when the multi-billionaire boss told his poorly paid workers, “We are in this together.”

“I heard about [the death] but didn’t realize that this had happened so many weeks ago,” said an Amazon worker in Baltimore’s BWI-2 facility. “This corporation benefits its stockholders. It’s not designed for safety. It’s all about product, product, product! Numbers, numbers, numbers!

“The company is adding a third and fourth tier [to its employee pay scale],” the worker added, saying this was a “carrot” to entice workers to believe “it’s not so bad, I’m sweating blood, sweat and tears but it’s alright.”

“Production costs and operation costs do not equal the cost of a human life,” they concluded.

The company informed its BWI-2 employees on Wednesday of a COVID-19 case at the facility. Speaking of previous incidents, the worker said, “About two weeks ago, I came in to work and there was a news crew reporting on site about a suspected case at the facility. Management told us it was a mistake.” A few days later, however, the company admitted that a case had occurred and that workers would be fired for speaking to the press about it.

The company was fearful of more rank-and-file opposition forming at its facilities, because “at this point, the protests on Staten Island were going on,” the worker noted. In New York, these protests against unsafe job conditions resulted in the victimization of Chris Smalls who led a walkout.

Last month, the Amazon CEO caught public backlash after news coverage revealed that the company had set up a coronavirus relief fund for its employees. Bezos, with personal wealth now of $138 billion, donated $25 million, asking the public to donate the rest to meet the healthcare needs of the company’s nearly 800,000 employees.

“How is your company worth over a TRILLION dollars and you want the public to donate to an employee relief fund?! As if Amazon can’t pay their employees themselves,” wrote one poster on Twitter in response to Amazon’s request that the public “make a voluntary donation to the fund.”

Another worker at the CLT4 facility in South Carolina told the International Amazon Workers Voice that three workers tested positive there. Despite that, the worker said, the distribution plant was staying open. Summing up the position of the company, the worker told IAWV that management said, “We know we know we have folks that have tested positive [for the coronavirus] here, but we have asked them and those they worked closely with to stay home. The temperature checks and masks we hand out upon entrance to the facility ensure we’re doing everything to keep our workers safe during this time,” she reported.

Another worker, speaking under the condition of anonymity, explained the miserable state of safety protocols at their facility. “At my location, they have temperature checks, they’ve ended the staff meetings and now they allow cell phones” so workers can check up on their family members and respond to emergencies. “But hand sanitizer, which is difficult to find in large buildings, is just for show. The self-serve dispensers they set up ran out in one day and haven’t been refilled since.”

As for hand washing, “in my building, which has four floors, you have a full-service bathroom on only two of them, while the other two floors have portable hand washing stations set up in different corners.” All of this might sound very convenient and efficient, she said, but there is a catch, “The portable stations have soap and hand towels, but no water.”

“I’ve seen people using their own bottled water to rinse themselves off. Some people bring their soapy hands over to the [drinking] water area, and wash their hands there, with the soap and germs splashing the area” where workers fill up their drinking cups.

In addition to the hand-rinsing going on at drinking fountains, the worker said there was no such thing as social distancing at the two-person portable sinks. “Amazon tells us they’ll fire us if we break social distancing. They break it all the time. We’ve lost some soldiers due to this,” they said.

Last week, CNBC reported that Amazon was informing its employees that if they broke “social distancing rules, they could face disciplinary action,” including termination.

“I spoke Human Resources today and there are no protocols in place for the ‘social distancing patrols’” Amazon now uses to keep workers from congregating too close. “They’re picking and choosing who to write up [so they can] kick out people that rock the boat. They’re now working with their legal department to get something on paper,” because the company is firing people due to infractions, the worker said.

Another worker from Baltimore told the IAWV that they see management “breaking social distancing all the time. The only time it is really enforced is when you are walking through the main area” of the building lobby. “In back, it’s not being enforced,” they said.

“We have a system where workers are being relied on to push out goods to the American people, yet these same workers are risking their lives to do this work with minimal hazard pay, minimum [personal protective gear], etc.” another worker from New Jersey told the IAWV. “Most of [us] have little choice to go in or not because Amazon will not pay for time off unless you are sick with the virus. If that happens you will not have enough money to deal with the costs that come with this virus.”

“This while Bezos, who continues to be praised for donating an extremely small percentage of his wealth to charities helping with this pandemic. He is making record profits, along with his shareholders. Systemic change is required to change the system to benefit workers and not punish them,” the worker concluded.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos cashes in on coronavirus pandemic, adding $24 billion to his fortune

Jacob Crosse

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent millions of workers and their families, already scraping to survive, into a financial tailspin from which many will never recover. However, for the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, the pandemic has been a financial bonanza, sending Amazon shares, and Bezos’ personal net worth, soaring.

At the close of the trading day on the stock market Wednesday, shares of the online retail giant were trading at $2,307, up from a year-to-date low of $1,676 on March 12, just over a month ago.

While Amazon workers are risking their lives in contaminated factories and protesting against the lack of basic safety equipment (at least 74 Amazon facilities have reported workers infected with the virus), and workers are being fired for speaking out, the market value of Amazon has climbed above $1.1 trillion, slightly below the $1.22 trillion 2019 gross domestic product of Mexico.

Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)

For Bezos, this translates into a year-to-date jump of $23.6 billion in his personal net wealth, bringing his fortune to more than $138.5 billion. His ex-wife MacKenzie, with her 4 percent stake in the company, has seen her net worth more than quintuple, from $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion according to Bloomberg.

Bezos is not an aberration. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has added over $10 billion to his personal fortune in the first four months of the year, while Alice, Jim and Rob Walton, owners of mega-retailer Walmart, have profited fabulously from the pandemic, increasing their personal wealth by $2.9 billion, $2.36 billion and $2.42 billion respectively, without stocking a single shelf or retrieving a cart.

The American financial aristocracy is gorging itself in the midst of scenes of mile-long food lines and mass graves. With the passage of Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar corporate bailout last month, which had the virtually unanimous support of Democratic lawmakers, airline industry executives and private equity, hedge fund and real estate investors (such as Donald Trump) are receiving billions of dollars worth of tax breaks, grants and low-interest loans, at taxpayer expense.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC) of the US Congress issued a report this week revealing that tax provisions were included in the corporate bailout legislation (the CARES Act) allowing millionaires and billionaires who own so-called pass-through companies, including hedge funds and real estate investment firms, to offset losses not just from 2020, but from 2019 and 2018 as well. The owners of pass through companies pay income taxes at the individual rather than the corporate tax rate.

The JTC estimated that the total cost in public funds for this boondoggle for the very wealthy will be $170 billion this year. It said that 82 percent of the tax benefit will go to roughly 43,000 taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. Only three percent will go to taxpayers who earn less than $100,000.

The $170 billion price tag for this handout to the super-rich compares to a measly $100 billion allocated in the legislation for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments. Many hospitals are being financially devastated by the impact of the pandemic and an estimated 2,100 cities across the country are facing huge budget deficits due to lost revenues. The result will be a new wave of hospital closures, layoffs and wage cuts, along with brutal cuts in social services and public employee jobs by state and local governments.

The JTC concluded that the average millionaire filer will receive $1.6 million in tax relief this year alone. The Trump Organization includes hundreds of pass-through entities, as do the businesses controlled by Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, allowing the president and his brood to take in millions of dollars by writing off risky investments from up to two years ago.

What these gifts to the oligarchy have to do with the coronavirus pandemic is a mystery no politician or media pundit has sought to explain.

On Tuesday, the government announced it had reached an agreement with the major airlines under which they will receive $25 billion in grants, again at taxpayer expense. The companies will have to pay back only 30 percent of the money. An additional $25 billion in low-cost loans will be provided to the airlines under a separate program. This looting of the US Treasury for the benefit of airline executives and major investors is being cynically presented as a defense of airline employees.

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, hailed the bailout. He said, “Even though the process was neither easy nor perfect, it is critically important that in the end there are agreements in place that put workers and families first by keeping hundreds of thousands of airline employees … on the payroll during this extremely tumultuous period for the US economy.”

This is a lie. None of the money in the $50 billion bailout of the airlines will go to the workers. It will be used by the airlines to buy time while they prepare a brutal restructuring of their operations to slash jobs, wages and pensions. Already tens of thousands of airline workers have been furloughed, and the bailout deal allows the airlines to consolidate routes.

The only restrictions on the companies that receive the handouts—at this point a total of 10, including the four giants, American, Delta, United and Southwest—is that they put off layoffs until the end of September and refrain from paying out dividends or buying back their own stock until the end of 2021. But even these minor restraints can be waived by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a multi-millionaire former investment banker.

DeFazio went on to say, “I strongly believe what Congress laid out in this provision of the CARES Act—to put workers first—should be the model for any industry-specific relief going forward.” This is nothing less than a call for the bailout of more industries.

The airline bailout was strongly promoted by the airline unions, working in lockstep with the companies. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, attacked the agreement between the Trump administration and the airlines from the right, denouncing the requirement that the companies pay back 30 percent of the handouts.

Between 2014 and 2019, the four largest US airlines—United, American, Southwest and Delta—spent a combined $45 billion buying back their own stock in order to drive up the share price and enrich the top executives and major investors.

Coronavirus toll reaches two million worldwide, nearly 30,000 US dead

Benjamin Mateus & Patrick Martin

The number of people on the planet infected with COVID-19 passed the two million mark on Wednesday, with the pandemic killing nearly 8,000 people in a single day. Half of those were in Europe, still the hardest-hit continent, while the largest single-country death toll was in the United States, some 2,482 people.

Nearly 5,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last two days, but neither the American government nor the corporate media seem to care. At the White House coronavirus press briefing Wednesday, Trump vented his grievances against his political rivals and threatened to shut down Congress, while offering nothing to halt the spread of the infection or save the lives of tens of thousands now under threat.

American network television broadcasts barely even took note of the record death toll on Tuesday, and they said even less when this figure in turn was exceeded on Wednesday. Instead, they reported on the mounting demands (from big business and the ultra-right) to reopen the economy and force workers back to their jobs regardless of the dangers to their health and lives. Meanwhile, the military continues to build field hospitals—not for today’s patients, but to house the far greater numbers still to come.

Hardware store in the Benito Juarez district of Mexico City, Wednesday, April 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

COVID-19 is a global crisis, and the death tolls on a per capita basis are even higher in Italy, Spain, France and Britain than they are in the United States.

On Wednesday the pandemic killed 1,438 people in France, 761 in Britain, 578 in Italy and 557 in Spain, bringing the cumulative death toll in these four countries to 70,492, according to figures posted on WorldoMeter. Britain will reach 100,000 coronavirus cases today, joining France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

One of the hardest-hit countries, in terms of deaths per million people, is Belgium, which has suffered 4,440 deaths, far more than China, which has 100 times as many people. Germany too, portrayed as a comparative “success” in Europe, has lost more of its citizens than China, where the coronavirus first made its appearance last December.

While presently the US accounts for 30 percent of coronavirus cases and Europe for about 50 percent, there is a surge in cases in Brazil, India, Egypt, Indonesia and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These figures only give a glimpse of the potential impact of this 21st century plague when it reaches the poorest countries, with the weakest public health and sanitation systems. The response of the Trump administration, however, is to turn its back on the majority of humanity by halting its funding contribution to the World Health Organization.

Contrary to the predictions of a decline at White House press briefings and official models, the number of new cases continues to rise, and the number of deaths per day in the United States has doubled in only nine days.

At this terrible milestone of two million human beings infected, it is worth reviewing the speed with which the pandemic has spread, and the complete incapacity of capitalist governments in both Europe and the United States, the richest and most technologically advanced societies on the planet, to do anything effective to halt it.

On January 22, WorldoMeter began keeping count of the numbers of cases in the outbreak that had its epicenter in Wuhan. On that day, 580 people harbored the coronavirus virus. Initially dubbed 2019-nCoV, the virus was officially given the name SARS-CoV-2 and the disease associated with it became COVID-19 (Corona Virus 2019).

On January 24, the day Chinese authorities implemented a massive lockdown of Wuhan city and Hubei province, an unprecedented quarantine of a massive geographic area impacting nearly 60 million people, the official count stood at just over one thousand. By this time, the genetic code for the virus had been shared with the world, and a test that could detect the virus had been provided to all countries by the WHO. Six days later, the WHO issued an official notice of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

At the end of January, the number of cases had jumped to over 10,000 with several nations having confirmed imported cases, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, United Arab Emirates, India, Russia, Spain and the United States.

At an international level, scientists, epidemiologists and virologists were engaged in elucidating the nature of this SARS-like coronavirus. Several publications describing clinical experiences with the infection were made available free in online journals.

In practice, there was initially a wide range of national experiences with the virus. The massive lockdown in China, combined with the mobilization of the country’s health care personnel and economic resources—two hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19 were constructed in a matter of days—ultimately seemed to have an impact. The number of cases in Wuhan and Hubei province stabilized, and other parts of China were not greatly affected.

By mid-February, however, reports from Iran suggested the outbreak there had grown out of control. US sanctions thwarted efforts to direct assistance by various governments and international aid groups. In the same period, a cluster of infections associated with a religious sect in South Korea saw a rapid escalation of community transmission leading to an essential lockdown of the city of Daegu. Massive testing and contact tracing were initiated that helped drastically curb the spread.

In March, however, the virus exploded across Europe and the United States. On March 6, the global count surpassed 100,000. On March 9, Italy’s lockdown was extended to the whole nation as the number of cases rapidly escalated, followed by a huge number of deaths of Italian physicians and health care workers. The videos of coffins by the truckload being transported in the dark hours of the night had a profound effect on the consciousness of the world.

The first few cases in the United States, on the west coast, led to the first death near Seattle, Washington, and a cluster of infections at a Seattle-area nursing home. The Trump administration established its coronavirus task force, with Vice President Mike Pence named its head and Dr. Deborah Birx the response coordinator. At this point, the CDC had only performed a few thousand tests, and the White House continued to exude complacency and indifference—Trump was only energized when reports on the epidemic led to a sharp fall in the financial markets.

On March 11, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom formally designated the coronavirus as a pandemic, declaring at a press conference, “In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives.”

On March 13, with total cases in the US at over 2,000, Trump declared a national emergency which granted access to $50 billion in funding for US states and territories. State after state began “shelter in place” policies, first closing schools, then most businesses. Though Trump promised testing capacity would increase, he told those without symptoms, “It’s totally unnecessary. This will pass.”

Only on March 17, during a news conference exactly one month ago today, did Trump finally ask “everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.”

A week later, as the number of cases approached 100,000 in the US, with New York City at the epicenter of the pandemic, came Trump’s infamous statement complaining that the financial cost was more important than stemming the rising death toll. “The cure can’t be worse than the problem itself,” he tweeted.

On April 2, the world passed the threshold of one million cases. The number of deaths had exceeded 50,000 people. Two weeks further on into this global crisis, and both figures have more than doubled.

Throughout this process, while doctors, nurses and other health care workers have labored heroically, through great difficulties and at great risk to their own survival, to save lives, the capitalist governments of Europe and America have been preoccupied with a different problem: how to preserve and even increase the accumulated wealth of the capitalist ruling class, at the expense of the working class, no matter how high the death toll rises.

Future Leaders – African Independent Researchers (FLAIR) Fellowships 2020 for African Researchers

Application Deadline: 27th May 2020 3pm UK time.

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: Each FLAIR Fellowship will be for two years initially and will offer up to £150,000 per year, alongside a programme of support to develop fellows as independent research leaders including training and mentoring, and opportunities to network both regionally and with the UK and to develop international collaborations.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Field of Research: Applications should be within the remit of natural sciences. This includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, agricultural, biological and medical research (excluding clinical and patient-orientated research), and the scientific aspects of archaeology, geography and experimental psychology but excluding economics, social science and humanities research.

Eligibility: You can apply for this scheme if you:

• Are a national of a sub-Saharan African country;
• Hold a PhD by the time you apply;
• Are an early career researcher with a minimum of two years of research experience since completing your PhD and no more than eight years of post-doctoral research experience;
• Wish to hold the fellowship in a research institution in an Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligible sub-Saharan African country;
• Have a clearly defined scientific research proposal focusing on one or more of the Global Challenge areas outlined in the scheme notes.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This scheme provides an award of up to £150,000 per year for two years in the first instance, covering:

• Research Fellow’s salary, up to £45,000 per year.
• Research expenses
  – Research assistance
  – Equipment costs
  – Travel expenses
  – Research consumables
• Institutional overhead, up to £15,000 per year

The scheme also provides a programme of support and development, including:

• Mentoring
• Training courses
• Opportunities for international collaboration
• Networking opportunities regionally and internationally

Duration of Programme: Each FLAIR Fellowship will be for two years initially. Holders may have the opportunity to apply for a renewal for an additional three years.

How to Apply: 

• Applications should be made through the Royal Society’s grant management system Flexi-Grant®.
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

The American World That Covid-19 Reveals

Rajan Menon

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) virus, which causes Covid-19, seemed to emerge from deepest history, from the Black Death of the 14th century and the “Spanish Flu” of 1918. In just months, it has infected more than 1.5 million people and claimed more than 88,000 lives. The virus continues to spread almost everywhere. In no time at all, it’s shattered the global economy, sent it tumbling toward a deep recession (possibly even a depression), and left much of a planet locked indoors. Think of it as a gigantic stress test.

Doctors use stress tests to assess the physical fitness of patients. Governments use them to see whether banks have enough cash in reserve to honor their obligations to depositors and creditors in economic crises. The International Monetary Fund conducts stress tests on national financial systems.  Now, like several other countries, notably Italy and Spain, the United States faces a different, far tougher stress test imposed by Covid-19.  The early results are alarming.

Since the first infection in the U.S. came to light in the state of Washington on January 20th, the disease has spread across the country at a furious pace. Hospitals, especially in New York City, have been deluged and are already at the breaking point. And things will get worse — and not just in New York.  Yet the most basic necessities — protective masks, gowns, rubber gloves, and ventilators — are so scarce that they are being reused, further increasing the risk to healthcare workers, some of whom have already contracted Covid-19 from patients.  The experiences of China, Italy, and other countries suggest that the disease will take the lives of many of these brave people; indeed, some here have already paid the ultimate price.

And this pandemic will subject our political system, economy, and society to a set of stress tests into the distant future.

The “Wartime President”

By mid-January, the news from China made it obvious that the virus would spread across borders and soon reach the United States. The sheer volume of travel between the two countries should have made that reality all too obvious.  Nearly three million Chinese visitors came to this country in 2018 and 2.5 million Americans, counting only tourists, traveled to China. In fact, we now know that, in the weeks after Covid-19 was disclosed in Wuhan, China, more than 430,000 people flew here from that country, thousands of them from Wuhan itself — and this continued even after Donald Trump put his much-vaunted travel measures in place. (“I do think we were very early, but I also think that we were very smart, because we stopped China,” he nonetheless claimed.)

In addition, President Trump and his team remained unruffled, never mind that the country wasn’t remotely prepared for what was clearly coming. Despite secret intelligence reports as early as January warning that Chinese leaders were understating the coronavirus threat’s severity, the administration failed to develop any kind of emergency plan to prepare for the pandemic.

That proved to be a monumental blunder. China confirmed its first coronavirus fatality on January 11th.  An infection was first reported in Washington state barely a week later. More than a month after that, at a February 26th press conference, President Trump nonetheless dismissed the seriousness of the disease, noting that seasonal flu kills as many as 69,000 in the U.S. annually. He failed to mention that the virus may have a fatality rate up to 10 times higher than the flu and that a Covid-19 vaccine was nowhere in sight. Only 15 infections had been reported here, he claimed breezily, and “when you have fifteen people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Close to zero? By mid-March, infections had risen to 1,200 (which soon would prove a drop in the pandemic bucket as “America First” acquired a new meaning). Yet the president called that number inconsequential. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh did him one better: “Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” He accused the media of exaggerating “in an effort to get Trump.”

True to form, the president was quick to personalize the pandemic. He preened about how scientific experts marveled at his grasp of the complex details of virology and the way supposedly awestruck doctors asked, “How do you know so much?” The president’s self-effacing answer: natural ability, possibly even a genetically-derived aptitude, thanks to “a great, super-genius uncle” who’d worked at MIT.

He declared himself a “wartime president,” despite the lack of any evident strategy to vanquish this particular foe. His response when governors of hard-hit states began pleading for urgent help from the federal government: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.”  The governors, he groused, were “complainers,” who should have stockpiled what they were now begging for. Thin-skinned as ever, he told Vice President Mike Pence that those like Governor Gretchen Whitmer, “the woman from Michigan,” who weren’t appreciative enough of his help didn’t even deserve to have their phone calls returned, at least by him. Inevitably, he had a Limbaugh-like conspiracy theory ready: fear-mongering Democrats were exploiting the Covid crisis to bash him. The virus, he said during a campaign rally — yes, he was still holding them in late February — was their “new hoax.” Fox News and the president’s base duly ran with this theme.

Despite the warning of epidemiologists that the virus’s transmission rate would skyrocket unless Americans were scrupulous about “social distancing,” Trump tarried (and to this day can’t keep his distance from anyone at his news conferences). He failed to use the presidential bully pulpit to disseminate this advice quickly.

Nor, despite an evident shortage of medical supplies and equipment, did he act decisively. The 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) gives him the authority to order private companies to produce essential medical supplies and equipment, including ventilators, and then distribute them in ways that would prevent hard-hit states from outbidding each other.  He rejected widespread calls to use the Act. “We’re not,” he quipped, “a country based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela. How did the nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.” Of course, no one had called for a government takeover of American companies. Trump did eventually invoke the DPA reluctantly in late March but has used it sparingly and ineffectively.

Continuing to downplay the Covid-19 threat, he declared during a March 31st  Fox News “virtual town hall” on the coronavirus that he would love to have the economy up and running two weeks later on Easter Sunday with “packed churches all over the country.”  That was, of course, a pipedream: by March 30th, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had already reported more Covid-19 cases — 140,904 — here than in any other country and 2,405 deaths.  (And yet, in early April, Trump was still talking about the need to fill sports stadiums “sooner rather than later”; the cure, he said, cannot “be worse than the problem itself.”)

As of April 11th, the CDC’s tally had risen to 492,416 infections and 18,559 fatalities, while John Hopkins University’s tracking site reported 526,296 infections and 20,463 deaths (the highest numbers in the world in both categories).  Physicians and public health specialists have, however, warned that the toll could already be much higher given the shortage of test kits. President Trump seemed finally to be grasping the gravity of the pandemic, thanks in part to the patient tutelage of specialists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  But put this in your no-good-deed-goes-unpunished file: on social media, radio, and television, Fauci has been pilloried by Trump fans for supposedly undercutting the president or, as one acolyte tweeted, for trying to create a “Police State Like China in Order to Stop the coronavirus.” Fauci even started receiving death threats.

Unable to stay out of the limelight, Rudolph Giuliani, evidently seeking to displace Dr. Fauci as Trump’s top coronavirus expert, took to Twitter, practicing medicine without a license and touting the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a sure-fire cure for the disease. This despite doctors’ warnings that the drug’s efficacy was unproven and that it could have fatal results, as well as the American Medical Association’s counsel that a rush to use it could lead to hoarding and reduce its availability for treating people with ailments for which it’s actually been approved. The president has followed Dr. Giuliani’s advice on hydroxychloroquine, repeatedly hailing it“the biggest game-changer in the history of medicine.”

At a March 29th press conference, Trump finally ditched his goal of restarting the economy by Easter and asked non-essential workers to stay home until the end of April, venturing outdoors only when essential. The Covid-19 death toll could, he now conceded, end up ranging between 100,000 and 240,000, a number, he asserted, that would only prove “we all, together, have done a very good job” given that he’d heard estimates of “up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that” if the pandemic were not dealt with effectively here. Later, he allowed that even 240,000 deaths in the U.S. could be a low end figure. Then he again praised himself for taking decisive steps — assumedly by denying for weeks that the virus was a massive problem, predicting that it would perish in the summer heat, and assuring Americans that you could, in any case, cure it with anti-malarial drugs, which he “may take” himself. Compared to two million possible deaths, 240,000 was, he boasted, “a very low number.” Give him credit for the math, at least: 240,000 is indeed a far lower figure than two million.

Economic Pain — Acute, with More to Come

As the stock market plunged — it had lost more than a third of its value by the end of March — and it became undeniable that the fallout from the virus would cause the economy to crater, Congress passed a $2 trillion-plus Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) bill on March 27th, which the president signed within hours. The main provisions of that mammoth, nearly 900-page piece of legislation included:

* $1,200 to people with annual incomes below $75,000;

* $2,400 to those who file taxes jointly and earn less than $150,000;

* $500 per child for households with dependent children;

* 13 weeks of unemployment compensation beyond individual state government limits plus a weekly supplement of $600;

* a 50% payroll tax credit up to $10,000 for businesses that continued to pay non-working employees and whose revenues have shrunk by at least 50% compared to a year ago;

* loans to small businesses to help them cover the costs of employees’ salaries and health insurance;

* a $30.75 billion “Education Stabilization Fund,” providing various forms of economic assistance to hard-pressed students;

* six-month deferments on federal student loans and the suspension of penalties for overdue payments;

* $500 billion in loans and guarantees for corporations.

These were certainly much-needed moves and $2.2 trillion was hardly chump change. Still, the number of the unemployed may far exceed current expectations as the economy more or less shuts down. Some economists estimate that the gross domestic product could eventually shrink by a staggering 30%, with unemployment reaching at least 32%, or 47 million people, a figure that would surpass the 24.9% peak during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The CARES stimulus package, geared significantly to big banks and big corporations, may not suffice to meet the needs of an increasing number of jobless people. At least 6.6 million had filled unemployment claims by end of March alone. By early April, the number edged close to 17 million, and millions more will follow. And who knows how much of the $500 billion allotted to corporations will be devoted to protecting workers’ jobs and benefits when less than 10% percent of it has strings attached?

Furthermore, some of the measures in the CARES Act to help the jobless expire on July 30th and others at the end of the year, although it could take far longer to truly contain the virus.  The government could pony up more money, but the bill itself has no renewal clause, which means that we could be in for another grim legislative battle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already stated that he’ll oppose rapid follow-on legislation until the effects of the current bill are known, lest Democrats “try to achieve unrelated policy items they would not be able to pass.”

The intricately linked global economic system has broken down in just a couple of months, so time isn’t on the side of the unemployed. In addition, the maximum duration of unemployment benefits varies strikingly by state. In North Carolina, it’s only 12 weeks; in Massachusetts, 30. Likewise, the maximum weekly amount paid ranges from $823 in Massachusetts to $235 in Mississippi. Unemployment insurance certainly helps, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that it averages just over $300 a week nationally, covering only 46.6% percent of a worker’s former earnings. Yet if Covid-19 leaves many millions without jobs well beyond July 30th, or perhaps even the end of the year, they will have to pay for food, rents or mortgages, and utility bills, to mention just a few of the basics.

Households with incomes in the bottom 20% will face a particularly hard struggle, to say nothing of the 38 million people already living in poverty.  Monthly rent in 2018 averaged $1,450 and monthly food costs (not counting spending in restaurants) $363. The average savings of Americans — excluding investments, retirement accounts, and homes — totaled only $4,830 that year. Unsurprisingly, approximately 27% percent of them report that may not be able to cover even a month’s worth of basic expenses; another 25% say that they could hang on for three months. Then what? Already, laid-off low-wage workers, who could barely meet their basic expenses when they had jobs, have become desperate, while those still employed who work in restaurants and hotels hit hard by social distancing have seen their hours cut back and their tips diminished.

No one knows just how bad things could get, how many people will succumb to Covid-19, or what heights the jobless rate will reach, but of this much we can be certain: the virus’s wave hasn’t crested yet and may not for weeks, or even months. And because the United States lacks the strong social safety nets of European countries, people with meager savings will be especially vulnerable. Apart from the trauma of suddenly losing jobs, people filing unemployment claims have already been wearied by chronically busy phones and crashing websites as unemployment offices face a tsunami of a sort never previously imagined.

The Social Fabric Under Stress

The loss of a job doesn’t just create economic insecurity, it can also produce psychological stress and a diminished sense of self-worth. Covid-19 is likely to leave startling numbers of Americans feeling bereft.  Social isolation may provide welcome solitude for a while (at least for those who can half-afford it). Before long, though, it will likely disorient people, particularly the elderly and those who are alone and cut off from friends and family, not to speak of exercise, eating out, or even trips to the local library. Zoom and Skype won’t, in the long run, qualify as the real deal. Well before Covid-19 made its appearance, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) reported that a fifth of Americans already felt isolated and two out of five claimed to lack “meaningful” social networks.” Loneliness, the HRSA concluded, had become an “epidemic” — and that was before an actual epidemic hit. Medical professionals concurred at the time. Imagine what they’d say now.

Among other things, the coronavirus experience will undoubtedly increase the risk of suicide (especially given the rush to purchase weaponry), already at epidemic levels.  In 2017 alone, 47,000 Americans killed themselves. By then, suicide had already become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than homicides or motor vehicle accidents. The suicide rate has increased for the last 13 years straight.  Among youth, it has jumped 56% in the past decade alone, among blue-collar workers by 40% in less than two decades. Sixty thousand veterans have died by their own hand since 2008, a suicide rate 1.5 times higher than for other adults.

By ratcheting up stress, dejection, and isolation, Covid-19 could also increase domestic violence, the neglect and mistreatment of children, and drug and alcohol abuse, especially among recovering addicts.  Globally, the virus has also turbocharged demagogues, for whom the pandemic provides an opportunity to commit hate crimes and engage in scapegoating, racial tropes, and weird conspiracy theories, while using social media to whip up fear, suspicion, and animosity, and deepen social divisions. Admittedly, such problems can’t all be chalked up to the pandemic. Still, they could all get worse as this insidious virus continues to wreak havoc.

Now for the Good Part

Crises highlight and exacerbate a society’s problems, but they also put some of its best attributes on display. Covid-19 hasn’t been an exception. Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and first responders knowingly endanger their lives daily to care for those sickened by the virus. By April, 25,000 healthcare workers from other parts of the country had converged on New York State, the pandemic’s epicenter, to help. Volunteers have mobilized nationwide to sew masks for hospital workers, stepping in where the government has failed. People have found ways to help elderly neighbors. Strangers have been engaging in acts of kindness and generosity toward one another — an acknowledgement that we confront a shared problem that will consume much more than our livelihoods if we don’t stand together (social distancing aside). Civic groups, non-profit organizations, and companies are pitching in to help in a variety of ways. Governors — Andrew Cuomo of New York, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California –have been working tirelessly to protect their states, showing that not all parts of the political system are as dysfunctional as Washington, D.C., today.

At some point, we’ll emerge into a different world. What it will be like no one can yet know. Covid-19 has certainly created much despair but reasons for gratitude and admiration as well — something to keep in mind as this terrible stress test continues without letup.