OT:
So here we are now in July and everything is a huge bumbled mess in the US that is only going to get worse due to the poor decisions of our government here. Why is it we are STILL begging our president to use the defense production act to make make masks, disinfectant, and basic necessities available to the public this many months in due to him doing NOTHING to resolve this? This is going to get so much worse if they open on campus schools with this escalating like it is already and not ensuring all households have access to these very basic things. Here are the reasons why:
1) Only 27% at most of those over 60 in the US live alone or with their spouse only( we only have partial and old data on this, since the pandemic began and so many people have lost their jobs, this has only gotten worse as more have had to move back in with their parents). The vast majority of the elderly in the US live with their family, that includes grandchildren. This means that those vulnerable families who have been isolating this entire time will now be forcefully exposed during a time where many of our hospitals are already over capacity. There is no way to send children back to campuses without exposing their other household members. This affects the majority of the population, not the minority. Lawmakers have been ignorantly treating vast majority of vulnerable populations like they are the exception, when this is actually the rule. They will only be able to shelter an extremely small portion of the vulnerable population and be exposing the majority of those most at risk through their current plans.
2) The vast majority of those with medical conditions and disabilities of all ages necessarily live with other family members due to needing care givers, and not being able to provide for themselves as the US does not provide the majority of those with medical conditions non family caregivers due to the deplorable state of healthcare and lack of government provided safety net in the US. This means that when children return to school, not only will they be exposing the majority of the elderly population that has been sheltering this entire time, they will now expose the vast majority with life threatening medical conditions as well. Due to the hospitals already being overwhelmed, many will not be able to access the treatment necessary for their survival for both the COVID-19 Induced complications, but also not being able to receive the other medical necessary treatments they need to address their other medical conditions.
3)The majority of people with preexisting conditions in the general population are not aware they have them, this includes children, parents and teachers as well. Most preexisting conditions are actually undiagnosed, as it takes a patient taking a good number of steps for a diagnosis to even happen in most cases and people generally do not do that until the conditions become severe enough to interfere with their daily life. Until you receive a proper diagnosis, which can prove difficult to obtain in the US due to the hoops one must jump through set up by insurers to obtain proper testing to receive a diagnosis in the first place, you are simply not aware of what underlying conditions you may have at all. Often, underlying health conditions are only discovered by accident when being treated for something else entirely. Due to COVID-19, many parents, teachers, and children will only find out that they themselves are a vulnerable population after they are actually infected with COVID-19 and are being treated, thus making it impossible to shelter them in advance.
4)The reason why there is in an increase in flu, strep, and other easily spread viruses and bacteria in the fall is due to schools reopening and the way campuses necessarily are designed to increase the spread. It is impossible to reduce the spread of these viruses in a school environment in the US due to the way the system is designed in the first place. Most schools in the US are underfunded overcrowded already. many cannot afford the basic classroom needs to be able to properly educate the children let alone have the funding to build more schools and classrooms necessary to be able to socially distance and reduce the spread. The general public also often make the mistake of looking at the student to teacher ratio as a gauge of how many students there are per classroom, but not all teachers that are counted actually have classrooms, for example, even though the student teacher ratio of a local high school is 15:1 , they currently have 30+ students per classroom, and are having to already utilize portable buildings and other locations at the school such as cafeteria, gym auditorium ect in order to hold classes, so those will not be available resources to be able to reduce classroom size. There is no possible way to reduce class sizes by spreading out to the cafeteria, gyms ect, because those are ALREADY in use. They usually do not build new schools here until the old schools are well exceeding capacity, and even then, often voters vote down building new schools because they do not want the tax increases leaving the school extremely overcrowded and underfunded due to way school funding is provided in the US. Most of the schools in the US simply do not have the money to even increase cleaning, purchasing of hand sanitizers masks or other protective measures at all. Where is this funding supposed to come from and who is providing it for schools to be able to make any changes at all here?
5)The majority of the general population is still unable to walk into a store here and buy disinfectant, Isopropyl alcohol, hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, respirators or masks and other basic necessities to protect themselves even if they were able to afford to do so. Due to so many being out of work right now, even if they could afford to do so, they still do not even have access to these things because the federal government did not take the appropriate steps early on, or even now to ensure they would have access or that we will even have access in the months to come. The supply chain is horribly broken and the government has been beyond incompetent at this point. Opening campuses before having these vital necessities being provided to every member of every community that opens is going to directly result in greatly increasing the number of people that will succumb severe illness that will result in long term organ damage, permanent disability, amputations and deaths. It is extremely reckless and irresponsible to expect to be able to open campuses without providing the communities with what they need to do so. Until they fix the supply chain, they cannot just move ahead with plans like they have already done so. They are trying to push ahead skipping the necessary steps to be able to do so. That will only result in disaster. With disaster in this case meaning increasing disability and deaths, this should be considered criminal neglect at this point and that governments pushing for this to happen this way should be held criminally and financially responsible to the families of those affected this. Of course that does not bring back the lives lost due to their incompetence, but we should not allow them to be able to cause these deaths without repercussion as they are currently attempting to do.
6) More young adults actually live with their parents in the US than any other time:
Living with Mom and/or Dad is more popular than any other form of living arrangement among Americans ages 18-34, the Pew Research Center says.
www.npr.org
This has been increasing, not decreasing already prior to the pandemic. We have had a steady increase in homelessness for years now and due to the current crisis, this is about to become extreme. Due to the pandemic, the already existing affordable housing shortage has only gotten worse, and we are also about to be hit with a mass eviction and foreclosure crisis due to those unemployed and underemployed not being able to pay the back rent and mortgages that have been piling up due to pandemic lay offs.
"We have never seen this extent of eviction in such a truncated amount of time in our history," housing expert Emily Benfer said.
www.cnbc.com
We are actually getting hit from numerous directions on this, as we are having the whole unresolved "Generation X" jobs and savings crisis hit us at the same as the Pandemic. Many families never recovered from the whole 2008 banking crisis and have slowly been bleeding out over the last decade, so that in combination with the current Pandemic financial storm is going to be beyond devastating. We have young adults trying to move back in with their parents, while the parents are in the process of losing their homes as well. So where are the parents supposed to go when they already have grandma and their adult children living with them when they lose their home too?