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Apr 13, 2020 5 min read

I understand that people don’t want the COVID-19 outbreak politicized. We must focus on the task at hand and do our part to support our communities and limit the virus’s spread. But after reading yet another weekly column by swamp creature and all around bootlicker Michael Reagan, who’s politicized and downplayed the issue, as usual, I think it’s time I weighed in.

I work in biohazard response. We should have been prepared for this pandemic. The response protocols have been in place since the 1960s. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new disease, or if it was introduced by the soviets, or ISIS, or rats, or some little old lady visiting her grandchildren, the protocols are the same.

The truth is that Trump is inseparable from this crisis. Before he pulled $9.8 million from FEMA and gutted the CDC, those agencies held courses on pandemic response for disaster relief volunteers. I should know, I took one. Our government spent billions to create these protocols. If the people in charge of implementing them were allowed to do their jobs, the situation would be under control. But they weren’t. During the most critical time to act, our Dear Leader was putzing around, calling the virus a hoax, lying about the number of documented cases in the country, and claiming we were fully prepared and had enough supplies.

He was unprepared, and it shows. Despite knowing COVID-19 was coming a month beforehand, as I write this, of 209 countries with documented cases, we lead the world in confirmed cases, we’re second in deaths, we rank 12th in deaths per million people, and we haven’t even peaked yet. His poor leadership allowed COVID-19 to spread, and caused our economy to collapse, leaving millions upon millions unemployed. And the truly scary part? COVID-19 is milquetoast as far as pathogens go. It’s not ebola or marburg. It’s not MERS, a different coronavirus with a mortality rate of 30-40%. It’s not a genetically engineered, weaponized version of smallpox, anthrax, tuberculosis, or Japanese encephalitis.

Having caved in to Trump’s requests for lower interest rates to keep the stock market bubble from popping, the federal reserve was already handicapped before it started grasping at straws to combat the uncertainty caused by his mismanagement of the virus, pulling levers behind a curtain they haven’t yet realized has fallen. They’ve dropped interest rates to 0%, and have promised unlimited lending and unlimited purchases of bonds and other asset classes. They’re printing money like there’s no tomorrow and nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets.

Did you know that the federal reserve is the largest owner of real estate in the world, because they still own the mortgages of nearly 6 million houses leftover from the Fannie and Freddie bailouts? And now they own and service debts for airlines, cruise lines, hotels, and countless other companies? Does that sound like capitalism to you?

What’s ironic is that both the pandemic and the economic fallout disproportionately affect baby boomers, who are mostly Trump supporters. How fitting is it that their economic chickens come home to roost just in time for their retirement? They’ll be pushing up daisies by the time their retirement accounts recover, and that doesn’t factor in the inflation, perhaps hyperinflation, looming on the horizon, after foreign central banks start divesting the dollars they accumulated during the pandemic, after OPEC and Russia resolve their oil price war, ending a deflationary force on our economy, and after the deluge of money injected by the federal reserve gains velocity. Do I even have to mention the size of their social security checks?

All those red-blooded, flag-waving, pinko-hating anti-socialists had better get over the stigma of public assistance, because we’re all going to be on it. I’ll bet every one of them cashes their $1,200 welfare check, I’ll bet lots of them sign up for those government business loans that’ll be forgiven, too, and I’ll bet the ones that get COVID-19 happily accept their free treatment.

“Oh, this isn’t welfare, it’s just a stimulus check meant to get me through, and stimulate the economy!” Yeah, like food stamps. “No, this is different. This is no fault of my own, it’s because there’s a crisis!” Yeah, there are a lot of crises in this country. Poverty, education, food deserts, affordable housing, lack of opportunities… A lot of crises that tend to only affect the people on the bottom, who aren’t important enough to affect the bottom line of those in power, so we don’t hear about them.

For too long, those at the bottom have heard the same talking points from people who were better off than they were: “You should have planned better.” “You should have gotten a better education.” “You should have gone into an in-demand field.” “There’s always some kind of work to be done, you just have to find it.” “You made bad life choices.” “If you’d have been more productive, you wouldn’t have been laid off.” “You’re able-bodied. Why don’t you join the army?” “We don’t need a nanny state, we have charity.”

We’ve kicked down long enough. People in a worse position than you; people with less money, less power, and less influence than you, are not the source of anything wrong with your life.

But you know what? A whole bunch of us are about to be on the same level.

Justin Sims

Uniontown