Coronavirus Updates Canada: Trudeau Announces Help For Energy Workers, But No Big Bailout for the Industry Yet
Canada is investing $1.7 billion to clean up orphan wells and millions of dollars for emission reduction efforts as COVID-19 continues to batter the country's already struggling energy sector.
By Anya Zoledziowski
Apr 17 2020
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ON THURSDAY, PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU SPOKE WITH PREMIERS ABOUT TOPPING UP SALARIES FROM SOME ESSENTIAL WORKERS. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK (CP)
Updated at 12:30 p.m. (EDT): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new measures that he said will support Canada’s struggling energy sector workers who are at risk of losing their jobs.
The measures are also intended to help the environment, Trudeau said.
Canada is investing $1.7 billion to clean up orphan wells and inactive wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, Trudeau said on Friday. The prime minister also announced a $750-million emission reduction fund through pollution reduction efforts, with a focus on methane, and $75 million to help cut offshore emissions in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Trudeau said an estimated 10,000 energy sector jobs will be maintained thanks to the investments, 5,200 in Alberta alone.
“This public health crisis must not prevent us from taking action to fight the climate crisis,” he said.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney applauded the orphan well-related investment on Twitter.
“This is critical to getting thousands of people in the energy sector back to work immediately,” Kenney said.
Trudeau also introduced $500 million in support for the arts, culture, and sports sectors.
The money will go to Heritage Canada, so that artists, “rising stars of sporting association,” and related organizations can receive wage support or funding if they’re experiencing liquidity problems.
The government is also providing $962 million to regional development agencies and the Community Futures Network to support small businesses, many of which are based in rural communities. Another $270 million will support early stage developers and innovators who don’t qualify for the wage subsidy, Trudeau said.
According to City News, U.S. and Canada officials also have agreed to extend the border closure for another 30 days.
Parliament could sit Monday
Outgoing Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer wants a small group of MPs to sit in Canada’s Parliament for four days out of the week, despite ongoing government-mandated physical distancing measures geared towards fighting COVID-19.
The government has said previously it’s considering virtual alternatives to house meetings, but Scheer is eager to get back to real-life meetings.
He said MPs need to sit in the House, so they can hold Trudeau’s Liberals to account.
Parliament is set to sit on April 20, unless all four parties agree to continue the current pause.
Canada could be flattening curve
The number of new COVID-19 cases in Canada is starting to decrease from day to day, according to Health Canada, but several outbreaks are still causing concerns.
The total of COVID-19 cases is now doubling every 10 days or so, according to Canada’s top doctor, Dr. Theresa Tam. In March, cases were doubling every three days.
As of Thursday night, there were 30,670 cases of the virus and 1,250 deaths across the country. Outbreaks in long-term care facilities make up nearly half of all deaths.
A personal support worker who worked at a nursing home in Toronto’s east end died of COVID-19 on Thursday.
Altamont Care Community centre has recorded eight COVID-19-related deaths, including the worker, and 42 cases of the virus.
Outbreaks in long-term care facilities have resulted in a higher COVID-19 death rate than Canada had originally projected.
Trudeau told reporters on Friday that 125 members of the Canadian Armed Forces with healthcare training will be providing support for workers in long-term care facilities in Quebec.
Trudeau spoke with provincial and territorial premiers late Thursday to discuss topping up the salaries for support workers who make under $2,500 per month. More details are expected soon.
Outbreaks elsewhere
Three guards who work at a Brampton, Ontario jail have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting Peel Public Health to declare an outbreak.
Health authorities are now rushing to test inmates and, according to the Toronto Star, 12 symptomatic inmates are in quarantine.
In Alberta, there are now at least 12 cases of COVID-19 linked to the Kearl Lake oilsands facility, near Fort McMurray. Two cases are on site and another 10 workers who tested positive are offsite.
Canada and Wuhan to collaborate
Ottawa is funding a project to develop rapid and cheap COVID-19 screening tests that is collaborating with Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security, infectious disease facility located in COVID-19’s birthplace, the Globe and Mail reported.
The project, one of at least 100 research projects funded by Ottawa to fight COVID-19, will be spearheaded by a University of Alberta professor, Le Xiaochun, who will receive $828,000 to develop equipment that will allow for the tests.
Breakdown of cases
Tam has said two days in a row that evidence suggests a slow down in new COVID-19 cases in Canada. Even still, new cases—and deaths—are still being reported. As of Thursday night, Canada had 30,670 cases and 1,250 deaths.
Here’s a breakdown of confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases across the country:
British Columbia: 1,575
Alberta: 2,158
Saskatchewan: 305
Manitoba: 250
Ontario: 9,525
Quebec: 15,857
Newfoundland and Labrador: 252
New Brunswick: 117
Nova Scotia: 579
Prince Edward Island: 26
Yukon: 8
Northwest Territories: 5
Nunavut: 0
Late Thursday, the global total of confirmed COVID-19 neared 2 million, with more than 130,000 deaths.
Even More Canadians Can Apply for the CERB
Canada's COVID-19 death toll by mid-April surpassed 1,000, which is higher than officials projected, and the country's GDP shrank by 9 percent in March, according to Statistics Canada.
By Anya Zoledziowski
Apr 15 2020
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PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU SAID HE WILL ANNOUNCE MORE MEASURES FOR STUDENTS SOON
Updated at 12:30 p.m. (EDT): Canada is expanding eligibility for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to batter Canada’s economy,
The CERB will now include people who are earning up to $1,000 per month, seasonal workers facing no jobs, and people who have run out of employment insurance (EI) since January 1.
As of Monday, nearly 6 million Canadians had applied for CERB, a federal aid program for people who have lost work (or can’t work) as a result of the pandemic and aren’t eligible for employment insurance.
The CERB will pay people $2,000 per month for four months.
The government will also top up the pay for essential workers who are making under $2,500 per month like those working in long-term facilities, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday.
He will be meeting with the provincial and territorial leaders to discuss the wage boost, so that it can be implemented as quickly as possible, he said.
Trudeau will announce more measures for students and businesses struggling with commercial rent soon, he said.
New mental health supports
As of Wednesday, Canada is also offering an online mental health portal, Wellness Together Canada, that aims to help people struggling with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and other mental health struggles as a result of long-term self-isolation.
The app will connect people to mental health professionals—social workers, peer support, psychologists—for chat sessions and phone calls, and will provide information for those seeking a wide-range of mental health struggles, including support with addiction.
Canada’s federal government also passed its emergency wade subsidy designed to help struggling businesses keep their staff on payroll. The subsidy will pay up to $847 per week per employee for 12 weeks, with the hope that businesses will be able to keep their staff and rehire people already laid off.
Record-breaking economic shrink
On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released a flash estimate that found the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by 9 percent in March, the largest one-month decline since StatCan started publishing related data in 1961.
GDP is the core measure of a country’s economic health.
Canada’s GDP declined by 2.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, StatCan said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released grim projections on Tuesday for the global economy, expecting it to shrink by 3 percent, as COVID-19 continues to batter international markets.
The report estimates Canada’s economy will contract by at least 6.2 percent.
Death toll higher than expected
Cases of COVID-19 are likely going to be much higher than predicted in Canada, researchers say, and the country’s current death toll, which surpassed 1,000 on Wednesday, has already exceeded a best-case scenario.
By Wednesday afternoon, Canada had reported 27,557 cases and more than 1,000 deaths and Ontario had recorded its highest number of deaths in a single day. The province extended its state of emergency for another 28 days, until May 12.
Canada had originally estimated that between 500 and 700 deaths would take place by April 16.
An onslaught of COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes account for nearly half of all fatal infections and have caused the higher than expected number of total deaths and more deaths in homes are expected.
Researchers are projecting that the number of COVID-19 cases will be much higher than Canada’s federal politicians predict, particularly if physical distancing measures are relaxed anytime soon.
While Canada Health estimates that about 10 percent of Canadians will get sick from COVID-19 with current controls in place, a study by researchers from several universities, including the University of Ottawa and the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that between 56.7 percent and 84.5 percent of the population could fall ill, depending on how long physical distancing is in place.
Amir Attarran of the University of Ottawa, one of several researchers who worked on the study, told the Toronto Star that the country has made it past the virus’ first wave, which is good news, but there will likely be new outbreaks.
“We are all pre-immune, we are all still susceptible,” Attaran said. “If we lift the self-isolation and go out, many of us could get sick. Some of us will die.”
Trudeau said it will be “weeks” before physical distancing measures can be lifted and the economy reopened.
“It would be terrible if we loosened measures too quickly,” Trudeau said, because that could result in another spike of COVID-19.
Trudeau has also said several times that life likely won’t go back to “normal” until there is a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
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“Pure Baloney”: Zoologist Debunks Trump’s COVID-19 Origin Theory, Explains Animal-Human Transmission
APRIL 16, 2020
GUEST
Peter Daszak
disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease.
LINKS
Peter Daszak on Twitter
EcoHealth Alliance
With the largest one-day death toll in the U.S. yet — 2,400 in just 24 hours — President Trump is trying to deflect attention from his handling of the pandemic by waging a war on public health experts and science, threatening to cut World Health Organization funding and fueling a theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. We speak to a zoologist who has been sounding the alarm about a coming pandemic for years. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney,” says Peter Daszak, disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. “These pandemic viruses that emerge originate in wildlife.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, here in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, with my co-host Nermeen Shaikh, usually sitting right here at my side but joining us from her home to keep us all safe and stop community spread. Hi, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Hi, Amy. And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to begin right away with our first segment. The White House is unveiling new guidelines today aimed at rolling back states’ stay-at-home orders protecting against the spread of coronavirus. President Trump’s call to wind down social distancing came as the United States recorded more than 2,400 deaths in just 24 hours, the highest one-day death toll for any nation since the start of the pandemic. Across the United States, there are nearly 640,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, though the true number is likely far higher due to the critical shortage of tests. At least 31,000 people have died of the disease in just a matter of weeks.
Despite this, President Trump spent the last few days waging a war on journalists, public health experts and science. On Wednesday, Trump suggested, without evidence, that World Health Organization officials conspired to hide the truth about the coronavirus. His comments came one day after he announced the U.S. would begin withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for the U.N. body. At the same news briefing, President Trump fueled the fringe theory promoted by Fox News that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. This is Fox News reporter John Roberts questioning Trump at Wednesday’s press briefing.
JOHN ROBERTS: Mr. President, multiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States government now has high confidence that while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan, that because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend and then went to the wet market in Wuhan, where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from officials?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to say that, John, but I will tell you, more and more we’re hearing the story. And we’ll see. When you say multiple sources, though, there’s a case where you can use the word “sources.” But we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.
AMY GOODMAN: This came just one day after the Pentagon’s top general, Mark Milley, said the coronavirus likely came from natural sources, not a Chinese lab. On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded.
ZHAO LIJIAN: [translated] China’s position on the origin and means of transmission of the novel coronavirus is clear. We will always believe this is a scientific issue, which should be studied by scientists and medical experts. I would like to remind you, the head of WHO has repeatedly said there’s no evidence that the coronavirus was made in a lab. Many well-known medical experts in the world also believe that claims of the so-called laboratory leaks have no scientific basis.
AMY GOODMAN: The scientific journal The Lancet has said the virus seems to have come from wildlife.
Well, for more on the origins of the coronavirus, Trump’s response, and where we go from here, we’re joined by a zoologist who has long studied diseases that cross the animal-human divide, and who for years has been sounding the alarm about a coming pandemic. Dr. Peter Daszak is with us. He’s a disease ecologist, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. EcoHealth Alliance has been studying coronaviruses in China since the end of the SARS outbreak in 2004. This coronavirus is really called SARS2. He’s joining us from the Hudson River Valley in New York.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, if you can unpack what we just heard, it goes to the issue of the origins of the coronavirus. Especially interesting that President Trump is raising this now as he’s being seriously attacked for the United States’ lack of action and delay, and so he is striking out at as many sectors as he can. But talk about the origins of the coronavirus, Dr. Daszak.
PETER DASZAK: Yeah, great to be here.
Look, first, the idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney. It’s simply not true. I’ve been working with that lab for 15 years. And the samples collected were collected by me and others in collaboration with our Chinese colleagues. They’re some of the best scientists in the world. There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.
And like you say, it’s really a politicization of the origins of a pandemic, and it’s really unfortunate. The stories, as President Trump said he’s been hearing, have been around since day one of the outbreak, and they’re around in every outbreak. Every single outbreak of a novel virus, somebody somewhere says, “Well, this has been manufactured in a lab.” In fact, a few weeks ago, when this started circulating, I googled ”HIV is man-made.” Do it yourself and see. There are people out there who still believe this is a bioengineered virus that spread around the world. It’s just really unfortunate. And I don’t really know why these conspiracy theories get such traction. I think the people just have trouble understanding what’s going on on the planet.
We’ve been studying the origin of emerging diseases. About 75% of every new emerging disease — think about Ebola, H1N1 flu, H5N1 flu, you know, these pandemic viruses that emerge — originate in wildlife. Every species of wildlife carries viruses that are a natural part of its biology, a bit like we have the common cold and herpes, cold sores. They don’t really do much to the species in the wild, but sometimes when we make contact with them, we pick up those viruses, and they can be lethal. Most times they’re not, but every now and again we get a lethal virus. And we estimate there are 1.7 million unknown viruses in wildlife, so there’s a lot of diversity out there that could emerge in the future.
And really, we need to be looking at that, instead of pointing fingers for political gain at scientists who are working to benefit public health. The scientists in those labs are right now, today, working to see if vaccines and drugs will kill the coronavirus to save our lives. This sort of battle doesn’t help in a pandemic.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak, could you say more about the origins of this specific pandemic? What do we know about its origins? Of course, many believe, as you’ve said, that it originated in bats. But explain how it moved from bats to humans. Was it at the Wuhan market? And what did that involve?
PETER DASZAK: Yeah, it’s — we don’t really know for sure, but we can trace back the origins by looking at the genetic signal within the virus itself. So we sequence out the gene from the virus, the genome, and then we compare it to others. And when we do that, we see that the viruses in people, the closest relative of those are from bats. This is not unusual. Bats happen to carry a lot of different viral species. There are many different bats around the world that carry their own viruses. We make contact with them. Often we don’t see them. They fly at night, for instance. And we pick up their viruses. SARS coronavirus, the original virus, emerged from bats. Ebola virus is a bat-origin virus. Rabies and many others.
How did a virus like this get from a bat to a human? It is a very strange thing when we try and think about it. But first of all, in Southeast Asia, there is a huge diversity of bats. People live out in rural areas close to bat caves. They’re exposed every night when bats fly over them, urinate, defecate, maybe onto their food or into their drink. People go into bat caves. People go in for various reasons. They go in to dig out the bat guano, the feces, and they use it as a fertilizer, just like we used to do many years ago with bird feces. They go into caves to shelter from the rain. They’re farmers. They’re subsistence farmers hunting and eating wildlife, so they get exposed that way. People do eat bats. It’s true. And they eat bats all around the world. It’s a free source of protein. If you’re out there in a bat cave, they’re pretty easy to catch. And these are the ways people get exposed.
Now, how did it get into the market? We know for sure that the Wuhan market was part of this outbreak, but we think that the first few cases weren’t in the market. And this is not uncommon. We’ve seen this with many, many other disease outbreaks, new viruses that emerge. They trickle out from rural areas through a person getting infected maybe in Hunan province and then moving into Wuhan, that maybe they’re part of the wildlife trade. Maybe a farmer got infected, or a farmer’s animals, and they were shipped into the markets. These wet markets aren’t just places to sell wildlife; they’re places where people congregate. They come in in droves. They circulate around. They’re really good places for a virus to spread. And if a person brings it in, or an animal, that virus will spread. And it looks like that’s what’s happened here.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you also explain — you have talked about the environmental causes of this, what’s called a virus spillover, like — infectious diseases like COVID-19, causes such as environmental, causes such as deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, and wildlife poaching. You’ve also said that people are developing a lot of new towns in this region of southwest China with a lot of high-speed train lines. And you warn that we’re going to see more pandemics like this as long as such rampant development continues. So, could you explain what the link is between development and the spread of these infectious diseases?
PETER DASZAK: Well, we’ve done the science on this. We’ve been working on this for 20 years. We tracked every known emerging disease to its origin, from the scientific literature. And then we tested, with mathematical models, what’s driving that, what are the causes that could underlie the emergence of these new diseases. And what we found is they emerge in places where human populations are very dense and growing. They emerge in the tropics mainly, because that’s where the wildlife diversity is, and the viruses that become pandemic come from wildlife.
And the other key factor is land-use change, people moving into new areas, encroachment into wildlife habitat, building roads into a forest for a mine or for a logging camp. There are many, many examples of diseases, like Ebola, SARS and others, HIV itself, from this. And that’s a global trend that will drive the rise of future pandemics.
Now, we’re not saying that we’ve got to stop every modern aspect of development. We can do these things, but we need to do them in a smarter way, a more sustainable way. And we need to start treating pandemics as a risk of doing these things around the planet. We’ve got to reassess our relationship with the environment and reduce our ecological footprint. It’s to the benefit of conservation. It’ll reduce climate change. It will also stop us getting sick. And I think that’s a really important point. For folks on the right who aren’t interested in conservation or climate change, what about your own health? You know, we are making ourselves sick by making the planet sick.
And that’s really the message that needs to come through from this, because if we just treat this as another disease, wait for a vaccine and then think, “Great, it’s all over,” well, I’ve got news. There are 1.7 million more viruses out there that will be emerging in the future. We can either wait for them to emerge and get sick and have another global recession, or we can get out there and readdress our relationship with wildlife and make the planet a little bit healthier.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a recent tweet, Dr. Daszak. You refute the widespread belief that COVID-19 is a black swan event, pointing to a 2013 Wired article that said, quote, “there are bats carrying a virus that can directly infect people, and cause another SARS pandemic.” If you could comment on that, and also the idea that if this came from a virology lab — there are labs, of course, in China, there are labs in the United States — it doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theory that released on the world, but the idea of perhaps there weren’t the proper safety precautions or someone inside the lab somehow got infected, that can happen in any virology lab in the world?
PETER DASZAK: Yeah, look, I mean, we’ve been raising the flag on these viruses ever since SARS, for 15 years. We went out to work in China with our colleagues out there, with a specific goal of saying, “Where did SARS come from?” It was an alarm call, SARS, because we had 8,000 people infected, 10% of them died, a very high death rate. But it didn’t go to a true global pandemic like COVID-19. So we went out to China, and we started looking into wildlife origins of this virus.
And what we found was really surprising: a huge diversity, dozens, hundreds of bat-origin coronaviruses. We found evidence that they were continually spilling over into people. We looked at rural populations in southwest China and found 3% of them had antibodies to these viruses. And we estimate that the exposure across Southeast Asia is about 1 million to 7 million people a year, just by living in rural areas where bats live. So, it’s not just an expectation that we’ll have more events. It’s a certainty. And we started saying that.
We looked at the viruses bats carried, and we showed that they can actually already infect human cells in the lab. They can cause disease, like SARS, in some of the mouse models for SARS. And they evade the vaccines that were being developed at the time. And this is not unusual. You know, there are many other viruses. There are viruses related to Ebola that we don’t know much about. We don’t know if they infect people. There are viruses related to influenza out there that we don’t know what they do in people.
But the way to deal with this is not to wait for them to emerge and make us sick. The way to do this is to get out there ahead of the curve, find out what’s out there in wildlife, find out who’s at risk, work with the people on the frontline and reduce that risk. And, you know, that’s a really important public health message. It’s also a really important message for international development. These viruses tend to emerge in poor countries in the tropics, just by the nature of where wildlife live, countries that are less able to deal with outbreaks. So, sending out taxpayer money to those countries is very unpopular with the current administration, but it not only protects them, it protects us. It’s a right-wing agenda and a left-wing agenda.
Now, on issue of whether this could be a lab release, well, this is the problem with conspiracy theories, you know? It’s impossible to say that it didn’t happen, and it never will be possible, even if you showed video evidence of every hour of everybody working in that lab. And there are video cameras up there. These are biosecure labs with very high-tech, sophisticated security systems. Even if you showed all the notebooks, the conspiracy folks would continue to say, “Well, it’s a cover-up. Clearly something happened, and these are doctored notebooks, doctored videotapes.”
The point is that, let’s look at a balance of probability. That’s what you have to do. We have a few hundred technicians and scientists working in these labs. They do not have a problem with staff or with security or with loose controls. These are very well-run labs. They’ve been inspected by the U.S. CDC, by people working in BSL-4 labs, high-security labs, in the U.S., in France and internationally. They’re accredited by the U.S. So, it’s ironic that now we’re saying they’re not very well organized. We actually inspected them properly and allowed them to open. You know, the cables that were reported in the —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak —
PETER DASZAK: Sorry, yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Daszak, if I may just interrupt, just we only have a minute, and this is a question that we have to get to before we move to our next segment, which is on India. You know, there was widespread belief that COVID-19 would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the developing world, from India to Brazil, and that millions would be infected. But that’s not yet happened. Your response to why that might be the case, and whether we should expect something different in the future? We have a minute.
PETER DASZAK: Well, yeah, look, rich countries test more. We can afford it. And poor countries don’t. And what I expect is that there are a huge number of hidden community transmission in poorer countries around the world, that is going to create an incredible problem in the future.
Who’s going to deal with that problem? Countries that can’t afford to are going to seek support from their colleagues and their allies around the world. It’s going to go through the WHO, the very organization we heard yesterday we’re going to pull funding from. It’s a travesty. And again, if we let that happen, we will see this outbreak continuing to cause problems in the developing world, and it won’t go away. And it will affect us. We’re never going to be free from a pandemic if we allow a virus to rage uncontrollably in countries that are out there with travelers coming back into the U.S. So, again, it’s misguided. It’s shortsighted.
And I really hope we address this quickly and aggressively, because, you know, I really feel that it’s going to be impossible to do social distancing in the favelas of Rio and the slums and some of the places where people are already disenfranchised because they’re considered illegal squatters. So, there really are going to be issues around the world with this coronavirus in poorer countries, for sure.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Peter Daszak, we want to thank you so much for being with us, disease ecologist, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease.
When we come back, we speak with the acclaimed author Arundhati Roy about the coronavirus in India and the political implications of the crisis. She says, “The pandemic is a portal.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Medical workers in Kerala, India, dancing for their patients. Kerala is where our next guest, Arundhati Roy, was
‘We’re in deep trouble’: Noam Chomsky explains how Trump and his ‘freak show’ are ‘moving literally to destroy the country’
April 13, 2020 By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
How did the United States — the richest country in the world — become the worldwide epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, with one person dying of COVID-19 every 47 seconds? We spend the hour with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, discussing this unprecedented moment in history, and its political implications, as Senator Bernie Sanders announces he is suspending his campaign for the presidency. Chomsky also describes how frontline medical workers and progressive organizing are giving him hope.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. itself is now the worldwide epicenter, with one person dying of COVID-19 every 47 seconds. Nearly 16,700 coronavirus deaths have been recorded in the United States, with the number of confirmed cases approaching half a million — more than Italy, Spain and France combined. Of course, the true rate of infections is far, far higher due to a critical lack of testing. This comes as the Labor Department said Thursday over 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits over the past week, as the pace and scale of U.S. job losses is set to rival the Great Depression.
Well, for more on the political implications of this unprecedented moment, we turn today to Noam Chomsky for the hour, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. His recent books include Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, Who Rules the World? and Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.
Noam Chomsky joined us for a conversation Wednesday from his home in Tucson, Arizona, where he is sheltering in place with his wife Valeria. This was just before Senator Bernie Sanders announced he’s suspending his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, making former Vice President Joe Biden the presumptive nominee to face Donald Trump in the November election. I began by asking Professor Chomsky about what’s happening right now in the context of the 2020 elections, and what he sees happening in November.
NOAM CHOMSKY: If Trump is reelected, it’s a indescribable disaster. It means that the policies of the past four years, which have been extremely destructive to the American population, to the world, will be continued and probably accelerated. What this is going to mean for health is bad enough. I just mentioned the Lancet figures. It will get worse. What this means for the environment or the threat of nuclear war, which no one is talking about but is extremely serious, is indescribable.
Suppose Biden is elected. I would anticipate it would be essentially a continuation of Obama — nothing very great, but at least not totally destructive, and opportunities for an organized public to change what is being done, to impose pressures.
It’s common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed. I think that’s a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion. Issues that were unthinkable a couple years ago are now right in the middle of attention.
The worst crime he committed, in the eyes of the establishment, is not the policy he’s proposing; it’s the fact that he was able to inspire popular movements, which had already been developing — Occupy, Black Lives Matter, many others — and turn them into an activist movement, which doesn’t just show up every couple years to push a leader and then go home, but applies constant pressure, constant activism and so on. That could affect a Biden administration. It could also — even if it’s just a holding action, it means there’s time to deal with the major crises.
Take Medicare for All or, the other major plank in Sanders’s program, free college education. Across the whole mainstream spectrum, all the way to what’s called the left in the mainstream, this is condemned as too radical for Americans. Just think what that means. That’s an attack on American culture and society, which you would expect from some hostile enemy. What it’s saying is it’s too radical to say that we should rise to the level of comparable countries. They all have some form of national healthcare. Most of them have free higher education — the best-performing countries nationally, like Finland, free; Germany, free; right to our south, Mexico, a poor country, high-quality higher education, free. So, to say we should rise to the level of the rest of the world is considered too radical for Americans. It’s an astonishing comment. As I say, it’s a critique of America that you’d expect from some super hostile enemy.
That’s the left of the spectrum. Tells you that we have really deep problems. It’s not just Trump. He’s made it much worse, but the problems go much deeper, just like, say, the ventilator catastrophe, which I described, just based on good capitalist logic with the extra hammer blow of making the government ineffectual to deal with things. This is much deeper than Trump. And we have to face those facts. Some do. I’m sure you reported — I don’t remember — you probably reported the setting of the Doomsday Clock in January. OK?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Notice what happened. All through Trump’s term, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, the best general assessment we have of the state of the world, moved closer to midnight — termination — reached the highest point ever. This January, it exceeded it. The analysts gave up minutes, moved to seconds: a hundred seconds to midnight, thanks to Donald Trump.
And the Republican Party, which is just monstrous, no longer qualifies as a political party. It simply sheepishly echoes everything the master says. Zero integrity. It’s just amazing to watch. He’s surrounded himself by a collection of sycophants who just repeat worshipfully everything he says. Real major attack on democracy, alongside the attack on the survival of humanity, to quote JPMorgan Chase again — the nuclear war, raising the threat of nuclear war, dismantling the arms control system, which has, to some extent, protected us from total disaster. It’s astonishing to watch.
The same memo that I quoted about how the policies we’re following are risking the survival of humanity ended by arguing that the banks should cut back its fossil fuel support, in part because of the reputational consequences. Their reputation is being harmed. What does that mean? That means that activists are putting pressure on them, and they have to maintain some kind of reputation. Now, that’s a good lesson.
And it works. We’ve seen some very striking examples. Take, say, the Green New Deal. A couple of years ago, that was an object of ridicule, if it was mentioned at all. Some form of Green New Deal is essential for the survival of humanity. Now it’s part of the general agenda. Why? Activist engagement. Especially Sunrise Movement, a group of young people, acted significantly, up to the point of sitting in in congressional offices. They received support from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other young legislators who came into office as part of the Sanders-inspired popular wave — another great success. Ed Markey, senator from Massachusetts joined in. Now it’s a part of the legislative agenda. The next step is to force it through in some viable form. And there are very good ideas as to how to do that. Well, that’s the way things can change.
With a Biden presidency, there would be, if not a strongly sympathetic administration, at least one that can be reached, can be pressured. And that’s very important. If you look over the very good labor historian — I’m sure you know Erik Loomis, who has studied the efforts by working people to institute changes in the society, sometimes for themselves, sometimes for the society generally. And he’s pointed out — made an interesting point. These efforts succeeded when there was a tolerant or sympathetic administration, not when there wasn’t. That’s a big — one of many enormous differences between Trump, the sociopath, and Biden, who’s kind of a pretty empty — you can push him one way or another. This is the most crucial election in human history, literally. Another four years of Trump, and we’re in deep trouble.
AMY GOODMAN: Back with professor Noam Chomsky in 30 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Ave Maria,” performed today, Good Friday, inside the burned-out shell of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was live-streamed. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue my interview with Noam Chomsky. I asked him how the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, has become the epicenter of the pandemic.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the United States is — I mean, countries have reacted to this in many ways, some very successfully, some more or less successfully. One is at the bottom of the barrel. That’s us. The United States is the only major country that cannot even provide data to the World Health Organization, because it’s so dysfunctional.
There’s a background. Part of the background is the scandalous healthcare system, which simply is not ready for anything that’s out of the normal. It simply doesn’t work. This is exacerbated by the strange collection of gangsters in Washington, who have — it’s almost as if they systematically took every possible step to make it as bad as possible. Through Trump’s term, the last four years, he has been systematically cutting back on all of the health-related aspects of the government. Pentagon goes up. Building his wall goes up. But anything — actually, anything that might benefit the general population goes down, particularly health.
Some of it is almost surreal. So, in October, for example, just very exquisite timing, he canceled completely a USAID project — Predict, it was called — that was working in Third World countries, also in China, to try to detect new viruses that might turn into the anticipated pandemic. And in fact it was anticipated since — at least since the SARS epidemic in 2003. So we have a kind of combination of factors, some of them specific to the United States.
If we want to ensure or at least hope to avoid new pandemics, which are very likely to come, more serious than this one, in part because of the enormous rising threat of global warming, we have to look at the sources of this one. And it’s very important to think them through. So, just roughly to go back, pandemics have been predicted by scientists for years. The SARS epidemic was quite serious. It was contained, but vaccines were — there was the beginning of development of vaccines. They never proceeded to the testing phase. It was clear at that time that something more was going to happen, and several epidemics did.
But it’s not enough to know that. Somebody has to pick up the ball and run with it. Who can do it? Well, the drug companies are the obvious place, but they have no interest in it. They follow good capitalist logic: You look at market signals, and there’s no profit to be made in preparing for a predicted and anticipated catastrophe. So they weren’t interested.
At that point, another possibility is the government could step in. I’m old enough to remember the terror of polio was ended by a government-initiated and -funded project that finally led to the Salk vaccine, which was free, no intellectual property rights. Jonas Salk said it should be as free as the sun. OK, that ended the polio terror, measles terror, others. But the government couldn’t step in, because there’s another particular aspect of the modern era: the neoliberal plague. Now, you remember Ronald Reagan’s sunny smile and his little maxim about how government is the problem, not the solution. So the government can’t enter.
There were some efforts, nevertheless, to try to prepare for this. Right now in New York and other places, doctors and nurses are forced to make agonizing decisions about who to kill — not a nice decision to make — because they simply don’t have equipment. And the main lack is ventilators, huge shortage of ventilators. Well, the Obama administration did make an effort to try to prepare for this. And this kind of dramatically reveals the kind of factors that are leading to catastrophe. They contracted with a small company that was producing high-quality, low-cost ventilators. The company was bought up by a larger one, Covidien, which makes fancy, expensive ventilators. And they shelved the project. Presumably, they didn’t want competition with their own costly ones. Shortly after that, they turned to the government and said they wanted the contract ended. The reason was it was not profitable enough, so therefore no ventilators.
We have the same thing in hospitals. Hospitals, under the neoliberal programs, are supposed to be efficient, meaning no spare capacity, just enough beds to get by. And in fact, plenty of people, me included, can testify that even the best hospitals caused great pain and suffering to patients even before this broke out, because of this just-on-time efficiency concept that was guiding our privatized, for-profit healthcare system. When anything hits out of the normal, it’s just tough luck. And this runs across the system.
So we have a combination of capitalist logic, which is lethal but could be controlled, but it can’t be controlled under the neoliberal programs, which also say the government can’t step in to pick up the ball when the private sector doesn’t.
On top of that — now, this becomes specific to the United States — we have a freak show in Washington, a totally dysfunctional government, which is causing enormous problems. And it’s not that nothing was known. A pandemic was anticipated all through Trump’s term, even before. His reaction was to cut back preparation for it. Astonishingly, this continued even after the pandemic hit.
So, on February 10th, when it was already serious, Trump released his budget for the coming year. Take a look at it. The budget continues the defunding of the Center for Disease Control and other government institutions responsible for health, continues to defund them. It increases funding for some things, like fossil fuel production, gives new subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. I mean, it’s as if the country is simply — maybe not “as if” — the country is simply run by sociopaths.
And the result, so, we cut back on the efforts to deal with the pandemic that’s taking shape, and we increase the efforts to destroy the environment, in which — the efforts in which the United States, under Trump, is in the lead in racing to the abyss. Now, bear in mind that that’s — I don’t have to tell you — is a far more serious threat than the coronavirus. Now, this is bad and serious, particularly in the United States, but we’ll recover somehow, at severe cost. We’re not going to recover from the melting of the polar ice sheets, which is leading to a feedback effect, well known, that increases — as they melt, there’s less reflective surface, more absorption in the dark seas. The warming that’s melting increases. That’s just one of the factors that’s leading to destruction, unless we do something about it.
And it’s not a secret. Just recently, for example, couple of weeks ago, there was a very interesting leak, a memo from JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank, which warned that, in their words, “the survival of humanity” is at risk if we continue on our present course, which included the funding of fossil fuel industries by the bank itself, said we’re endangering the survival of humanity. Everyone who’s got eyes open in the Trump administration is very well aware of this. It’s difficult to find words for this.
I should say, other countries have — first of all, it was not a secret. I mean, it’s become convenient now. Trump is desperately seeking some scapegoat that he can blame for his astonishing failures and incompetence. The most recent one is the World Health Organization, the China bashing. Somebody else is responsible.
But it’s simply — the facts are very clear. China very quickly informed the World Health Organization last December that they were finding patients with pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown etiology. Didn’t know what it was. About a week later, January 7th, they made public the fact to the World Health Organization, the general scientific community in the world, that Chinese scientists had found out what the source was: a coronavirus resembling the SARS virus. They had identified the sequence, the genome. They were providing the information to the world.
U.S. intelligence was well aware of it. They spent January and February trying to get somebody in the White House to pay attention to the fact that there’s a major pandemic. Just nobody could listen. Trump was off playing golf or maybe listening — checking his TV ratings. Yesterday, we learned that one very high-level official, very close to the administration, Peter Navarro, in late January had sent a very strong message to the White House saying this is a real danger. But even he couldn’t break through.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you mention Peter Navarro, the trade representative, sending a memo — it just came out in The New York Times — in late January warning of the coronavirus, saying that, I think, something like up to a million people could die. And Trump took from that setting a travel ban on China, but not doing a corollary, which was ensuring that the United States had the proper tests and also had the PPE, the protective personal equipment, that doctors, that nurses, that the custodial staff in hospitals needed to stay alive, to treat patients, to help them stay alive. And the intelligence agencies, it came out, at this time, even before Navarro, they were all warning Trump. If you could go back to even two years ago, when he disbanded his pandemic unit within the National Security Council, said that when he’s at the table in China talking about spending money on bombs or a wall, they’re not saying, “Sir, you also have to look at what’s happening here”? And that unit, pandemic unit, not only is about how we deal in the United States, but also ensuring, as the CDC does and other agencies of the U.S. government, that scientists are sent out to other countries, like China, to investigate and to help other countries, because when it comes to a pandemic, we’re all in this together. So, if you could talk about these early warnings and why testing and this personal — protective personal equipment is so important?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, remember that it continued even after the pandemic was already in force. Now, the budget proposal is astonishing. This is February 10th, well into the pandemic. Trump cuts further the health-related components of the government, continuing the hit. They were under the ax, just as they were throughout his term.
Actually, the clips that you played before are part of a very clever strategy. Whether this is consciously planned or just intuitive, I don’t know. But the pattern of simply making one statement today, contradicting it tomorrow, coming out with something else the next day is really brilliant. It means he’s going to be vindicated. Whatever happens, he’ll have said it. You shoot arrows at random, some of them are going to hit the target. And his technique with the Fox echo chamber and the worshipful base simply tuned to Fox, Limbaugh, etc., they’re just going to pick whatever happened to be right, and say, “Look, our wonderful president, the greatest president we’ve ever had, our savior, knew it all along, and here was his statement.” Can’t miss.
It’s very much like the technique of producing constant lies. You know, I don’t even have to go through it. The assiduous fact-checkers tot them up. I think it’s maybe 20,000 by now or something. And he’s laughing all the way. This is perfect. You tell constant lies, what happens is the concept of truth just disappears.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, political dissident. Back with him in 30 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. At a hospital in Long Island, it became so overwhelming every time a patient coded, the staff decided to counter it by playing “Here Comes the Sun” on the PA system every time a patient was released. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to my interview with professor, linguist, world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky.
AMY GOODMAN: So, this is a clip, Noam, of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah called “Saluting the Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandumbic.” It’s extended, the three-minute video, highlighting members of the right-wing media, like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Tomi Lahren and others, as well as Republican members of Congress and the Trump administration, downplaying or mocking the coronavirus pandemic. It starts on February 24th and ends with Donald Trump claiming March 17th and Hannity saying March 18th that they had always taken the pandemic seriously. This is “Saluting the Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandumbic.”
SEAN HANNITY: Tonight I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We are all doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent, and you’re going to all die. Or at least that’s what the media mob would like you to think.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks. The hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda Strain, as “oh my god, if you get it, you’re dead.”
PETE HEGSETH: This is one of those cases where the more I learn about coronavirus, the less concerned I am. There’s a lot of hyperbole.
LOU DOBBS: The national left-wing media playing up fears of the coronavirus.
TOMI LAHREN: The sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship? I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than I am getting the coronavirus. But maybe that’s just me.
JEANINE PIRRO: It’s a virus like the flu. All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn’t reflect reality.
DR. MARC SIEGEL: This virus should be compared to the flu, because at worst — at worst, worst-case scenario — it could be the flu.
GERALDO RIVERA: The far more deadly, more lethal threat right now is not the coronavirus, it’s this — it’s the ordinary, old flu. People are dying right now.
STEVE DOOCY: The flu is here, everywhere.
GERALDO RIVERA: Nobody has died yet in the United States, as far as we know, from this disease.
STEVE DOOCY: That’s right.
LAURA INGRAHAM: And the facts are actually pretty reassuring. But you’d never know it, watching all this stuff.
JESSE WATTERS: You want to know how I really feel about the coronavirus, Juan? If I get it, I’ll beat it. I’m not afraid of the coronavirus, and no one else should be that afraid, either.
MATT SCHLAPP: It is very, very difficult to contract this virus.
DR. DREW PINSKY: It’s milder than we thought. The fatality rate is going to drop.
ED HENRY: When you hear the context, it’s not quite as scary.
AINSLEY EARHARDT: It’s actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead. And then the planes — remember back in the day when you had a seat next to you possibly empty? You could stretch out a little more? It’s like that on every flight now.
REP. DEVIN NUNES: One of the things you can do, if you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Yeah.
REP. DEVIN NUNES: Likely, you can get in, get in easily.
NEWS ANCHOR: Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz mocked concerns about the spread of the virus by wearing a gas mask on Capitol Hill.
JOHN KING: [reading] “When a reporter in the Capitol asked Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, 85, what precautions he was taking … [he] extended his arm with confidence: ‘Wanna shake hands?’”
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: In our line of work, you shake hands. I expect the president will continue to do that. I’ll continue to do it.
LARRY KUDLOW: We have contained this. We have contained this — I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: It is being contained. And do you not think it’s being contained?
SEAN HANNITY: Zero people in the United States of America have died from the coronavirus. Zero.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a flu. This is like a flu. It’s going to disappear one day. It’s like a miracle. It will disappear. … I have felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I took it very seriously.
SEAN HANNITY: By the way, this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Sean Hannity and Donald Trump, right before that, on March 17th and 18th, saying, “We have always taken the coronavirus pandemic seriously.” “Saluting the Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandumbic” from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, who is now doing his show each night from home to protect against community spread. So, Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, well-known linguist, author, activist, as you listen to the Fox News — this is not just a channel; these are the people that President Trump channels. These are perhaps his senior advisers, as they continually played this down. Do you hold President Trump responsible? Would you say he has blood on his hands?
NOAM CHOMSKY: There’s no question. Trump makes some crazy statement. It’s then amplified by the Fox News echo chamber. The next day, he says the opposite. That’s echoed; the echo chamber amplifies that. Notice that the tone — the tone of the reporting is interesting. It’s all with perfect confidence, not what any sane, rational person would say — “We really don’t know. There’s a lot of uncertainty. This is the way things look today.” There’s nothing like that. Absolute confidence. No matter what the dear leader says, we amplify it. And it’s an interesting dialogue. They amplify what he says. Sean Hannity can say, “This is the greatest move that was ever made in the history of the world.” And the next morning, Trump tunes in to Fox & Friends, listens to whatever is said. That becomes his thought for the day. It’s an interaction, Murdoch and Trump moving literally to try to destroy the country and destroy the world, because in the background, we should never forget, is a far greater threat that is coming closer and closer while Trump is leading the way to destruction.
He has some assistance. So, down on the southern part of the hemisphere, there’s another madman, i.e. Jair Bolsonaro, who’s trying to vie with Trump to see who can be the worst criminal on the planet. He’s telling the Brazilians, “It’s nothing. It’s just a cold. Brazilians don’t get viruses. We’re immune to them.” His health minister and other officials are trying to butt in and say, “Look, this is really serious.” The governors, many of them, fortunately, are ignoring what he says. But Brazil is facing a terrible crisis. It’s actually gotten to the point where in the favelas, you know, these miserable slums, in Rio, where the government does nothing for the people, others have intervened to try to impose sensible restrictions, insofar as it’s possible under those miserable conditions. Who? The crime gangs. The crime gangs, that torture the population, have moved in to try to impose health standards. The indigenous population is facing a virtual genocide, which won’t bother Bolsonaro. He doesn’t think they should be there anyway. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, scientific papers are coming out warning that in 15 years the Amazon is going to shift from being a net carbon sink to a net CO2 emitter. That’s devastating for Brazil — in fact, for the whole world.
So, we have the Colossus of the North, as it’s called, in the hands of sociopaths, who are doing whatever they can to harm the country and the world. And the Colossus of the South, as it’s been called, is, in its own way, doing the same thing. I’m able to follow this pretty closely because my wife Valeria is Brazilian and keeps me up to date with the news that’s coming out in Brazil. And it’s simply shocking to see.
But meanwhile, other countries are reacting sensibly. So, as soon as the news started coming out from China — and there was plenty of news right away, contrary to what is being claimed — the countries on the Chinese periphery began to react — Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore — quite effectively. Some of them have it basically under control. New Zealand has apparently quashed the coronavirus, maybe almost completely, with a lockdown right away, an immediate lockdown for a couple of weeks, and seems to have come close to ending it. You look into Europe, and most of Europe just dithered, but some countries, the better-organized countries, did act right away. It’s very striking. It would be very useful for Americans to compare Trump’s ravings, of the kind you illustrated, with Angela Merkel’s, German chancellor, her sober, factual account and talk to the German people, describing exactly what’s happening and what has to be done.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we only have a minute, but I wanted to ask you, as we speak to you at your home in Tucson, Arizona, where you are sheltering at home, where you are staying at home because we are in the midst of this pandemic, to prevent community spread and to protect yourself and your family: What gives you hope?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I should say that I’m following a strict regimen, because my wife Valeria is taking charge, and I follow her orders. So Valeria and I are in isolation.
But what gives me hope is the actions that popular groups are taking all over the world, many of them. Some of them are — there are some things happening that are truly inspiring. Take the doctors and the nurses who are working overtime under extremely dangerous conditions, lacking — especially in the United States, lacking even minimal support, being compelled to make these agonizing decisions about who to kill tomorrow. But they’re doing it. It’s just a — it’s an inspiring tribute to the resources of the human spirit, a model of what can be done, along with the popular actions, the moves to create a Progressive International. These are all very positive signs.
But you look back in recent history, there have been times where things looked really hopeless and desperate. I can go back to my early childhood, the late ’30s, early ’40s. It looked as though the rise of the Nazi plague was inexorable, victory after victory. It looked like you couldn’t stop it. It was the most horrible development in human history. Well, turns out — I didn’t know that at the time — that U.S. planners were expecting that the post-war world would be divided between a U.S.-controlled world and a German-controlled world, including all of Eurasia — a horrifying idea. Well, it was overcome. There have been other serious — the civil rights movement, Young Freedom Riders going out into Alabama to try to encourage black farmers to go to vote, despite the threat, serious threat, of being murdered, and being murdered themselves. These were some — this is examples of what humans can do and have done. And we see many signs of it today, and that’s the basis for hope.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, speaking to us from Tucson, where he is now sheltering at home, laureate professor at University of Arizona, taught for more than half a century.
Report: COVID-19 Cases in U.S. Amazon Warehouses Will Likely Skyrocket
APR 17, 2020
A report by two grassroots workers’ rights organizations suggests coronavirus cases in U.S. Amazon warehouses will likely “exponentially increase” in the coming days as the corporation refuses to shut down some of its facilities — even when workers test positive for COVID-19. More than half of Amazon’s 110 warehouse facilities in the country have reported cases of coronavirus. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has told shareholders he now wants to test all employees for COVID-19. Despite the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic, Amazon’s stock continues to climb, lifting Bezos’s personal fortune to nearly $140 billion. In related news, Amazon has shut down all of its warehouses in France after a court ruled Tuesday the company needs to reassess the safety of its workers during the pandemic.
UnitedHealth Group Profits Surge as Coronavirus Spreads
APR 17, 2020
The for-profit health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group reported profits grew by over $160 million during the first quarter of 2020, as demand for nonessential medical treatment plummeted while coronavirus hospitalizations surged. UnitedHealth reported a 3.4% year-over-year increase in quarterly earnings to $5 billion. Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter tweeted in response, “The earnings were so good, the company said it still expects to make as much in total profits this year as they predicted in December … when no one could predict the massive loss of life & jobs caused by the coronavirus. In other words, they’re thriving during a pandemic.”
COVID-19 & Indian Country: Pandemic Exposes Navajo Nation’s Water Access Crisis & Health Disparities
APRIL 15, 2020
GUESTS
Dean Seneca
epidemiologist who spent nearly 20 years as a senior health scientist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is now executive director of Seneca Scientific Solutions Plus. He is a citizen of the Seneca Nation.
Emma Robbins
director of the Navajo Water Project, and a Navajo artist and activist.
LINKS
Emma Robbins on Twitter
Navajo Water Project
Seneca Scientific Solutions
As the COVID-19 death toll continues to rise in the U.S., fear is mounting that the spread of the virus could devastate tribal communities. We look at how the coronavirus is impacting Indian Country with Dean Seneca, a citizen of the Seneca Nation and epidemiologist who spent nearly 20 years as a senior health scientist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Navajo activist and artist Emma Robbins, director of the Navajo Water Project, a community-managed utility alternative that brings hot and cold running water to homes without access to water or sewer lines. “One of the hardest things right now is being able to wash your hands in the Navajo Nation,” says Robbins. The Navajo Nation is the largest tribal nation in the United States and the hardest hit by the outbreak, with nearly 30 deaths and more than 830 confirmed cases.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report, as we broadcast from the epicenter of the pandemic, New York City.
We turn now to look at how the coronavirus is impacting Indian Country. As the COVID-19 death toll continues to rise in the U.S., fear is mounting the spread of the virus could devastate tribal communities. Already at least 44 people in the Indian health system have died. There are more than 1,100 confirmed cases, according to Indian Country Today.
Navajo Nation, which stretches some 27,000 square miles across portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has been the hardest hit by the virus so far, with more than 830 reported cases and 28 deaths as of Tuesday. In Arizona, 16% of COVID-19 deaths have been Native Americans, who make up only 6% of the state’s population. Meanwhile, two pueblos in New Mexico, Zia Pueblo and San Felipe, have some of the highest rates of infection in the United States. In Oklahoma, the first COVID-19-related death in the state was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
And experts warn these numbers will only grow due to a disproportionate number of preexisting health conditions in tribal communities and resource-starved tribal healthcare systems ill-prepared for the pandemic. The coronavirus federal stimulus package provides $8 billion in relief for the 574 federally recognized tribes, but many say far more is needed to adequately protect indigenous people from the virus’s spread.
For more, we’re joined by a public health leader for American Indian and Alaska Native populations, epidemiologist Dean Seneca. He spent nearly 20 years as a senior health scientist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He’s now executive director of Seneca Scientific Solutions Plus. He’s a citizen of the Seneca Nation.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dean Seneca. Can you give us a lay of the land right now? How hard has the pandemic hit Indian Country here in the U.S.?
DEAN SENECA: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.
The pandemic, it’s hit pretty hard in certain areas throughout Indian Country. Like you said, the Navajo Nation is definitely hit the hardest. And some areas where we have high populations or cities where people can come together, we have a sparsity of cases, you know, for example, in Portland, Oklahoma and some other areas. But overall, given the situation that Native people are in regarding health disparities and preexisting conditions, except for Navajo Nation, I think we’re not doing that bad, as far as the pandemic hitting Indian Country. You know, with just 12,000 tests only and over 1,100 confirmed, like you pointed out, many at Navajo Nation, the rest of the country is faring pretty well, in my opinion, given what the outbreak has done throughout the rest of the country.
Now, having said that, my fear is that the virus hasn’t really hit rural America yet. And as you know, many of our tribal nations throughout the country are in rural America. So, that will be the big test. I feel that it will be a matter of time before we really see if the spread has hit into the deep pockets of Indian Country.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Navajo Nation for a minute, the largest tribal nation in the United States and the hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with nearly 30 deaths and more than 830 confirmed cases as of Tuesday. Government and health officials, as well as community members, are scrambling to protect the roughly 175,000 people living on and around the reservation, as many residents still lack access to clean water and face the scarcity of other resources that are crucial to curb the spread of the daily virus. I wanted to go to Navajo Council Delegate Amber Crotty.
DELEGATE AMBER CROTTY: When you come back home to your remote area, you’re surrounded by family and friends. And so, that’s where the contact also happens, when you’re in a household with multigenerational families, grandmas in the household, with grandpa. Then it’s you, and then it’s your children, and possibly if you have older children. And so it’s multiple generations that are being hit, and that’s what we’re seeing. And the remoteness now, we can — as long as we’re moving, the virus is moving with us. It’s just shedding light on the disparities that have already existed and also the lack of federal funding to meet the demand of the health needs.
AMY GOODMAN: Navajo Nation is currently on lockdown. Meanwhile, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer have quarantined themselves after learning they came in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Neither of them is currently presenting symptoms.
I’d like to bring Navajo activist and artist Emma Robbins into the conversation with Dean Seneca. She’s the director of the Navajo Water Project, a community-managed utility alternative that brings hot and cold running water to homes without access to water or sewer lines.
Emma, welcome to Democracy Now! I wanted to ask you — I mean, if people were to say what’s the number one rule all over the country right now, it’s wash your hands, and wash them well and often. Talk about Navajo Nation, how hard hit is right now, and your access to water.
EMMA ROBBINS: Yeah. Good morning. Thank you, Amy, for having me.
As you mentioned, one of the hardest things right now is being able to wash your hands on the Navajo Nation. If you don’t have hot and cold running water and access to soap, that’s extremely difficult. And as we’ve all heard throughout the past weeks, that’s one of the ways to flatten the curve the most.
In addition to that, not having drinking water on the reservation is very difficult, because when you need access to running water, you need to actually get bottled water and travel to these different grocery stores. And a lot of times when residents arrive, there just isn’t any left.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about how hard hit Navajo Nation is right now.
EMMA ROBBINS: Yeah, as mentioned, you know, we’re one of the hardest-hit areas. Not only does our reservation have an extremely high infection rate, but those surrounding ours, as well, of the Pueblo Nations, do, too. So it’s very concentrated in one area. As you mentioned, there are over 800 cases of COVID on the Navajo Nation currently. And unfortunately, we’ve lost 28 community members.
AMY GOODMAN: Dean Seneca, if you can talk about the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic in Indian Country, and overall? I mean, you, for years, worked for the — you’re an epidemiologist, you’re a citizen of the Seneca Nation, and you worked for the Centers for Disease Control, an agency that now everyone in this country has come to be familiar with.
DEAN SENECA: Well, as you can tell, you know, right from the very beginning, I mean, he didn’t make this pandemic a priority. He did a lot of mixed messaging in the very, very beginning when he started to talk about this. And you see that he’s trying to now — in his recent reports, trying to justify that, “No, we were on top of this right from the beginning.” And that’s far from the case. You know, his mixed messaging is what was really critical. At times, he would say, “Well, hey, this virus is just going to go away. And we’ll wake up one day, and it won’t be here.” You know, people listen to this information, and that is the wrong thing to send. He made a major mistake in eliminating his council on international health and global pandemics. That was huge right from the beginning. He should never have done that.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain. That was in that National Security Council. So, when he’s talking in — what? — December about more money for bombs and building a wall, if that pandemic group were represented, they would have said, “Sir, what about China?” although it’s clear, very early on, the intelligence agencies, his closest Cabinet members, I mean, heads of agencies —
DEAN SENECA: Correct. Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: — were actually warning him about this.
DEAN SENECA: Yes. And he kind of put it aside, thinking that the pandemic would never leave China and reach the United States. And actually, one of the things that I predicted early, when I saw 20,000 cases in China, I said the virus is already here. And I said that, you know, way before many of the experts.
But here’s the big thing. When I did the Ebola outbreak, you know, I can say with certainty that the White House, CDC, FDA and USDA were literally connected at the hip. OK? I think that that’s one of the big things that made us successful, is that our communications were very, very tight, and we were working together and communicating several times a day.
During this response, we know that the White House is really, really struggling on who is in charge and who’s overseeing this. At one time it was CDC that was in charge. Then they recently moved it to the FDA. So they were scrambling for leadership there. And, you know, that speaks to poor leadership right from the top. I hate to say that, being a veteran myself, a military person in the Army, Army Reserves. I don’t ever want to see the United States fail. But I really do feel that the administration really did not get on board in a timely manner when they needed to. That’s evident. The leading expert from NIH has also pinpointed to that a little bit, and then he had to go back on TV recently to justify his hypothetical comments.
So, you know, strong leadership right at the beginning of a pandemic like this is critical, is essential, because we’re fighting a war. This is a war where you can’t see the enemy. You don’t know where the enemy is. The enemy can be around you at any time. And you have to do your best to protect yourself. This is a different kind of war. And in any kind of war, in any kind of situation like this, you need strong leadership. And that’s evident it did not happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Your perspective is an unusual one, Dean Seneca. You’re there in Seneca Nation, upstate New York. You’re a Native epidemiologist, worked for the CDC for years. You took on Zika and H1N1. Explain the differences.
DEAN SENECA: Well, you know, the big difference is, you know, those viruses really — I mean, they did hit the United States, but they never hit the United States hard. And we were able to do very effective contact tracing. And that’s one thing I’ve been preaching throughout this whole pandemic, is that contact tracing is the tool in which we can really stop and mitigate an outbreak.
But, you know, H1N1, we had a few cases here, something that we never saw before as a country. We ramped up our emergency operations components. You know, we did see a couple deaths, and we did see a minor spread. And then, after a while, it was another strain of the flu, very, very different. It did give us an opportunity to kind of exercise our emergency preparedness capabilities.
Zika, a little bit different. It did impact a little bit the southern part of the country, but not a major life-threatening situation with Zika — not in all cases, but, you know, pretty much the southern border, a different kind of a situation where it was a vector-borne virus that was transmitted, and it caused several different chronic conditions. This, the corona —
AMY GOODMAN: And Ebola.
DEAN SENECA: Oh, yeah, and Ebola. And I must say that Ebola was probably the hardest thing that I ever did in my life, when you go overseas and you have to prepare for something like Ebola, which is, you know, a very violent kind of hemorrhagic fever where the body, when infected, literally bleeds internally. You know, that was the hardest thing I ever did, very dangerous situation. I went over there, and I was part of a team of scientists, I’m proud to say, that actually were a part of putting the curve into the ground. And what we did there is we went from passive epi-surveillance to active epi-surveillance, to prospective, you know, being active and getting out into the community and seeking cases ahead of time, instead of people being sick and getting this information reported to us.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Dean Seneca, when you hear that President Trump is ending funding for the World Health Organization, what is your response?
DEAN SENECA: This is a very ill-responsible move on behalf of a leader that is leading the world in good public health and leading the world in almost every facet — economics, military, education, health. You know, it’s just — really speechless at how ill-responsible that move is. If anything, we should be trying to work with the WHO, which is such a very nonpolitical, very, very passive, has a lot of empathy organization. You know, it’s a caring organization. They try to do their best with the limited resources they have. And they’re all around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, Dean Seneca, for understanding how Indian Country works, when a governor like Governor Cuomo declares, you know, shelter at home, does that apply to the reservations in New York, or do you issue a separate order?
DEAN SENECA: Well, what I’ve been promoting is that — you know, we coordinate with our state and local and county health departments, but tribal nations have the ultimate public health authority. And, you know, they need to exercise that public health authority when necessary. Given this situation, yes, we want our tribal nations to work with other state entities and those kinds of things in order to isolate and practice social distancing. And I know, for example, that Seneca Nation, recently, President Armstrong issued a stay-at-home order, which is a very, very good thing, to kind of reduce the spread of this virus.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Emma for a moment. One of the things we’ve been focusing on on Democracy Now! are the mutual aid efforts that are going on all over. This is Kim Smith, a Navajo woman who’s running a relief operation from a farm in Hogback, New Mexico.
KIM SMITH: We’re stepping up for the community members at a time that is so crucial. And that’s what we’re here for, ultimately, as young people, to be able to sacrifice ourselves, sacrifice our well-being, so that more of our people don’t get sick. And the reality is, is that our ancestors sacrificed so much more for us to continue to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to go back now to Emma Robbins to talk about what is happening in Navajo Country — you run the Navajo Water Project, as we said before — the mutual aid that’s going on, and also why the Navajo community is so hard hit, a hot spot in — not only in places like New Mexico and Arizona, but in Indian Country overall.
EMMA ROBBINS: Yeah. You know, that’s such a great question, because the Navajo Nation experiences some of the highest rates of water poverty in the United States. Navajos are 67 times more likely to not have indoor plumbing and potable water and sanitation in their homes. And again, getting back to the idea of not being able to wash your hands, you’re not able to flatten the curve then. And we’ve seen a rise of COVID cases when that happens. As I mentioned, when people go out to haul water, whether that’s from stores or watering points, they’re also exposing themselves to others. I think it’s also been really tough because we don’t have a ton of health facilities across the reservation. And those that do have access to it often live very far away and aren’t able to get there in time.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the role of Navajo women in leading mutual aid?
EMMA ROBBINS: Yeah. I’m glad that you asked that question. I think I’ve seen many Navajo women step up and fight for our communities, which is our traditional role. That’s not to say that we’re in the '60s and it's the idea of stay in the kitchen. It’s that we are the caretakers of our communities. And this is nothing new for us. It’s time to step up and work together and just make it happen, where people are able to get the help that they need and to really just come back and serve our communities. I think of this as by Navajos, for Navajos, of projects that are happening on the reservation successfully.
AMY GOODMAN: And now the chairman of the Navajo Nation, Jonathan Nez, and the vice president — he’s the president — currently in quarantine?
EMMA ROBBINS: Yes, that’s correct. They do believe that they could have come in contact with COVID themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: And the hospitals and clinics on the reservation, are they adequate? And what do you think needs to happen at the national level in the United States? We’re talking stimulus package. The kind of aid that Indian Country is getting from that $2 [trillion] — it’s obviously much more — $4 [trillion], $6 trillion stimulus package?
EMMA ROBBINS: Yeah. So, it’s important to understand that on the Navajo Nation we have two types of hospitals. One is IHS, or Indian Health Service, which is across Indian Country. And then we have what are called 638 hospitals, which are hospitals that were originally part of the federal government but have been taken over by the tribal government. And on the reservation, there are 16 health centers. Nine of those are clinics. Seven are hospitals. There are about 400 hospital beds across the nation and 46 ICU beds. You know, talking about these numbers, that is not proportionate at all, and it’s scary to think about these numbers rising. And so, yes, we are a sovereign nation. Yes, we are able to help ourselves. But it’s also important that we do have our treaties honored and have that funding from the federal government, because this is when we need help. Right now we can’t wait.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Emma Robbins, I want to thank you so much for being with us, head of the Navajo Water Project. And I want to thank Dean Seneca, epidemiologist and citizen of the Seneca Nation, where he was speaking to us from, in upstate New York. For years, he worked at the CDC, took on H1N1, took on Zika, took on Ebola, now dealing with this century’s most significant, hardest-hitting pandemic of all, the coronavirus.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, why was an African-American doctor, wearing a mask, getting together his equipment to test homeless people in Miami, Florida, handcuffed? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Tears for Fears frontman Curt Smith and his daughter Diva giving a quarantine performance of the band’s song “Mad World.”
SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=NAVAJO
Trump Cuts Funds for World Health Org as Oxfam Warns Pandemic Could Push Half a Billion into Poverty
New analysis shows the economic crisis caused by coronavirus could push over
half a billion people into poverty unless urgent and dramatic action is taken. This
virus affects us all, even princes and film stars. But the equality ends there. By
exploiting the extreme inequalities between rich and poor people, rich and poor
nations and between women and men, unchecked this crisis will cause immense
suffering. Report: "Dignity Not Destitution"
APRIL 15, 2020
GUESTS
Paul O'Brien
vice president of Oxfam America who is coordinating the organization’s coronavirus advocacy response.
LINKS
Paul O'Brien on Twitter
Report: "Dignity Not Destitution"
As the confirmed cases of coronavirus surpass 2 million around the world, President Donald Trump says he will cut U.S. support for the World Health Organization. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet medical journal, called it a “crime against humanity.” Oxfam America said the cuts slash “any hopes for the responsible international cooperation and solidarity that is critical to save lives and restore the global economy.” This comes as a new Oxfam report estimates the pandemic’s economic fallout could push more than half a billion more people into poverty. We get response from Paul O’Brien, vice president of Oxfam America.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As the death rate from the coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate, with more than 2 million confirmed infections worldwide and at least 127,000 deaths, President Trump said Tuesday he would cut off U.S. support for the World Health Organization. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump sought to shift blame for his administration’s disastrous handling of the pandemic onto the U.N. public health agency, accusing the WHO of helping China to cover up the spread of the coronavirus when it emerged late last year.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The world depends on the WHO to work with countries to ensure that accurate information about international health threats is shared in a timely manner and, if it’s not, to independently tell the world the truth about what is happening. The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s decision sparked international outrage and condemnation. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet medical journal, tweeted, “President Trump’s decision to defund WHO is simply this — a crime against humanity. Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”
The American Medical Association’s president, Patrice Harris, called on Trump to reconsider the cut, saying, quote, “Fighting a global pandemic requires international cooperation and reliance on science and data,” she said. The global anti-poverty organization Oxfam America said the cuts slash, quote, “any hopes for the responsible international cooperation and solidarity that is critical to save lives and restore the global economy.”
This comes as a new Oxfam report estimates the pandemic’s economic fallout could push more than half a billion more people into poverty. For nearly 3 billion people already living in poverty and facing malnutrition, the virus could be deadly. In all, it estimates half of the world’s 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty in the virus’s aftermath. The report is called “Dignity Not Destitution: An 'Economic Rescue Plan For All' to tackle the Coronavirus crisis and rebuild a more equal world.”
For more, we’re joined by Oxfam America’s vice president, Paul O’Brien.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with President Trump. In the midst of this pandemic, where the U.S. is the epicenter of the world’s pandemic — more deaths than any other country in the world — President Trump announces he’s ending support for the World Health Organization. Paul O’Brien, your response?
PAUL O’BRIEN: Thanks for having me on.
It was pretty shocking to hear that last night. We had predicted last week that the number of deaths from coronavirus could be as high as 40 million over the coming period. So, we’re already in crisis, but it could get significantly worse.
President Trump has his treasury secretary talking to other G20 finance ministers today, and what that leader needs to be able to show is America’s role in leading multilateral cooperation. And at the same time, he’s announcing that he’s going to cut the legs off the World Health Organization, thereby undermining his own attempt to show global leadership. It was profoundly self-destructive for U.S. leadership. It’s profoundly harmful for our world.
And it seems to be nothing other than short-term blame shifting and scapegoating in order to distract people from the failures of this administration to properly lead on the issue. But its consequences could be devastating for people.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul O’Brien, there are many critics of the World Health Organization. But across the board now, with President Trump announcing that he is cutting the funding for this organization — the U.S., the largest funder of the World Health Organization — explain what this organization does and why it is so critical. And with President Trump so deeply concerned about what’s happening in the United States, one would think, why what happens in the rest of the world makes an enormous difference to what will happen in this country?
PAUL O’BRIEN: Well, as you say, New York is the epicenter of the crisis. The U.S. is now facing more deaths per day than has been seen. We are facing our own health crisis here. We’re also facing our own economic crisis here just at the same time. You’ve got 17 million new unemployed in the United States. And even before the crisis started, you had 40% of Americans didn’t have $400 to their name for an emergency. And then the crisis hits. So you’ve got a health crisis and an economic crisis here. You’ve got that, in many ways, even worse in many of the communities that Oxfam works in. We work in 90 countries around the world, including the United States. But you’ve got this health and economic crisis coming at the same time.
You’ve got a World Health Organization, whose job it is to convene leaders to make sure that the response is coordinated and evidence-based, is based on science, and that there is a truly global response to a global pandemic. So, apart from the financing of the organization, the leadership and the moral authority of the organization to be able to drive global consensus to respond to this health and economic crisis is absolutely critical. And for President Trump, the world’s most powerful politician, to stand on a stage yesterday, for whatever reason he had, and to attack them, in order to blame shift, undermines their ability to get that global consensus at a critical time. So, this act, in itself, could have profound repercussions for many of the people that we see as particularly vulnerable in the United States and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: He made the announcement in the Rose Garden yesterday, the single one-day — the highest one-day death toll for any nation in the world: 2,228 people died of COVID-19. That’s the United States. Talk about the rest of the world, where perhaps the — where COVID-19 hasn’t hit as hard yet, mainly, for example, in Africa, and what the World Health Organization means particularly for these areas of the world, the most vulnerable.
PAUL O’BRIEN: Right. Well, the whole world is vulnerable. We think, particularly when you look at the combination of bad health systems or weak health systems and economic vulnerability, three areas are at greatest risk: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. You’ve got, in our — our report found that we think 500 million more people could go into poverty as a consequence of this, essentially wiping out all the progress that’s been made over the last 30 years, in some contexts, and, on an average, the last 10 years of progress.
Women are going to be, as is so often the case, facing the brunt of much of the consequences of this. In Bangladesh, for example, a million garment workers were laid off from their jobs. Eighty percent of them are women. In Kenya, flower factories just shut down, 30,000 people sent home. Most of them are women.
We don’t have enough protections in the United States, because we haven’t addressed the problems of chronic extreme inequality. But when you look at what’s going on outside of the United States, where 80% of the people on the — of the workers on the planet Earth have no health insurance, 2 billion people are in the informal economy.
So, if you’re in a context — let me just raise five contexts for you. These are the five largest slums in the world. There are slums in Karachi and Mumbai in Asia, in Cape Town and in Nairobi, in Kenya, and in Mexico City. Those five — they’re the largest single slums in larger cities — have 5.7 million people. When coronavirus hits those environments, first, there’s no healthcare system in those contexts that stock ventilators waiting for them. In some countries where we work, there are literally two or three ventilators in the whole country. But economically, people are living in close quarters. There’s no physical distancing possible. They get no sick pay. Their economies are being shut down. They’re being told, “Stay in place.” They’re not able to trade. They’re not able to access goods. In many contexts, their borders are now not allowing food, if they’re net importing countries.
So we have an economic crisis that is potentially coming, along with a health crisis, that is going to be profoundly harmful for many people, and potentially destabilizing in ways that we will all face the consequences of.
AMY GOODMAN: Your report is called “Dignity Not Destitution: An 'Economic Rescue Plan For All.'” You say Oxfam is calling for wealthy countries to agree to a global economic rescue package that includes canceling $1 trillion in debt payments for poorer countries. They say debt cancellation could free up to $400 billion, to free up money to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
PAUL O’BRIEN: Yeah. There are ways forward. And this is an incredibly important week, and today is an important day. You’ve got ministers of finance — the G20 is meeting, and ministers of finance from the 189 countries are meeting, to ask and answer the question: What can they do collectively to address the economic fallout of this crisis? You reported what’s going to happen to the global economy. We think there are three ways forward, and we’re calling on these governments to work together to show the kind of multilateral leadership that President Trump failed to show last night.
The first, as you mentioned, is debt. We’ve seen some early movement this week. Yesterday we got some — the beginnings of good news, in that the G7 supported some debt suspension, and the IMF agreed to a debt moratorium for and put in place some debt relief packages for 25 countries. That’s a start. It’s nowhere near enough. What we don’t want to see happen this year is that debt payments are essentially suspended in a moratorium and where the interest will accrue and countries are going to be forced to pay that over the following years, even if they suspend it for 2020. Think of it this way: In 45 countries, their health systems are a quarter the size of the debt payments that they have to make. So they have to make 400% the size of their health budgets just in paying their debt allocations. So —
AMY GOODMAN: Paul, very quickly, I wanted to ask you about Yemen and Gaza.
PAUL O’BRIEN: From which perspectives? Because both of them are now facing both health and economic crisis. You’ve got, in those contexts — and we work in both of those contexts, with refugee populations and those who have been forcibly displaced, to try and reduce the level of conflict. But as you know, I was in Gaza not long ago. People are living in incredibly constrained quarters. It’s very dense. They have almost no economic activity at the best of times, because of restrictions that are put on the environment. And when you put COVID into that context, from an economic perspective, it creates potentially catastrophic levels of slowing down any form of economic activity. So, we are deeply worried about both Yemen and Gaza. As I said earlier, we think that the Middle East is probably one of the fulcrums of concern for harm from this crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul O’Brien, thank you so much for being with us. We’re going to link to your report. Paul O’Brien is vice president of Oxfam America. The new report, “Dignity Not Destitution: An 'Economic Rescue Plan For All' to tackle the Coronavirus crisis and rebuild a more equal world.
When we come back, we look at coronavirus in Indian Country. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Medicine” by Christopher Mike-Bidtah, a Diné musician also known as Def-I.
