Reading about the American government’s failure to handle the coronavirus just reminds us how underdeveloped this country is. It is infuriating to see American politicians condescend non-developed countries and voice racist sentiments towards them.
Recently, Mexico was considering restricting border movement due to worries of a coronavirus outbreak that can spread from the U.S. As a proud Mexican citizen, I suggest we restrict it because I don’t trust the American government to contain this pandemic.
It’s well known that the U.S. was built to serve and now serves white, able-bodied individuals. But the egregious mishandling of coronavirus shows not only how inadequate the structures in place are, it also shows how they actually helped catalyze the virus’ spread to the country’s most vulnerable populations.
There is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camp 20-minutes away from campus imprisoning adults, and a detention facility imprisoning children in Worcester. There are hundreds of children, elderly people and adults imprisoned within these walls without proper access to healthcare or adequate nutrition.
These concentration camps create prime conditions for disease to spread. Locking people into overcrowded, unsanitary facilities with inadequate resources is inhumane. I have no doubt that people will die.
ICE released a plan of action and wrote on their website that, as of March 13, there were no confirmed cases of coronavirus at a detention center. They claim to have “comprehensive protocols” in place to screen people detained for coronavirus and to isolate those affected. They also claim that detained individuals have the right to attend medical appointments and that ICE is closely following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance.
This is coming from the same institution that tracked detained girls’ periods to stop them from getting abortions. It’s the same institution that was sued by immigration advocates for failing “to take action against what [the law suit] characterizes as dangerously inadequate medical and mental healthcare, improper use of solitary confinement, and deficient accommodations for people with disabilities,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
A review published by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in January of 2019 found that ICE did not adequately hold detention facilities accountable for “failing to meet performance standards.” It counted 14,000 health and safety “deficiencies” between October of 2015 and June of 2018.
According to the Outbreak Observatory, a project created by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, there have been multiple outbreaks of infectious diseases in Customs and Border Protection and ICE facilities in 2018 and 2019.
In facilities housing children, there have been outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox. In others, there have been outbreaks of influenza and mumps. Last year, it was reported that six children died while being detained by the U.S. government or soon after release because of infections. These were a result of the facilities’ overcrowding and the childrens’ pre-existing health conditions.
Knowing all of this, how can you trust ICE to have any idea how to contain a pandemic? How can you expect an institution that rips families apart and locks children in cages to know how to properly give the people it imprisons access to adequate medical care? For ICE to perform such a feat, it would require they actually perceived the people they abuse as humans.
The U.S. government’s willful incompetence doesn’t end here.
ICE claims to be following all of the CDC’s regulations. But, who’s to say the CDC understands how to handle this pandemic? Its current director, Robert Redfield, had no prior experience running a government agency, much less an institution vital to public health when he was appointed two years ago.
At the initial stages of coronavirus’ spread, the CDC set strict criteria that only those that had traveled to Wuhan, China and had respiratory issues should be tested. It sent out faulty materials in its initial rollout of test kits last month and did not efficiently organize nor distribute testing duties among private and government laboratories, according to The Guardian.
Even now, many states still use narrow measures because they don’t have enough testing kits. The CDC’s budget has been falling for years, and recently, it decided to “stop publishing negative results for the coronavirus.” This means the public no longer has an accurate count of how many people are infected.
Last week, Redfield testified in Congress and expressed confusion as to why the private sector had not done more in the last few weeks to develop and distribute diagnostic tests to the public. In response to another question asking why the CDC wouldn’t replicate South Korea’s successful strategy of instituting mass drive through tests, Redfield stated that the CDC was “trying to maintain the relationship between individuals and their health care providers.”
Here lies the root cause of why the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic has been so woefully inept. In this country, healthcare is a business, and as Redfield’s answer vividly illustrates, the U.S. government doesn’t want to interfere.
The U.S. government passes off many of its duties, like healthcare, social services and education, to the private sector. And when it doesn’t step up — by charging exorbitant amounts that prevent a large portion of Americans from having regular access to healthcare — the whole system crumbles. Businesses aren’t designed to serve the lives of the entire American population.
Even changes in government action to address the pandemic’s consequences show you how utterly corrupt and malicious this system is.
Due to the pandemic, 90 U.S. cities suspended water shutoffs to people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills, according to The Guardian. But why were we depriving basic utilities to people who can’t afford it to begin with? Why does the government care more about protecting its business owners’ bottom line than its people’s welfare?
The last words of a New Republic article I read on the U.S. government’s lack of structure haunt me still:“It turns out that, outside of its bloated military and management of the world’s reserve currency, the United States was barely a country at all.”
While we’re stuck at home — if we are lucky enough to have a safe environment at home to wait this out — there’s a lot of time to contemplate what it means for a country to be a country.
What is a country meant to do if not protect and provide for people? Why do we live clustered together if the institutions we’ve collectively built were not made to serve everyone? Looking at the U.S. now, I think it resembles a virus more than it does a country — slowly killing its people while endlessly perpetuating itself.
I know this is a cynical take, but it needs to be said. Besides, there’s a bright side to it. Viruses can be treated. There is a way to force this country out of its underdevelopment and parasitic tendencies. We have to figure it out and take the treatment immediately.
