I’m Really %^&$* Mad. Thanks For Reading.
By Connor Forrest Peebles
I was sitting in my chem class when the few of us that had not left early started to read the first of Armstrong’s letters to campus where he finally addressed the coronavirus. A lot of fellow students expressed exasperation at how slow our school was to act and really for me that feeling has just been ramping up ever since. I watched as our federal government was also slow to take action with the administration downplaying the seriousness of the virus and calling any criticism of their initial handling of it a ‘democrat hoax’.
Now it feels that everyday some new enraging information comes out. The President plays golf and holds rallies while the virus spreads. After the Vice President was put in charge of the coronavirus response he spends the next day at a republican fundraiser in Florida. Instead of buying testing kits overseas the president spends weeks ramping up production of American testing kits by companies high in his campaign donations, all the while saying that "everyone who needs a test gets a test" when in fact only those showing dangerous symptoms were being tested because of a shortage of testing kits. GOP senators sell millions of dollars in stocks after a confidential senate briefing about how the virus would tank the economy. The President tries to buy exclusive rights to a vaccine in production in Germany. We now lead the world in cases.
He has now been reluctant to dip into the federal stockpile of protective equipment and ventilators at the urging of his son in law. The President says he doesn’t believe that the worst hit states actually need as many ventilators as they are saying (he’s saving them for when the republican and swing states say they need more ventilators). Now the federal government is selling that federal stockpile to 3 week old private companies that will in turn have the states bid for them, driving up the prices. Basically the administration is slowing down the distribution of life saving equipment for profit. They are profiting off dying Americans!
Now I talk to my mom almost everyday about how her hospital where she works as a Respiratory Therapist is limiting all employees to one mask a day while admitted cases increase exponentially. Other hospital workers in her age range (60’s) were told that they will be given paid leave. However hours later it is said that this doesn’t apply to Respiratory Therapist. So my asthmatic mother who is in the high risk age zone is being forced to work in the COVID ward once a week while being purposely shorted on protective equipment, ultimately because of the incompetence and criminality of our current administration.
But what scares me more than anything is that there are people out there, maybe people reading this, that think Trump is doing a good job at handling this crisis and in fact are planning to vote for him again. If they bothered to know about his Nepotism in getting his family and conspirators rich by profiteering off the crisis they say that’s just what a good businessman would do. These people have either always thought this way and Trump’s xenophobia and racism made them rise up or they have been brainwashed by Trump’s favorite mass misinformation media machine, Fox news, to believe anything he says and cheer afterwards while denying anything else said by anyone else. If Trump wins in November I don’t think I can actually stand to stay in the states after I graduate. Speaking of which, a huge disinformation campaign is going on where thousands of fake news domains are being made and will probably all start to roll out in the summer https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/ (Links to an external site.) . So for this reason it seems like a perfect time for a class like this.
Basically, I’m fucking mad. Thanks for reading