twabby
Registered User
- Mar 9, 2010
- 13,840
- 14,864
Why are you claiming only the wealthy and large businesses would want and benefit from a shortened quarantine period? It’s the small businesses and the working class that gets f***ed if and when the economy slows down. The wealthy get richer during downturns since they can buy stuff up at a discount and ride the wave back up. Small businesses cannot afford another prolonged lockdown and people who live paycheck to paycheck cannot afford to be out of work for 10 days.
The guidance was changed because we have to learn to live with Covid as part of our new normal and because vaccines by and large prevent people from getting so sick that they require hospitalization.
I didn't say small businesses wouldn't benefit from the relaxed guidance, I said that the CDC made the change in guidance based on the interests of big businesses and the wealthy. Do you think they care what Agnes's Antique Shoppe has to say, or what Walmart has to say?
It's no coincidence that a mere week after Delta (the airline, not the extremely dangerous variant of SARS-CoV-2) asked for a 5 day quarantine period instead of a 10 day period, the CDC updated their guidance to reflect Delta's wishes. Surely Delta was not alone in pressuring the administration to relax the quarantine period.
The updated CDC guidance also contained a curious lack of scientific evidence to support the change, instead justifying the update by saying that we have to get things back to normal. I don't think the Centers for Disease Control should be offering guidance that is purely political and/or economic in nature, especially without the science to back it up.
Small businesses cannot afford another prolonged lockdown because the government will not provide them with the money to shutdown. People who live paycheck to paycheck cannot afford to be out of work for 10 days because the government will not provide them with benefits that will enable them to lockdown. This isn't justification for not locking down. Perhaps instead of providing the Department of Defense (i.e. private military contractors) with close to $10 trillion over the next 10 years, we could instead give everyone $2,000 a month to survive until the pandemic is over. Perhaps instead of having one of the lowest effective tax rates on the wealthy and corporations in the world we could instead ask them to pay their fair share to allow society to survive, as it is this society that has allowed them to amass such riches in the first place.
Put yourself in the shoes of a McDonalds worker who has a 3 year old in daycare. After spending hours face-to-face in front of belligerent customers demanding their Filets-o-Fish quickly, you go to pick up your child from daycare. She's unvaccinated, of course, because vaccines are unavailable for those under 5. She's also spent hours around other coughing, drooling, snotting, unvaccinated children. Children who may have unvaccinated parents. Are we supposed to ask our 3 year old child to learn to live with COVID as part of her new normal because vaccines by and large prevent her from getting so sick that she would need to go to the hospital? If she survives her bout with COVID, are we supposed to ask her to live with the long-term consequences of COVID that are still very poorly understood just so that the S&P 500 can continue to go up? How many children, immunocompromised, and poor people do we need to sacrifice on the altar of The Economy?