Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“It’s been 10 days since Joel Valdez was shot outside of a Houston grocery store, and he still hasn’t been able to undergo surgery, due to his hospital being overcrowded with COVID-19 patients.”
“That’s the problem with almost all government bail-out schemes. You gotta be in the room where it happens—metaphorically, at least. Successful businesses will always have an advantage over those who lack the lobbyists, name recognition, or culture cachet required to cash in.
On the other hand, the federal government’s firehose of COVID relief spending—$5.9 trillion and counting—means it is easier than ever to get bailed out. So far, the government has responded to the pandemic by sending money to people who earn six-figure paychecks, paying fully vaccinated people not to work even though there are millions of available jobs, bailing out state governments that are running huge surpluses, and using the pandemic as cover for a massive bailout of union-run pension funds, among other things.
Like with Hamilton, there doesn’t seem to be any consideration of when or how much government aid is necessary. We’ve pumped so much money into the system—nearly all of it borrowed and added to the country’s long-term debt problems—and it has to go somewhere.
Did a bunch of fake celebrities whose only claim to fame is being former contestants on The Bachelor need the federal government to dump as much as $20,000 apiece into their bank accounts? Nope, but they got the cash anyway, according to data gathered by ProPublica and reported in a variety of media outlets.”
“States and localities continue to struggle with getting billions in federal rent relief funds out the door, frustrating both tenants and property owners while fueling demands for continued eviction moratoriums.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department released new data showing that as of May 31, recipient jurisdictions have spent only about $1.3 billion, or 6 percent, of the $25 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) funds approved by Congress in December 2020 to help renters cover rent, rent debt, and utilities.
That federal money was given in the form of grants to states and territories and to local governments with populations over 200,000.
That number obscures a lot of variation between states. Virginia has spent about 30 percent of its ERA award, compared to California’s 2 percent. The pace of spending is also increasing. States and localities spent $774 million in May, compared to the $443 million spent in April, and the $272 million spent from January to March. About 345,000 families have received ERA-funded assistance.
That’s far short of the 1.3 million households who self-report that they’re “very likely” to be evicted in the next two months in Census surveys, reports Politico.”
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“The dispersal of funds has faced a number of problems. For starters, most state and local governments have had to set up their own rent relief programs from scratch.”
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“Some 60 percent of respondents in a recent survey of ERA administrators said that a lack of staff was preventing them from dispersing rental aid. Another 49 percent said that their technical ability to scale up programs was responsible for the trickle of relief provided thus far.
Nevertheless, housing advocates say that even with these front-end logistical difficulties, ERA grantees should still be managing to spend emergency rental assistance like there’s actually an emergency on.”
“The federal government created the stockpile, originally the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, in 1999 to counter potential biological, disease and chemical threats to civilian populations. It was eventually renamed the Strategic National Stockpile in 2003, and the Department of Defense was given a role in its management alongside HHS. The stockpile was designed as a stopgap that would allow the federal government to surge supplies to specific areas experiencing disasters or threats, supplementing local procurement efforts. It was not meant to be the sole source for private and public institutions to obtain medical supplies in emergency settings.
Hospitals, public health departments and other health care facilities are supposed to maintain their own stocks of masks, gowns, drugs and ventilators. But during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they ran out of those basic supplies. The overwhelming number of Covid-19 patients forced both private and public institutions to search for personal protective equipment and therapeutics on the open market.”
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“A year and a half into the pandemic, the U.S. still does not have a good way to quickly scale production of drugs and medical supplies needed to help supplement the strategic national stockpile, in part because manufacturers operate on just-in-time principals. Those standards are supposed to minimize inventory and maximize efficiency, but struggle to account for swings in demand.
“Everybody — shippers, hospitals, pharmacy chains — no one wants to hold inventory. Who is going to pay for those expensive medicines sitting there month after month?” O’Toole said. “This is why hospital stockpiles have dwindled.”
The federal government is beginning to work with the private sector to ensure manufacturers have the ability to scale production quickly during large-scale disease outbreaks.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is working with its parent, HHS, to find companies willing to alter their standard manufacturing practices to scale up production of therapeutics and other medical supplies to better prepare for the next pandemic. But expanding manufacturing capacity in the U.S. is not easy, one former Trump administration official who worked with BARDA told POLITICO. It will take years to build facilities, manufacturing lines and hire staff to oversee production, the former official said.”
“The vast majority of Americans want to age in their home and community, spending their twilight years in a familiar and comfortable setting. But the choice is not always their own.
The US long-term care system — such as it is — is broken. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are on waiting lists for home-based care. More than 40 million people report that they have cared for a loved one over 50 without any pay in the last year. The United States ranks near the bottom of developed economies in the number of older adults who receive long-term care at home. Meanwhile, America’s nursing homes are staffed by overwhelmed and underpaid workers, and for-profit takeovers of those facilities have led to worse care for patients.
Covid-19 has made this long-term care crisis impossible to ignore. More than 130,000 nursing home residents have died in the pandemic, accounting for nearly one in four US deaths. Residents of large institutions died at higher rates than those who live in the community.
In America, aging people who need care — in a nursing facility or at home — either must be wealthy enough to pay for it themselves or must deplete their income and assets enough that they qualify for Medicaid. Almost by accident, the health insurance program for low-income Americans has become the main payer for nursing home and home-based care. Experts describe long-term care in the US with a sense of disbelief.
“If you were starting from scratch, you would never design a system this way,” David Grabowski, a Harvard professor who studies the economics of long-term care, told me.
Tricia Neuman, who studies long-term care at the Kaiser Family Foundation, put it even more baldly: “We do not have a system of long-term care in our country.”
America has been struggling for decades to figure out a balance between having people age in long-term care facilities and age at home. President Joe Biden has proposed a massive infusion of federal spending on home-based care. Experts say it should start to address these structural problems — but it’s only a start.”
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“More than three in four people over the age of 50 said in a 2018 AARP survey they want to stay in their community as long they can. But fewer than half thought that would be possible — and many of them may end up being right, as the long waiting lists for home- and community-based services attest. As of February 2020, more than 820,000 Americans were stuck on their state Medicaid program’s waiting list for home- and community-based services, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and their average wait time is longer than three years.
Even for those lucky enough to be able to afford in-home care, the US long-term care system hasn’t done them any favors. Virginia Veliz, a 70-year-old in Santa Clarita, California, has been coordinating care for her 90-year-old mother, who has Lewy body dementia and Parkison’s disease, for the past five years.
“You really have to treat it like a job,” she said.”
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“There are some people for whom institutional care makes sense — those with severe cognitive decline, for example. Others might simply prefer to live in a nursing home with other people instead of living alone at home.
But the idea is that it should be the patient’s choice. The US still has not found a way to put that decision entirely in the patient’s hands.”
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“Prioritizing home-based care appears to be the preferred solution for both patients and policymakers. But it will cost money. The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden are considered global leaders in providing community-based services, but they also spend a substantially higher share of their GDPs on long-term care (around 3 percent) than the US (0.5 percent).”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/05/biden-supreme-court-eviction-moratorium-502517
“Do you know who is back in the office, unlike State Dept. employees who’ve had access to COVID vaccines longer than most of the rest of us? Scores of millions of Americans, including many who would like to visit their relatives for the first time in a year and a half. Compounding that failure to put asses back in office chairs is the fact that, as Arndt says, “passport specialists need to be physically present in the office to process the passports. They are not processing remotely or from home.””
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fighting-back-the-virus-with-andy-slavitt/id1382983397?i=1000525552882
“Cuba’s economic problems largely predate the pandemic, but the coronavirus sharpened them. It decimated Cuba’s tourism industry, a huge slice of the island’s economy. Trump-era sanctions — which the Biden administration has not rolled back — have added to the pressure. And the pandemic itself is taking a toll: Cuba is currently experiencing a record surge in cases and deaths.”
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“Biden said the US supports Cuba’s “clarion call for freedom and relief.” Both Democrats and Republicans have backed the protests, but US lawmakers are split over how to approach the demonstrations and acute humanitarian crisis on the island.
Biden promised during his 2020 campaign to roll back Trump’s sanctions on Cuba, but he hasn’t acted. Now, the issue is urgent — both for those who want to see the sanctions gone and for those who feel Biden must keep them in place to continue pressuring the regime.
Biden’s best-laid plans on foreign policy didn’t include Cuba as a priority. But now a crisis in Cuba is here. What the US should do is always a complicated decision, but it’s clear Biden can’t just ignore Cuba.”
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“After the protests, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed much of the unrest on the United States, claiming US-backed mercenaries caused the unrest. He called on supporters to also go to the streets and “defend the revolution.” About 100 people were arrested, according to human rights groups.”
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“The specter of United States interference remains powerful in Cuba, given, well, a very long history of US intervention there. Fast-forwarding to the Cuban Revolution in 1959, communist revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed dictator and began to pursue closer ties with the Soviet Union — an absolute no-no for the US during the Cold War.
The US tried to overthrow Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion in the 1960s, but after that failure, the US strengthened an economic embargo that largely blocked Americans from doing business or trade with Cuba. There have been tweaks on the margins since, but the embargo has long outlasted the Cold War.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama began a historic diplomatic opening with Cuba, and as a result of the process, rolled back some economic restrictions tied to the Cold War-era US embargo and opened up travel.
Trump, as president, vowed to reverse those policies; he did throughout his time in office, significantly stepping up the pressure starting in 2019. He imposed renewed travel restrictions and other sanctions, including designating Cuba as a “state sponsor of terror” in his final days in office. A key pillar of Trump’s sanctions severely limited remittances to the island, which cut off another economic spigot.
As experts said, Cuba’s problems are deeper than US sanctions alone, but the Trump-era policy, especially coming during the pandemic, is adding to the strain. And that is creating a dilemma for Washington.”
“Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued an impassioned plea for residents of her state to get vaccinated against Covid-19, arguing it was “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the disease’s continued spread.
“I want folks to get vaccinated. That’s the cure. That prevents everything,” Ivey, a Republican, told reporters in Birmingham, Ala., on Thursday.”
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“Alabama remains the state with perhaps the lowest vaccination rate in the country, according to the CDC: Only 39.6 percent of its residents 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, compared to the 48.8 percent of Americans nationally who have gotten their shots.”
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“The Delta variant now represents more than 83 percent of the virus circulating in the United States, according to the CDC, and unvaccinated people account for 97 percent of coronavirus-related hospitalizations and deaths nationally.”