As The Dispatcher was going to press in March, the COVID19 virus had become a global pandemic, claiming 27,000 lives worldwide and making the US the most-afflicted nation on earth with 185,000 confirmed cases and a domestic death toll of 3,800 and rising. Washington State and California are the West Coast hotspots, but the COVID19 virus has now spread to all 50 states. Eighty percent of Americans are living under “shelter-in-place” orders issued by state governors after the federal government failed to act.
President Trump ignored advice from public health experts to prepare ahead and act early. Instead, the President delayed and minimized the threat until the virus spread throughout the United States and shortages of ventilators and face masks led to chaos in hospitals – forcing doctors, nurses and other health workers to be needlessly infected.
As usual, workers were paying the highest price for incompetence at the top, with record-breaking numbers filing unemployment claims, and the prospect of widespread evictions, foreclosures and mounting personal debt.
Trump cuts protection
Today’s disaster has roots going back two years, to February 1, 2018 -the day that President Trump slashed vital programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those programs were created to stop epidemics in 39 high-risk countries, including China.
Key programs eliminated
The programs Trump cut were part of a global health security effort, designed to stop dangerous disease outbreaks in other countries before they reach the US. The program trained front-line workers how to detect dangerous outbreaks and improved local laboratory and emergency response teams where the risk of disease was highest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at their source to prevent small outbreaks from becoming global pandemics.
Painful history lesson
Public health officials have long advocated for strategies to prevent disease, beginning at the turn of the 20th century when most workers and their families lived near open sewers and drank water contaminated by human waste and industrial pollution. Scientists had to fight to be heard over objections from factory owners who resisted reform efforts. Opportunist politicians inflamed public fear with racist appeals against the so-called “moral-failings” of various racial and ethnic groups of workers who were blamed for spreading disease, including African-Americans, Chinese, Mexicans, Irish and Italians.
Labor & public health together
It seems obvious today that sanitary sewage systems and clean drinking water are cornerstones of public health and disease prevention, but it was far from obvious at the beginning of the 20th Century. It took a movement, led by a coalition of labor organizers, immigrant rights workers, doctors and scientists, and outraged women – who along with African Americans – had no rights to vote or hold public office.
These reformers led campaigns against a long list of diseases including typhoid, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, scarlet fever and malaria – many of which were eliminated through battles for better housing, clean water and sanitation, universal public education and voting rights.
Many progressive labor organizers saw public health advocates as natural allies because both were fighting to improve conditions for the entire working class, most of whom lived in wretched conditions and faced lethal diseases on a daily basis – when not working in factories filled with children who labored in dangerous conditions.
Conservative labor leaders at the time were of little help – often aligning themselves with racist politicians who delivered crumbs of patronage in exchange for votes and bribes.
Roosevelt’s public health plan
By the time Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 during the Great Depression, many cities had installed sanitary sewers and cleaner water systems. Public health departments with nurses were on city payrolls. New disease prevention measures included immunizations, quarantines, nutritional education for new mothers and other efforts to help children. All these and more programs exploded under Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs that built thousands of parks, playgrounds, water treatment and sewage plants, flood control, rural electrification, plus farm and nutrition programs that helped both rural and urban Americans.
Bi-partisan agreement
For 75 years after Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, presidents from both parties have supported public health programs, including ones designed to stop disease outbreaks in other countries from spreading around the globe and threatening America.
Pay a little now or lot later
The COVID19 pandemic is far from over, but some lessons are already clear:
• Preventing a pandemic is much easier than battling one that’s out of control.
• Strong and decisive governmental action is required to fight a pandemic.
• A poorly-managed pandemic causes enormous harm to workers and their families.
With thousands of ILWU members now out of work because of Trump’s bungled COVID19 response, attention will soon shift to the November election, where his handling of the pandemic response could be a key factor for many voters.