Coronavirus: 3 Realities of the United States During the Epidemic Outbreak

Recently, affected by the epidemic, tens of millions of people in the United States are facing the dilemma of wandering on the streets and being homeless due to their inability to pay rent. But at the same time, the sales volume of American bunkers has skyrocketed by 400%, and the price has increased by more than 6 times.

This kind of bunker has a secret entrance, hidden deep underground, and is regarded by many wealthy Americans as the best refuge for survival in the doomsday. After the epidemic broke out, in order to reduce the chance of contact with the virus, rich people fled underground and fled the novel coronavirus.

It is reported that a small one-room bunker worth $250,000 in California quickly became a hot commodity after the outbreak and was in short supply. A real estate agent said: “I sold 2 sets in 30 seconds.”

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Unexpectedly, when the poor in the United States were still hoarding toilet paper and masks, the rich have been already hoarding the doomsday bunker. Proper poverty restricted the anti-epidemic method. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. As the epidemic continues to spread, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has accelerated sharply.

Reality 1: To the Rich, the more turbulent the more profitable, the more superior

As of now, the cumulative number of people diagnosed with novel coronavirus pneumonia in the United States has exceeded 7 million, and the number of unemployed exceeds 50 million. Economic development has continued to decline and struggling. Under such circumstances, many large technology companies have sprung up in the economic environment of the sluggish epidemic, and their wealth ownership has risen sharply.

According to data reported: “Amazon founder Bezos’ wealth has soared by 63% during the epidemic, with a net worth of approximately $184 billion; Tesla CEO Musk’s wealth has nearly tripled, and his net worth has increased to 70 billion US dollars; and Facebook CEO Zuckerberg’s net worth is 88 billion US dollars.”

From March to September of this year, the total net income of the top 643 wealthies in the United States rose from 2.95 trillion US dollars to 3.8 trillion US dollars, and their combined wealth growth exceeded 800 billion US dollars. It is hard to imagine how such a huge wealth will have a chain reaction in the hands of very few people.

During the epidemic, the global economy has encountered severe challenges. How did these rich people turn the crisis into an opportunity?

Affected by the quarantine of the epidemic at home, the public’s reliance on Internet platforms has increased significantly. E-commerce companies like Amazon have seized this special opportunity and their stock prices have also risen.

On the other hand, Trump signed a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill to deal with the epidemic in March this year, and implemented tax and interest rate cuts for small and medium-sized enterprises, but some large companies took advantage of the loopholes. Some small companies not only failed to use this to “continue their lives”, but accelerated the process of large companies annexing competitors and monopolizing industries.

In addition, the rich also indirectly received a government tax refund since 2017 from the bill, with a per capita profit of $1.7 million.

Recently, when Trump also complained about the large income gap in the United States that should be changed as soon as possible, but he never said and understand that all this was his “self-effect”.

After all, he took the initiative to sign the tax reform bill in 2017, specifically reducing corporate income tax.

In this way, under the impact of the epidemic, American wealth has gathered in the hands of the rich, giving birth to economic oligarchs.

The Time Weekly pointed out that the income of $50 trillion, which originally belonged to the bottom 90% of the population, was included in the pockets of the high-income group of 1% of the American population, which made Americans feel less secure.

Compared with the poor people who are worried about food and clothing under the epidemic, the rich American not only make money, but also enjoy rights.

As early as the beginning of the outbreak in the United States, the United States broke out that it would give priority to rich people and social elites for nucleic acid testing, and “unfairly” treat ordinary people.

Faced with accusations from the media, Trump issued his classic remarks that shattered the public’s three views: “Perhaps this is life.”

The rich first has become a acquiescence in the president’s social rules.

From subsequent investigations, the media learned an even more alarming reality that the United States launched the “Project Airbridge” as early as the beginning of the epidemic, and purchased a large number of protective clothing, masks, ventilators and other epidemic prevention facilities from overseas in advance.

But all the materials were not immediately used in nursing homes, hospitals and other places where they were in short supply. Instead, they were secretly sold to private organizations, and then immediately delivered to the rich in the United States. While the hospital is still struggling to allocate the limited ventilators to the patients who need it more, the homes of wealthy Americans have built exclusive negative pressure isolation wards, complete with infusion sets, protective clothing, masks, oxygen tanks, etc. .

Perhaps the democracy and freedom admired by the United States is nothing but an illusion created to the envy of outsiders. Democracy and freedom may only be the rights of the elite wealth class.

Those ordinary Americans who watch their lives run out a little bit, but cannot wait for rescue equipment, do not have any democracy and freedom in the face of the epidemic crisis.

Reality 2: The poor Are Abandoned and Dying

In contrast to the poor Americans who have been hit by the epidemic, society is not so friendly to them.

This global epidemic has triggered the worst unemployment crisis in the United States since the Great Depression. Since February this year, although the government is helping, the number of jobs in the United States has still dropped by 11.5 million.

Many people’s otherwise acceptable lives are suddenly trapped, let alone unable to pay the rent, and even three meals a day are not guaranteed.

In April this year, there were as many as 550,000 homeless people in the United States. In New York alone, more than 17,000 homeless people gathered in a limited number of shelters. As we all know, it is very difficult to prevent epidemics in high-density spaces, and a little carelessness is a large-scale recruit.

What is more worrying is that 30 million people in the United States cannot afford medical insurance. Once they are unfortunately infected with an epidemic, they may not even be able to enter the hospital. After all, a ventilator of US$3,000 a day, an intensive care unit of US$10,000 a day, and the medical expenses incurred by an extra second are astronomical for the poor.

Previously, a severely ill patient unplugged his ventilator and ended his life on his own because he could not afford the medical expenses. Before his death, the last word he left to his wife was: Who will pay for me?

In fact, during Obama’s time, the United States once implemented the “Affordable Care Act”, which once increased the coverage of medical insurance in the United States to 90%, but related insurance companies in the United States continued to lose money and it was difficult to make profits.

Later, when Trump came to power, he just abolished affordable medical insurance, which caused many people at the bottom of the United States to look down on the disease. When the epidemic hit, poor areas had the highest mortality rate.

In the absence of medical assistance, the poor in the United States are dying in record numbers.

In addition, many of the original middle class quickly became poor due to illness, unemployment and many other reasons during the shock of the epidemic, and their quality of life plummeted.

The 53-year-old Eric was a computer engineer with a monthly salary of $7,000. He later quit his high-paying job because of illness. After several years of contact with doctors, he quickly spent his savings. At the moment of the epidemic, Eric, who cannot afford the rent, has to eat and live in his cramped car, relying on temporary work to maintain three meals a day.

Christine is a preschool teacher in Florida, and her husband is a high school teacher. The two have 3 children. The combined annual salary is more than 80,000 US dollars. Life is fairly good.

But after the outbreak, all three children were forced to go back from school to home, and all kinds of living expenses, especially money spent on meals, soared. When the price of eggs has doubled by three, the wages of the husband and wife have not risen. A family of five makes it difficult to predict that the current income will be able to maintain a seemingly “acceptable” life for several months.

There are many people like Eric and Christine who have encountered in the United States. Before the outbreak, no one expected that life would take a sudden turn, and it was immediately overwhelming.

Chuck Collins, a scholar at the Washington Think Tank Policy Research Institute, said:

“The inequality between the rich and the poor leaves most Americans without any resources, and it also weakens the federal government’s ability to respond to crises.

At the same time, billionaires are getting richer and their taxes have been falling. "

On the one hand, the rich are accelerating the absorption of money, and on the other hand, the poor are struggling to survive. Under the epidemic, how does the US government deal with the dual nature of ice and fire?

Reality 3: The US Government is Downplaying the Epidemic and Acquiescing Injustice

Faced with the huge gap between rich and poor, the US government is not doing nothing. Soon after the outbreak of the epidemic, the Federal Reserve urgently launched a loose monetary policy, allowing hundreds of millions of funds to flow into risky asset markets such as stocks and bond markets in an attempt to activate the economy.

This kind of operation made the rich people’s worth soar, but it did not really reverse the plight of the real economy. The number of unemployed people is still huge, and the lives of the poor are still difficult.

American reporter Bob Woodward recently revealed that Trump had a clear understanding of the epidemic as early as February this year, and even the severity of the new coronavirus pneumonia. But in external interviews, the Trump administration has played down the epidemic more than once, fearlessly: New coronavirus? The problem is not big, don’t be afraid.

Many people have lowered their awareness of self-protection, refused to wear masks, and despised the epidemic psychologically.

By March 19, when there were more than 10,000 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the United States, Trump actually claimed that his previous statement was a white lie in the face of media suspicion, which was entirely out of stability considerations.

However, in the rhetoric of avoiding panic, the Trump administration has not introduced strong enough measures to reduce social unrest, and the gap between the rich and the poor has gradually widened.

In August, the number of confirmed new coronavirus in the United States exceeded 5.5 million. In order to fully promote the resumption of work and classes, the government spokesperson is still deliberately playing down the impact of the epidemic.

Until mid-September, when the epidemic spread in the United States on a large scale, and people condemned the US government for disregarding life and breaching its trust, Trump still confidently said: Even without a vaccine, the new coronavirus pneumonia will automatically disappear. It is not false!

Faced with the safety of the people and the stable development of the capital economy, the US government’s choice is ready to emerge.

Conclusion

When Jefferson wrote “Humans are born equal” into the “Declaration of Independence”, have you ever imagined that, more than 200 years later, the United States will have an extreme scene of the rich becoming rich and the poor dying?

A pandemic suddenly exposed the truth behind the prosperity of a country that prides itself on equality, freedom, and democracy.

Whom do the freedom, equality and democracy belong to? In the systems and societies where capital drives everything, these universal values may be the means for elites and riches to manipulate the ordinary people, but ordinary people foolishly regard these as their own rights.