the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 13, 2020
In July 6, in Los Angeles County, there were 2,903 new COVID-19 cases, the largest number of daily cases ever reported in a U.S. county.
In a dominant majority of these cases, the working class, the poor and the homeless are the people being infected with this disease.
Nursing homes became hotbeds of coronavirus deaths, accounting for almost half of all fatalities. California’s Department of Public Health has listed 399 skilled nursing and assisted-living facilities in Los Angeles County that currently have COVID-19 cases.
This is neither an accident nor unexpected. The hospitals push recovering COVID-19 patients to the nursing homes. And the nursing homes push their residents, who need health care, to the streets to accept the new COVID-19 patients, because these patients bring more money and profit. And the state inspectors who are supposed to check the conditions in the nursing homes look the other way.
In one example, at Hollywood Premier Healthcare in Los Angeles, the inspectors found the facility to be in compliance on March 30, then three days later, it had 68 confirmed cases. The staff reported the lack of protective equipment and materials, and some refused to show up for work. Later that month, the National Guard was deployed to assist the overwhelmed facility.
"These weren’t real inspections; they were more like courtesy call visits. At a time when residents desperately needed the California Department of Public Health to help protect their lives, it tolerated infection control violations that have proven so deadly," said Patricia L. McGinnis, executive director of Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.