Thom Hartmann for BuzzFlash: Trump Makes the Case for Medicare for All
October 14, 2020
The COVID pandemic has bolstered the case for Medicare for All (Molly Adams)
By Thom Hartmann
It’s now semi-official. People within the Trump administration have laid it out: the actual coronavirus strategy of the federal government is now herd immunity.
That will require roughly 70% of America’s 340 million people to become infected, a total of 238 million people.
All of them, from the elderly to newborns, at risk for the many side effects of this virus including dementia, strokes, heart damage, kidney damage and severe chronic fatigue.
The current case fatality rate for the United States - the percentage of people who die because they got the virus - is, according to Johns Hopkins, 2.7%.
If that percentage of Americans who are infected with the coronavirus die, that means a herd immunity strategy leads directly to 6.4 million dead Americans.
On top of that, there are multiple confirmed reports around the world of people getting reinfected with the coronavirus, the same way we all get periodically reinfected with flu and the common cold, indicating that even after 6 million Americans have died, the rest of us are still vulnerable to getting this disease all over again a few months or a year down the road.
The United States is the only developed country in the world willing to pursue the stupid and deadly herd immunity strategy for this virus. We are also, not by coincidence, the only developed country in the world without a national healthcare system.
This pandemic is a wake up call to Americans: the most effective core of any good nationwide public health strategy is a national healthcare system.
The coronavirus emphasizes the need for Medicare For All, as well as the need for rational, science-based leadership in the United States.
Otherwise, millions of Americans may die, year after year, until we finally get it right.
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
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