Millionaire governor Ned Lamont has announced that the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency is over!
Well, not over over… they just aren’t going to be helping the workers of Connecticut deal with it anymore. That’s on us now!
Yesterday, Lamont announced that the services and programs put into place to support the residents of Connecticut during the state of emergency are being canceled as of May 11, 2023.
He makes it very clear that this does not mean that the danger has passed, “I continue to urge Connecticut residents to take actions to protect themselves from the spread of COVID-19 and all respiratory viruses – stay home when you’re sick, get vaccinated and boosted to limit your risk of contracting viruses, and listen to the advice of medical experts on ways to stay healthy.”
Hey, Ned? How are working people expected to “stay home when sick” when they can barely afford to put food on the table as it is? Especially when emergency SNAP benefits are being canceled along with every other program! We have no sick leave, no medical coverage, and no way to provide for ourselves when we get infected. We are being set up for economic disaster for the sin of protecting our fellow workers.
Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani adds, “Residents still should get vaccinated, get the updated vaccine, use at-home tests, stay home when they’re sick, and based on your own medical conditions, consider wearing a high-quality mask when respiratory viruses are circulating at high levels in their community.”
Unfortunately, in addition to eliminating the emergency food relief, the state is also transitioning all vaccination, testing and therapeutics to the broken for-profit insurance system. Even the most “up-to-date” vaccines are obsolete, and much less effective against the viral strains currently circulating; if more effective updates ever get released, how will we afford them? The available tests are expensive, and fail to detect new variants with increasing frequency; what worker can afford to take them over and over as a precautionary measure?
Also, if you are amongst the nearly ONE MILLION Connecticut residents covered by Medicaid, you will need to pay extra close attention to your insurance because continuous enrollment is being canceled as well.
KFF, an independent health policy research organization, has outlined the devastating effects that the abandonment of the continuous enrollment program could have. Especially vulnerable are “…immigrants and people with limited English proficiency (LEP), and people with disabilities.”
This entire process of rolling back programs and services highlights a few important facts:
- The government is run by and for the wealthy capitalist class.
- They do not care about the working class, especially the most vulnerable and least empowered sections of the working class.
- Any reforms that the government is forced to put in place to respond to the inevitable crises caused by capitalism can and will be taken away as soon as these monsters have the slightest excuse.
The ultra-wealthy elite that run this country did not face this pandemic the way that the working public was forced to. They have always been able to protect themselves, with round-the-clock testing, the ability to stay home whenever they wish, unmitigated access to effective treatments, and comprehensive protection measures at their events. While workers continued to put their lives on the line, the corporate vampires that run this country funneled more profit than ever into their greedy maws, all on the backs of a working class who is still struggling to survive.
Today, as Lamont rips away the meager concessions that were put in place for workers’ safety in the face of a continuing global pandemic, we are reminded who we can rely on: each other. The ruling class is not going to protect us. It is up to us to come together to protect each other from the deadly virus that still rages around us. It is up to us to come together to protect ourselves from the tyranny of these capitalist exploiters. It is up to us to come together to create a world where people come before profits.
