Artie Vierkant

@avierkant.bsky.social

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Death Panel podcast, wrote Health Communism with Beatrice Adler-Bolton

patreon.com/deathpanelpod

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When this news first leaked, it was reported that new guidance would be posted in April for public feedback. Instead it’s only March 1st and the change is “effective immediately,” with no mechanism for public comment

In our latest, we discuss the CDC’s plan to drop its covid isolation guidance, a move that has nothing to do with the state of the pandemic and everything to do with keeping people at work on.soundcloud.com/Pzf5hRtezq3c...

CDC Says: Back to Work (02/15/24)on.soundcloud.com Beatrice, Artie and Abby discuss this week’s news that the CDC is planning to drop its covid isolation guidelines, and how the proposed change is emblematic of the Biden administration’s long running

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Artie Vierkant

J: “Please remind our comrades not in Gaza, that there are still many of us here. It seems like some people think that everything is gone. … And we are here. … We need your solidarity. We are not already all destroyed. And we will stay alive another week.”

R: “We are cold. We are tired. We are sick, and hungry. No one has medications. No one has dialysis. There is nowhere to give birth. This is not a humanitarian crisis. This is how health is also a weapon of war.”

G: “It can be hard to get people to care about COVID when there are bombings all day and night, snipers, drones, block by block warfare. But all day long, I am making masks out of whatever materials I can find, and handing them out.”

G (cont.): “It is very hurtful and alienating to see people in the Global North say that our deaths are taking away from necessary attention to COVID. The exact opposite is true.”

G (cont.): “I talk about Long COVID and COVID to everyone who will listen. And while many people say that I am crazy, many are also learning COVID is still an ongoing pandemic because of calls to mask at protests in solidarity with Palestine happening in the Global North.”

S: “I was 18 in 2018 and the Great March of Return is what made me want to go into public health. I cling to that memory when I am disillusioned with our field, and it helps keep me going.”

S (cont.): “Lately, I have been finding solace in thinking about what plants I would like to have in my garden one day: strawberries, sweet lime, my own olive tree. I dream I will make my world green again.”

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Artie Vierkant

Some liberals’ main concern in rewriting this history is anxiety over people not voting for Biden (whether bc of pandemic or Palestine). But the effect of ending the programs was felt in real time—here’s a story from 2021 of a woman with lupus forced back to work by this decision

The story ends with the woman telling @jeffstein.bsky.social: “You can’t stand there and say you’re the child of the Great Depression, but not understand what you’re doing to the population pushing millions of people off a financial cliff.”

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Artie Vierkant

Most importantly, Biden had an opportunity to position pandemic relief programs as part of a new baseline for economic security. Instead, they had Jen Psaki forcefully say the opposite, in 2021: “no one from the administration has ever proposed making these permanent”

In 2021, while there was public outcry over the end of pandemic unemployment insurance expansion, the Biden administration dithered until the very last moment, allowing it to expire, while Biden publicly said it “makes sense” for the benefits to be ending.

Today’s @deathpanel.bsky.social is in part a response to these claims by Eric Levitz, which misrepresent the fights around the termination of the pandemic welfare programs. Far from championing welfare expansion, the end of these programs means Biden has overseen welfare retrenchment

In our latest, we respond to recent attempts to paint the Biden administration as pursuing “the largest expansion of the welfare state in a half century” with a close look at just how quickly they acted to bring pandemic welfare expansions to an end on.soundcloud.com/TF6e3j2oC7ga...

Unmaking the Pandemic Welfare State (01/18/24)on.soundcloud.com Beatrice, Artie, and Phil discuss how recent claims that Biden has tried to bring about “the largest expansion of the welfare state in a half century” ignore his track record of ending every last ...

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