End of CDC masking guidelines aimed at “normalizing” death

[wsws.org]

{The CDC’s guidance is a political, not a scientific, decision. It is intended as a signal that all measures that impinge on business interests, from social distancing requirements to enhanced sanitary guidelines, are to be dropped. Factories and workplaces will be free to bunch workers up in groups, never clean surfaces or bathrooms, and send their employees into unmasked crowds.}

Currently, here in Ohio, there's an agenda of getting people off of unemployment and back into the workforce. In other words. They're being forced back into the contamination zones. Ohio intends on expiring the extra $300 compensation in June as one means to force people back into the workforce. What do working parents do? 4% equals approximately $3000 per family of purchasing power. Biden's infrastructure program will provide jobs? These types of jobs are and have been basically non stop in my area. We've had road and bridge projects running in both Canton and Akron and between on I77, weather permitting, nearly non stop for approximately 5 years now. So long I can't give an exact time line. We had a gas tax forced on us for these repairs just before that time line for them. The money isn't/won't be going towards boosting the economy or substantial worker pay, but to corporations, stock holders, and board members.

{Now, even the pretense that the disease is being combatted is being dropped. Instead of claiming to be stopping the spread of the disease, mass death from COVID-19 is being “normalized.” The pandemic will continue. New strains will spread, and workers are being told that they will simply have to accept widespread death as a fact of life.}

The sacrifice of people for profit seems to never stop.

{In December 2020, when the US death toll stood at nearly 300,000, the WSWS explained:

The normalization of death arises from the decision, rooted in class interests, to treat “economic health” and “human life” as comparable phenomena, with the former prioritized over the latter. Once the legitimacy of the comparison and prioritization is accepted—as it is by the political establishment, the oligarchs and the media—mass death is viewed as unavoidable. It is from this awful calculus that the slogan emerges, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.”}

{The change in CDC guidelines has no scientific or public health validity. The Trump administration repeatedly pressured the CDC to falsify science to justify the administration’s goal of reopening schools and business. This reality has not changed under Biden, who has dedicated his administration to the single-minded pursuit of reopening schools, with the aim of getting the largest possible share of the population back into the labor force to swell the profits of major corporations and hold down rising demands by workers for wage increases.}

New boss, same as the old boss.