FRSO leader Steff Yorek speaks out on pandemic
Minneapolis, MN – The Political Secretary of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) Steff Yorek stated, April 13, “At least 16,500 people have died in the capitalist United States of COVID-19. This compares very unfavorably to socialist China which has had less than 3400 deaths.
“New York City is reeling under more COVID-19 deaths than all of China. It is the kind of manmade tragedy created by an economic system where the value of the stock market is placed higher than the lives of workers. Early action could have mitigated this, but the economy was deemed more important. Across the country we see that African American workers are disproportionately being struck down by the virus, possibly because of long term, disproportionate exposure to air pollution, because of environmental racism,” said Yorek.
Yorek noted, “It appears that there is no one driving the bus in terms of a national strategy to exit the lockdown phase. There are five things needed to control the spread of this pandemic in the absence of broad stay-at-home orders. They are, one, widespread testing for every fever and cough and of some of the population with no symptoms at all; two, quarantine of all infectious cases; three, supported locations to isolate even mild cases of infection to prevent spread within families; four; public health workers to track down contacts for each case and get them to isolate for fourteen days, and five, sufficient hospital infrastructure to manage hospitalized cases while still treating regular patients. From my vantage point there appears to be no plan to execute this on a nationwide scale, just a plan to open up and see what happens.”
Noting a dangerous anti-science trend, Yorek stated, “Some governors are ruled by an opposition to science; all the while Donald Trump cannot stop himself from erupting into anti-science rants and promoting untested, unproven and possibly dangerous treatments.”
Yorek concluded by stating, “Capitalism is a failed system and we need to tun up the heat on politicians who are killing us.”