Coronavirus Dead
LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
In Case of Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak, New York Plans To Use Prison Labor
to Dig Mass Graves
"The city has plans to send corpses to Hart Island in the Long Island Sound
where, in the late 19th century, yellow-fever patients were quarantined.
Prisoners from Rikers Island would be ferried over to do the digging."
by Alan Macleod
March 02nd, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Two dozen new cases of Covid-19, a deadly strain of novel coronavirus, were
detected in the United States over the weekend, bringing the total to 42,
with 47 more U.S. nationals infected either in China or aboard the Diamond
Princess cruise ship. Included in the 42 is New York City's first case; the
patient in question is currently confined to her Manhattan home.
"There is no cause for surprise - this was expected. As I said from the
beginning, it was a matter of when, not if there would be a positive case of
novel coronavirus in New York," said Governor Andrew Cuomo, who last week
called for the state legislature to pass $40 million in emergency management
funds to confront the outbreak. Yet even with the extra money, it seems
clear that the city would be almost completely unprepared to handle a crisis
on the scale that much of the media is hyping it up to be.
A new report by New York Magazine, based upon information from the Center
for Disease Control (CDC) and a 2008 New York City pandemic response plan,
shows the Big Apple would be overwhelmed in the case of a Spanish Flu-like
epidemic. Last week Mayor de Blasio announced he had set aside an extra
1,200 hospital beds in case of need. But a truly serious outbreak could see
as many as 26,300 new patients per day arriving at hospitals. Furthermore,
the city has barely one sixth of the ventilators it would need in that
situation, with medical masks also in perilously short supply.
Perhaps the most notable information from the report is that if the city's
crematoria are overrun, New York intends to use prison slave labor to dig
mass graves:
The city has plans to send corpses to Hart Island in the Long Island Sound
where, in the late 19th century, yellow-fever patients were quarantined.
Prisoners from Rikers Island would be ferried over to do the digging."
This policy is based on a document authored during Michael Bloomberg's
tenure as mayor, one that saw a more authoritarian approach taken to crime
and policing. Bloomberg is currently running for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
The Media's Deafening Silence on Mike Bloomberg's Ties to Epstein and Other
Criminals
Billionaire "Democratic" candidate Mike Bloomberg has ties to Harvey
Weinstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein among other notables.
MintPress News | Whitney Webb | Feb 28
Yet while the prospect of Harvey Weinstein and other inmates of the infamous
prison being forced to come into contact with contaminated corpses might
raise some eyebrows, New York prisoners already bury thousands of poor,
homeless or unidentified people in deep, mass graves containing up to 1,000
bodies on Hart Island, being paid $0.50 per hour for their labor. More than
one million people have been interred on the desolated island off limits to
the public. In the past, it has also been used as a quarantine station and a
prison.
While the Chinese government has drawn praise for mobilizing its
considerable resources, building multiple hospitals in a matter of days to
house the infected, and effectively quarantining entire municipalities, the
American response has been less impressive. President Trump, who attempted
to cut the CDC's budget in February, proposed a tax cut in response to the
virus. The majority of American cases are located in the Pacific Northwest,
with Washington state governor Jay Inslee, himself a former Democratic
presidential candidate, declaring a state of emergency on Saturday.
In the United States, prisoners are leased out across the country to large
corporations, who use their artificially cheap labor to reap huge profits.
Everything from McDonald's uniforms to expensive lingerie to car parts to
Starbucks cups are manufactured by prisoners, who have little option but to
give their labor for as little as $0.12 per hour. Meanwhile, many
firefighters who tackled the California wildfires were actually incarcerated
inmates making $1 per hour risking their lives. And while governor of
Arkansas, Bill Clinton used prison slave labor in and around his mansion to
"keep costs down."
As Coronavirus Spreads So Does Anti-Chinese Racism
Similar to how Ebola was racialized as a distinctly African illness, news of
the coronavirus has led to an outbreak of anti-Chinese racism.
