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Episode 48: Quebec Communists: “Lockdown or Not, We Must Continue to Organize”
Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca
The Communist Party of Quebec (PCQ) is concerned about the alarming numbers of new cases of COVID-19 infection. With more than 2,500 cases daily for the past few days, there is a real danger of overloading our health care system to the point where inhumane choices will have to be made, especially since all specialists agree that any increase in the number of infections will have delayed repercussions on the number of hospitalizations. We can expect the worst. This is why we understand the decision of public health authorities to proceed with a new lockdown.
However, these numbers are far from inevitable. They are the result of decades of deliberate underfunding and privatization of the public health system in an effort to commodify it.
A new lockdown is nothing more or less than an admission of failure, a flagrant example of the collapse of our public health system. It is no coincidence that here, as everywhere else in the world, it is where budget cuts to healthcare have been deepest that the pandemic is spreading the fastest. In Italy, which was the epicenter of the pandemic last spring, 10 years of underfunding and privatization resulted in a 37 billion euro deficit and the loss of 150,000 hospital beds. In Britain, now in its third lockdown, successive austerity measures since the 1980s have left the health care system a shortfall of more than 10 billion pounds and the loss of 160,000 beds.
Read the article in full.
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By DaveWelcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca
The Communist Party of Quebec (PCQ) is concerned about the alarming numbers of new cases of COVID-19 infection. With more than 2,500 cases daily for the past few days, there is a real danger of overloading our health care system to the point where inhumane choices will have to be made, especially since all specialists agree that any increase in the number of infections will have delayed repercussions on the number of hospitalizations. We can expect the worst. This is why we understand the decision of public health authorities to proceed with a new lockdown.
However, these numbers are far from inevitable. They are the result of decades of deliberate underfunding and privatization of the public health system in an effort to commodify it.
A new lockdown is nothing more or less than an admission of failure, a flagrant example of the collapse of our public health system. It is no coincidence that here, as everywhere else in the world, it is where budget cuts to healthcare have been deepest that the pandemic is spreading the fastest. In Italy, which was the epicenter of the pandemic last spring, 10 years of underfunding and privatization resulted in a 37 billion euro deficit and the loss of 150,000 hospital beds. In Britain, now in its third lockdown, successive austerity measures since the 1980s have left the health care system a shortfall of more than 10 billion pounds and the loss of 160,000 beds.
Read the article in full.