The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said the US would be “pulling out every stop” to get additional aid into Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
“Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough,” the US President said, noting “hundreds of trucks” should be entering the enclave.
Biden said the US is “going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need, no excuses”.
He also noted the efforts to broker a deal to free the hostages and secure an “immediate ceasefire” that would allow additional aid in.
I’m sure that it is, but it’s not just elderly dying, plenty of kids and their parents are suffering. I just read a NPR puff piece about a landlord who finally got their investment property ‘back’ by evicting their tenant… a recently widowed healthcare worker with a child. It’s almost like we shouldn’t be trying to just return to ‘normal’ with an uncontrolled pandemic raging.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point. I’m not saying it’s not a serious illness but I am saying it’s very far from “an uncontrolled pandemic” and saying it is is hyperbolic to the point of disregarding any other point you made.
We’ve given up on all testing, masking, vaccination and even quarantining at this point. 9/11s of people are dying monthly from all manner of respiratory diseases (after getting wrecked by covid). What exactly would uncontrolled look like to you then?
Uncontrolled would be the very start of the pandemic, with neither masking nor immune people. It’s not a wildfire any more, not even in the US with their proclivity to shoot themselves in the foot. It’s better controlled than influenza simply because more people got shots against it.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point.
I understand you don’t feel affected by covid anymore, but you’re incredibly wrong.
CDC estimates for influenza deaths in the 2022-2023 flu season: 21,000
CDC cumulative covid deaths from Sep 9, 2023 minus Oct 1, 2022: 84,560
Honestly, I’m not seeing a death count for RSV, but based on this RSV Burden Estimates, it’s at most: 10,300 per year.
And this is all shown pretty well in the Trends in Viral Respiratory Deaths in the United States graph.
Not denying covid is more deadly than influenza or RSV, but you still have to account for the fact that covid might kill an old person that would otherwise die to influenza in a month or two (or something else, they are old and their bodies are degrading inevitably). That is why sustained increased death rates in corrolation to covid numbers is a better qualifier for the argument that we have to take precautions to limit people dying. I have been of the understanding that after the major initial waves, death rates are not higher than usual and hence unsustained.
