Ripe for the picking

The race to stop COVID before the situation becomes much worse is more urgent than ever. We are told there is "no way to sugarcoat" that.  

If the variants alter the virus enough, tests, treatment and vaccines might not work as well, said Straif-Bourgeois. A new variant might be able to slip past antibodies, re-infecting someone who has already had COVID-19. Potentially, such a variant could complicate the path to herd immunity.

“There is no way to sugarcoat this,” said Garry. “It does look like some of the variants may not be as effectively blocked by the vaccine.”

The virus is leveling up. The longer these variants are out there unchecked, the more likely they are to develop into something that beats the vaccine. If those strains become dominant worldwide then we have to start all over. As of right now, we are told the vaccines are still effective against the so-called "UK variant" everyone is worried about.   But also that more infectious and deadlier strain has been detected in New Orleans already. So this is not the time to let up on our mask and distance precautions. It's not the time to pressure the schools to reopen. And it's definitely not the time to be welcoming visitors for Mardi Gras.  This is the time to get some shots into some arms, as they say. 

And for a minute there it seemed like that was indeed the plan.  But then a funny thing happened. 

The Biden administration has told Louisiana officials that shipments of the coronavirus vaccine won’t be increasing much for at least a month, the latest challenge to the state’s effort to ramp up vaccinations.

The revelation that shipments won’t be increasing — which has long been the promise made to states by federal officials — means Louisiana likely won’t be able to hold mass vaccination events anytime soon, Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a press conference Friday.

Vaccine shipments to the state this week and next are expected to remain flat at about 58,000 doses per week, with potentially only a 5% to 10% bump through most of February. Louisiana has received roughly flat shipments of vaccine doses for the past month, Edwards said, amid supply issues that are impacting distribution across the U.S.

Whoops! They took the Trump administration at their word and that turned out to be bullshit. Now the planned ramping up of vaccinations could be delayed by a month or so.  Do we have even that long before things get even more complicated?  Guess we'll find out. 

Either way the "post-pandemic era" is coming.  We might decide to mark its arrival at the time of our successfully containing the virus. Or we could call it when get a certain percentage of the population vaccinated. More than a few people might like to mark it at the end of Joe Biden's first 100 days in office.  It really depends on how soon you might want the checks to stop coming. But wherever we decide the pandemic ends, the conditions it will leave in its wake are setting us up for a cascade of further disasters which we are not likely prepared to mitigate. 

For example, I'm very curious where we decide to define the new level of "structural unemployment."   

The labor market has rebounded somewhat since the initial coronavirus wave in the spring. But of the 22 million jobs that disappeared, nearly 10 million remain lost.

“Compared to then, we are doing better,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the career site Indeed, referring to the spring. “But compared to the pre-Covid era, we still have so far to go.”

Consider that each of the last four recessions has occasioned a deeper and longer lasting period of job loss than its predecessor. The so-called "Great Recession" of 2008 was historically frightening.  Here is a somewhat famous very frightening graph of our declining economic resilience. 

These numbers do not even tell the whole story, of course. Each recession sets off a new exacerbation of precarities as the jobs that comprise each recovery are more exploitative and less secure with fewer hours and fewer benefits. So even as the line eventually goes back up, material conditions continue to worsen. 

To dig ourselves out of that hole we are going to need a more aggressive and determined commitment from the federal government than we have seen in generations.  We will need real support and relief. That should come in the form of monthly payments to make up the income lost during stay-at-home orders. It should include a guarantee that your boss can't expose you to danger and that a landlord or a bank can't kick you out of your home.  We need to rescue our state and municipal governments before they collapse into bankruptcy exposing everyone to more chaos.

Unfortunately, none of the above is Joe Biden's priority. Making Mitch McConnell happy is. 

President-elect Joe Biden will seek a deal with Republicans on another round of Covid-19 relief, rather than attempting to ram a package through without their support, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The approach could mean a smaller initial package that features some priorities favored by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The idea is to forgo using a special budget process that would remove the need to get the support of at least 10 Republicans in the Senate, which will be split 50-50 and under Democratic control only thanks to the vice president’s vote.

Rather than taking the challenges of the pandemic-depression seriously, Biden's first concern is rehabilitating the image of the Republican Party after its leadership instigated a riot at the Capitol intended to disrupt the certification of his own election.  And since delivering justice or even just the hope of a better world isn't as important as making sure he's got a  "strong opposition party" around to do deals with, Joe is opening the negotiations at... one time checks for $1400. 

The stimulus package has a price tag above $1.5 trillion and includes a commitment for $1,400 stimulus checks, according to a source familiar with the proposal, and Biden is expected to commit to partner with private companies to increase the number of Americans getting vaccinated.

A significant portion of the additional financial resources will be dedicated to minority communities. “I think you will see a real emphasis on these underserved communities, where there is a lot of hard work to do,” said another transition official.

We'll examine that "emphasis on underserved communities" more closely when there are more details. But there isn't much reason to believe this is anything beyond the usual noble-sounding framing for unnecessary and counterproductive means testing.  More to the point, after everything that's happened, pushing people to accept $1400 as $2000 if you count the accrued $600 store credit from December is just shitty messaging. Even though we've shoveled trillions of dollars in tax cuts and subsidies for billionaires out the door all year, Joe wants you to know now that he is counting every penny you might get your grubby little hands on. 

The millionaires who comprise the Biden led faction of congressional Democrats may not feel this personally but their performative miserliness put on to please the op-ed writers does more than just insult people. It abandons whole communities to ravaging predators. 

The New Orleans area has earned an unwelcome financial distinction during the coronavirus pandemic: more homeowners here are at risk of losing their homes due to unpaid mortgages than in any other major American city.

More than one-in-ten borrowers in the New Orleans-Metairie metro area are now at least 30 days late with mortgage payments and could be at risk of foreclosure on their properties, according to federal data.

New Orleans was already being hollowed out and gentrified by predatory capital before the pandemic began.  Without drastic action, COVID will surely lead to an exponential expansion of that crisis. 

"Our numbers for folks seeking help with evictions already are through the roof — up 300% since the pandemic started," said Laura Tuggle, executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, a non-profit legal aid provider for low income Louisianans. "The deluge on mortgages is going to come."

With a relatively high concentration of low-income households, the New Orleans area already had one of the nation's highest mortgage delinquency rates before the pandemic, according to Andy Walden, economist and director of market research at Black Knight, a Jacksonville, Florida, firm that tracks mortgage trends nationwide.

That story is from a few weeks ago. There is a new one in today's paper that further confirms what's happening here. Housing sale prices are up in Orleans Parish by 16% this year.  But those numbers really just show us the rich getting richer.  Meanwhile...

Meanwhile, the broad numbers mask big discrepancies between the upper and lower end of the market, and some of the strains in housing across the area. According to federal data, more than one-in-ten borrowers in the New Orleans-Metairie metro area are at least 30 days late on their mortgage payments, putting them at risk of foreclosure.

About a month ago we wondered what was happening with the "large portfolio of foreclosed properties" that had been held by the embattled Bank of Louisiana before the younger generation of management there began selling them off.  We wondered about that specifically because a foreclosure crisis is typically followed up by a wave of vulture capitalism that results in even more intense and damaging wealth consolidation. One can only assume that will get even worse now with so much of the city ripe for the picking.

So we find ourselves, not only in a desperate race to stop the virus before it mutates beyond our control, but also in a race to protect working class New Orleanians from the ravages of the post-pandemic economy. At the beginning of the year we wrote that policy choices by both the mayor and the assessor indicate they intend to side with the asset speculators over the city's residents. In this month's Antigravity, MACCNO voices similar concerns about the assessor. 

Cutting property taxes for commercial property owners—who tend to be wealthier and whiter than the general population—without a corresponding benefit for commercial tenants, while simultaneously increasing residential property taxes and rent, would be a recipe for displacement and gentrification no matter when it happened. But during a pandemic that has already created economic disaster for musicians, small businesses, artists, and other members of the cultural community, the effects could be especially devastating. Williams himself acknowledges the situation he is creating but avoids responsibility, telling The Advocate he “is not the tax collector,” even though he doesn’t “see how everybody is going to be able to pay their taxes on time.”

Is anyone coming to help? It's not clear that they are. Biden's inaugural speech sounded a lot like a redux of his convention speech. Which is to say he was long on affected empathy for your suffering but short on resolve to do anything about it. The "unity" talk even evoked unpleasant Mitch Landrieu "One City One Voice" flashbacks. Yes, of course, bad things are happening to you. Maybe you've lost your job. Maybe you can't pay for health care.  Maybe you are facing eviction. Maybe the planet is on fire and we're facing a future of diminishing prospects for most of us. We know about all of these things and acknowledge that they are bad.  But the one thing we really can't tolerate is any complaints.

So Joe Biden is going to open the schools in 100 days.  If we can't vaccinate people by then and the virus is still out of control, that is too bad. Someone will just find a way to blame the teachers. So New Orleans is open for Carnival visitors.  If cases start to spike because workers were compelled by their bosses to go serve food and drinks to tourists, that is too bad. The mayor will inevitably just go on TV and yell at the residents again.  The post-pandemic is coming.  Hopefully it comes sooner than later because lives are at stake in that.  But, in its wake, the fortunes and livelihoods of the vulnerable working class are going to be exposed. And it's highly doubtful they'll find many friends in power willing to do anything about that.