Tell Congress to approve COVID-19 funding and provide economic relief
Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
I demand that you replace the $5 billion the GOP stripped out of the COVID-19 emergency supplemental funding bill, and then pass the full $10 billion bill to help cover the costs of prevention and treatment in the US and fight the pandemic and its effects globally. Passing this bill is morally and economically urgent. Inflation is the most important issue for many voters, and forcing them to pay out of pocket for COVID-related expenses that used to be free just feels like another hit to their budgets, even if it doesn’t meet the technical definition of inflation used by economists.
Background
In spite of having access to superior medical care and the unprecedented fast development of effective COVID-19 vaccines, the United States has lost 1 million people to the pandemic. That's more per capita than any other industrialized nation. It's more than the number killed in two decades of car crashes. It's more than all the battlefield deaths of American soldiers since the Civil War.
But the virus has impacted different parts of society differently. A significant proportion of the nation’s oldest residents died, making up about 75% of the total deaths. Among younger adults, death rates have been much higher among Black and Hispanic people than white people. Understanding these patterns can help the US government better direct its resources to continue to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future pandemics.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, daily new cases in the United States currently average 87,382, and on some recent days have topped 100,000. That’s four times as high as just two months ago, and higher than the number of recorded cases during the summer of 2020. It is most certainly a serious undercount, since many people are testing at home and not reporting the results. Given the recent emergence of two new subvariants in South Africa, the Biden administration now predicts there will be 100 million infections in the autumn. This new phase of the pandemic should be a sobering reminder for us all to be prepared, and a call to action for Congress to fully fund these preparations.
As President Biden put it: “I urge Congress to move promptly on the COVID funding bill. Without timely COVID funding, more Americans will die needlessly … In the fall, if we are hit by new variants, it will be too late to get the tools needed for protection — critical treatments that will be available in Europe, but not the United States.”
References
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/13/us/covid-deaths-us-one-million.html