Instead of Fixing America, We Wait for Science to Bail Us Out
COVID-19 has highlighted our systemic failures, but our leaders continue to ignore them
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted a litany of long-standing systemic failures in the United States: Our weak social safety net, our in-humane healthcare system, our paralyzed adherence to free-market capitalism at all times, our obsession with "freedom" over science, the stifling constraints of partisan federalism, the exploitation and abuse of the working class—and how all of these failures, individually and collectively, disproportionately impact people of color.
It’s as if the virus was astutely designed to exploit our flaws. As of today, Tuesday, November 17th 2020, the United States has reported a total of 11.2 million Covid-19 cases, and 246,879 deaths. We are far and away the leader in both categories, and the CDC believes that our true total case count is between six, and 24 times higher than what has been reported.
We’re #1! We’re #1!
And it’s not as if things are slowing down. Our daily numbers have been rising for weeks. We’re breaking new case and hospitalization records all the time. Texas just recently surpassed Italy in total reported cases. It has been nearly 10 months since the first case was diagnosed in the United States, and we are still aggressively heading in the wrong direction.
Our governmental response has been nothing short of disgraceful. Part of that lays squarely at the feet of the Trump administration, but regardless of who the president was, our systems and mindsets are not well equipped to handle a pandemic of his nature—they’re just not.
Federalism prohibits our ability to coordinate a uniform, nation-wide response. While we didn’t have a true national response from this administration, there is no doubt that certain states would refuse to cooperate if the situation were different—as we’re about to find out in a few months. Scientific fact has been entirely politicized in this country, and our obsession with a perceived sense of “freedom” had led people to claim that simply wearing a mask in public is oppression. Thus, reaching a consensus on how to come together and fight a pandemic appears to be all but impossible here.
Unlike pretty much every country in Europe, and the vast majority of peer nations across the globe, our social safety net is neither strong enough nor flexible enough to handle this many people losing their livelihoods. So the people of America turned to stimulus checks and relief bills for help. And they got one. Literally one. The CARES Act was passed on March 27th and provided direct payments to many Americans as well as enhanced unemployment benefits, paycheck protection programs for small businesses, and tax credits on wages paid. But the unemployment benefits ended on July 31st, and no further stimulus has yet to be passed.
When Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey proposed paying people $2,000 a month to stay home during the pandemic—a bold, yet sensible proposal aligned with the actions of many other countries—Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a man fully content to ride the rocket of unregulated capitalism into the dying sun, thought the mere notion was hilarious:
We cannot reasonably expect people to stay home all the time when we do not provide them the resources to stay above water.
Furthermore, unlike most of our peer nations, we do not have universal a healthcare system. In the U.S. there are at least 28.9 million people uninsured, while 21.3% of the population are underinsured. Around half of the population in the U.S.—over 150 million people—have health insurance through their employer. So when millions of people lose their jobs, millions of people lose their health insurance. This makes the prospect of losing employment all the more terrifying. And even for those who keep their jobs and insurance, there have been a deluge of reports from people being issued large bills for Covid treatment. Our labyrinthine, for-profit system is not designed to handle a health care crisis.
All of these things, individually and collectively, disproportionally impact communities of color. Here’s some data from the CDC on hospitalization and deaths by race and ethnicity:
This is not a new phenomenon: Health disparities like these have been present since our inception.
As a nation, we have failed to address all that this virus has highlighted, opting instead to pin our hopes on science bailing us out with a vaccine. And it looks like we might get one.
It’s great news, but in a way it excuses us from focusing on why our response has been such a catastrophe. It enables us to keep the status quo spinning along like a saw blade without us having any serious conversations about structural change.
Hopefully we all get a safe and highly-effective vaccine in the near future, and a significant relief bill, and the United States is able to begin to move past the virus. But we cannot forget what brought us to this point of desperation.
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Jesse, letting you know now, I am not a thief. We think alike and my book has a strong emphasis on Levittown (PA and NY). Hearing you with Amanda Seales for the first time. Fellow NYer presently living in PA. Looking for contact info. Stay well. Subscribing at 9:40 am December 10th