Testing, testing & testing. Social distancing. Providing healthcare workers & institutions with the resources they need. Providing free access to healthcare to all & health coverage for those who've lost their jobs. Providing financial support for average citizens not just co.s.
All these things are vital. Essential. As will be preparing a safe plan to emerge from strictest lockdown and operate society as fully as safely possible from now through the time we have a virus. Further, we must have a vision for not just restarting but reinventing our economy.
That vision must help us recover from what is likely to be the greatest unemployment crisis in our history and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It must center on job creation. But it also must center on reimagining our economy for the decades to come.
And it must learn the lessons of this crisis. They include:
1. Healthcare for all is not just a moral imperative it is essential to our national security and economic viability
2. Paid sick leave for all is essential
1. Healthcare for all is not just a moral imperative it is essential to our national security and economic viability
2. Paid sick leave for all is essential
3. Worker income must be protected in times of national or local crisis like this and the income must go straight to workers immediately and not be channeled through businesses
4. We must take big $ out of politics or the corruption we have seen in this crisis will be repeated
4. We must take big $ out of politics or the corruption we have seen in this crisis will be repeated
5. (Money corrupts everything in politics. If we do not fix that problem we will not fix any of the other problems cited here. National financed federal elections is the way to go. Citizens United must be overwritten by new law.)
6. (No, seriously. Our corrupt political system, the domination of big money in politics, is responsible for many aspects of the crisis we are struggling with today plus exacerbating issues like gross income inequality and disenfranchisement of the American majority.)
7. Look closer, the climate crisis is going to make pandemics and natural disasters more frequent. Addressing it must be a priority. (And rebuilding the economy as a green economy must be a centerpiece of the vision we embrace.)
8. Our first impulse will be to fight globalization and erect new barriers. Wrong impuls. Protect vital supply chains to be sure. Protect public health. But the globalization genie is not going back in the bottle. We must learn to deal w/it rather than try to turn back the clock.
9. That includes adequately funding and working to strengthen international institutions like the WHO.
10. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is last public health crisis or pandemic we will face. These will come more frequently in future. Be prepared. Heed early warnings. EMBRACE SCIENCE. DEMAND FACTS. REQUIRE ACCOUNTABILITY.
