["What we need is long-term economic policy that establishes
justice, promotes the general welfare, rejects decades of austerity,
and builds strong social programs that lift society from below.” EPA
] [[link removed]]

PANDEMIC LESSONS FOR THE REST OF US, OR VACCINE THINKING APPLIED TO
ALL OF AMERICAN LIFE  
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Liz Theoharis
December 13, 2020
Tom Dispatch
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_ "What we need is long-term economic policy that establishes
justice, promotes the general welfare, rejects decades of austerity,
and builds strong social programs that lift society from below.” EPA
_

A New York City resident advocates for how he thinks the Coronavirus
(COVID-19) outbreak should be tackled. , UN Photo/Evan Schneider

 

Martin Luther King, Jr., offered
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all-too-relevant comment on his moment in his 1967 speech "Where Do We
Go from Here: Chaos or Community?":

“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our
distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our
abundance into the overfed mouths of the upper classes until they gag
with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is
necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is
also intelligent.”

King concluded
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that American society was degrading human life by clinging to old
thinking rather than turning to bold, visionary solutions -- words
that (sadly enough) ring even truer in our day than in his.

In late October as the coronavirus pandemic raged, the Economic Policy
Institute [[link removed]] released a study showing that it
isn't just morally right but an economic necessity
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to deal with poverty in this country and fast. “If America does not
address what’s happening with visionary social and economic policy,"
as that study put it, "the health and well-being of the nation are at
stake. What we need is long-term economic policy that establishes
justice, promotes the general welfare, rejects decades of austerity,
and builds strong social programs that lift society from below.”

Even as, almost two months later, we remain trapped in an
unprecedented crisis of spreading illness, there is increasingly clear
evidence that, were those in power to make other choices, we would no
longer need to live burdened by the social ills of old. Oddly enough,
because of the Covid-19 crisis, we're being reminded (or at least
should be reminded) that, in reality, solutions to many of the most
pressing issues of our day are readily at hand
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if those issues were prioritized and the attention and resources of
society directed toward them. In a moment overflowing with lessons,
one of the least discussed is that scarcity is a lie, a political
invention
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used to cover up vast reserves of capital and technology facilitating
the enrichment of the few and justifying the pain and dispossession of
so many others. Our present reality could perhaps best be described as
mass abandonment amid abundance
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Indeed, the myth of scarcity, like other neoliberal fantasies, is
regularly ignored when politically expedient and conjured up when the
rich and powerful need help. The pandemic has been no exception. Over
the last nine months, the wealth of American billionaires has actually
increased by a third
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to nearly $4 trillion, even as tens of millions of Americans have
filed for unemployment and more evictions loom
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than ever before in U.S. history. Now, politicians in Washington are
haggling over a “compromise” relief bill
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that offers little in the way of actual relief, especially for those
suffering the most.

At the same time, with the health of everyone
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not just the poor and marginalized, at risk, the government has proven
itself remarkably capable of mobilizing the necessary resources for
decisive and historic action when it comes to producing a Covid-19
vaccine in record time. That the same could be done when it comes to
protecting the most vulnerable and abolishing poverty should be
obvious, if only the nation saw that, too, as a crisis worthy of
attention.

WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A WAY

In 1918, with an influenza pandemic raging in the United States,
cities closed down and doctors prescribed painkillers like aspirin as
a national debate (remarkably similar to the present one) raged over
the necessity of quarantine and masks. At that time, the country
simply had to wait for those who were infected to die or develop
immunity. Before it was over (in a far less populous land), at least
675,000 Americans perished
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than in every one of our wars since the Civil War combined.

A century later, when the Covid-19 pandemic exploded this March, the
country ground to a similar terrifying halt, but under different
conditions: for one thing, the shutdown was accompanied by the promise
that the government would invest billions of dollars in a potentially
successful vaccine produced far faster than any ever before. Nine
months later, after the Trump administration had funneled those
billions
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into research and had guaranteed
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the manufacture and purchase of viable vaccines (radically reducing
the business risk to pharmaceutical companies in the process), it
appears that we are indeed there
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Last month, multiple companies released trial data for just such
vaccines that seem to be nearly 95% effective; and Great Britain has,
in fact, just rolled out
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the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine with the U.S. not far
behind. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized
Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use. 

A long list of grave questions remains when it comes to the oversight
of, and accountability of, those private companies that now hold the
health of the world in their hands. Already, the British government
has granted Pfizer, which stands to earn billions by beating the
competition to market, legal indemnity
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from any complications that may arise from its vaccine, and the Trump
administration has made similar agreements. Much also remains
uncertain when it comes to how American-produced vaccines will be
fairly distributed, here and across the world, and whether they will
be safe, effective, and free. (I recently signed onto a public letter
to the incoming Biden administration calling for a "people’s vaccine
[[link removed]].")

Still, it does seem that the historic speed with which this novel
virus could eventually be curbed by just such a vaccine (or set of
them) is likely to prove astonishing. Historically, on average,
successful vaccines have taken 10 to 14 years to develop. Until now,
the fastest effective one ever produced was the mumps vaccine and that
took four years
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Nearly as remarkable is how so many people have received the news of
the coming of those coronavirus vaccines as if it were the norm. If
anything, in a time of constant, rapid technological revolution,
there's a noticeable impatience, stoked by Donald Trump and others,
that it's taken this long.

The Covid-19 vaccine experience does show one thing, however -- what
can be done when the resources of this country are marshalled to
immediately address a crisis-level issue. Imagine if the same approach
were taken when it came to systemic racism, climate change, or the
poverty that has only deepened in the midst of the pandemic crisis.
Indeed, if the political will were there, Americans could clearly
tackle massive problems like hunger and homelessness no less
effectively than developing a vaccine, instead of spending millions of
dollars on cruel attempts to drive the homeless away by redesigning
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park benches and other urban architecture to repel those with nowhere
to stay. After all, in cities like San Francisco
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where homelessness is rampant, there are more vacant houses than there
are homeless people.

Although the politics of austerity generally reign supreme on both
sides of the aisle in Congress (especially when it comes to
antipoverty programs like welfare), it's also true that public
spending is regularly and abundantly martialed to solve issues that
affect certain parts of society -- namely, the private sector and the
military. From subsidies to major companies like big agriculture
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to critical R&D expenditures
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for Silicon Valley to public university research
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that benefits private industry, funding from the state is often the
invisible backbone of American business operations and advances.
Likewise, spending on the military
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makes up more than half of the federal discretionary budget, funding
everything from the 800 American military bases
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to expensive and risky new technologies
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and war machines.

LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC

Back in March, the writer Arundhati Roy spoke of the pandemic as "a
portal
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She was perhaps suggesting that the widespread suffering caused by
Covid-19 could open a doorway into a future in which we humans might
begin to treat ourselves and the planet with greater devotion. In
another sense, however, the pandemic has also been a portal into our
past, a way of showing us the conditions that have laid the groundwork
not just for the devastation that now consumes us but for possibly far
worse to come.

No one could have expected this exact crisis at this exact moment in
exactly this way. Yet, before Covid-19, society was already teetering
under the weight of poverty and inequality
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and a sober look at history offers clues as to why the United States
now has the highest Covid-19 case tally and death toll
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in the world. Too many have died because our country’s preexisting
conditions of systemic injustice have gone untreated for so long and
those in power never seem to learn the applicable lesson of this
moment: pandemics spread along the fissures of society, both exposing
them more and deepening them further.

Before Covid-19, there were already 140 million people
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in this country who were poor or a $400 emergency -- one job loss,
accident, illness, or storm -- away from poverty. Across America that
meant close to 80 million people
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were uninsured or underinsured, 60 million people
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had zero (zero!) wealth other than the value of a family car, more
than a million people
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were defaulting on federal student loans annually, and more than 62
million workers
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were making less than $15 an hour, with more than two million in
Florida alone making only $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage
[[link removed]].
And that's just to begin down a nightmarish list.

For Pamela Sue Rush
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and about 1.5 million other people, it meant a lack of access to piped
water and sewage systems. Before Pamela, who is Black, contracted
Covid-19 and died in July, she lived in a mobile home in Lowndes
County, Alabama, where human waste festered in her backyard because
she didn’t have proper plumbing, and in a state that still hasn't
expanded Medicaid, and in a country that has no federal guarantee of
either healthcare or clean water. Covid-19 may have been the immediate
cause of her death, but the underlying one was racism and poverty.

During these pandemic months, a popular notion has been that the virus
is a great equalizer
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because everyone is susceptible. Yet the human and economic toll has
been anything but equal across society. It will take more time to find
out just what the mortality rate among the poor has been, but it's
already clear that those of us with compromised immune systems,
disproportionately poor and people of color, are at greater risk of
hospitalization and death from the coronavirus, and early reports
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suggest that poorer counties have higher death rates. An unsurprising
but alarming new study
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that more than 400,000 Covid-19 cases are associated with the lifting
of eviction moratoriums, forcing people out of the safety of their
homes; such numbers will only worsen this winter as evictions
continue, if such moratoriums aren't extended
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into the new year.

Beyond the toll of the virus itself, the economic fallout
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been devastating for the poor. Between six and eight million people
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have fallen below the federal poverty line since March (although that
measure
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an old and broken standard). The true numbers are undoubtedly far
higher. The last 38 weeks have seen unemployment claims
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greater than the worst week of the Great Recession of 2007-2008. Some
economists are now talking about a possible quick bounce back once the
virus is controlled and yet the long-term damage is only beginning to
reveal itself. After all, 10 years after the Great Recession
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a time when little in the way of long-term relief was provided, the
majority of workers had still not recovered from it. That this crisis
is already significantly deeper and wider should give us pause as we
consider what the next decade will look like if this country doesn't
alter its bleak course.

The fissures in our society were vast before Covid-19 hit and they've
only broadened. A vaccine will address the most visible of them, but
we as a nation will continue to stumble from crisis to crisis until we
learn the most important lesson this moment can teach
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that our yet-to-be-United States will only heal as a society when
every person’s needs are met. In a pandemic, one person without
food, water, healthcare, or housing puts everyone at risk
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The same is, in fact, true in non-pandemic times, for a society riven
by poverty and deprivation will always be unstable and vulnerable.

Martin Luther King once told a crowd in St. Louis that “we must
learn to live as brothers or perish together as fools.” Today, the
balance is tipping perilously toward the latter category, as Congress
painfully debates a thoroughly anemic relief bill that promises little
for most Americans and sets a dangerous precedent for the coming
months. In a recent letter
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to Joe Manchin, the self-proclaimed "centrist" senator from West
Virginia, Reverend William Barber II (my co-chair on the Poor
People’s Campaign [[link removed]]) wrote:

“I am ashamed of this nation. I know you want to do the right thing,
and Republicans are tying your hands, but please don’t call this a
'centrist plan.' It’s more cynical than centrist. It’s damn near
criminal that millions are hurting, billionaires are getting richer,
sick people are dying, poverty is expanding, and the Senate can’t do
the right thing.”

Indeed, the most important things to note in the coming stimulus bill
are these: it protects corporations (that have not protected their
workers) from any accountability or legal responsibility; it continues
to bail out the rich, not the rest of us, with no provisions for
stimulus checks and insufficient funding to states and municipalities;
it lowers unemployment benefits to $300 per week (based on wages of
$7.50 an hour) rather than $600 per week (based on $15 an hour); it is
not only significantly less than the nation needs, but less than what
was on offer months ago. The cynicism of this relief bill lies in the
way it diminishes life for political gain and corporate profit and in
the false contention that this is the most that's available
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to us, the best the nation can do.

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Call it a cruel stroke of history that Congress should be deliberating
on the welfare of millions only a few weeks before Christmas,
especially since so many of the key players call themselves
"Christians." This holiday season and the winter beyond it promise to
be a long, dark portal to who knows where, as temperatures drop,
Covid-19 cases continue to rise, and poverty and homelessness are
transformed into so many more death certificates. The timing of
Congress's new "relief" bill is particularly wicked if, as a
Christian, you were to remember the details of Jesus’s birth in that
manger in Bethlehem.

After all, he was born a homeless refugee to an unmarried teenage
mother and had to flee to Egypt with his family as a baby because the
ruling authorities already deemed that this poor Palestinian Jewish
boy would grow up to be a threat to the established order of
injustice. But the powers and principalities of his day were never the
only ones who mattered. There were always those who recognized in his
birth that, to right the wrongs of society, to protect the lives of
countless innocent victims, another way was possible, if society
started with the poor and marginalized, not with those already full to
the brim.

It's too bad that some of the congressional representatives who call
themselves Christian are so unwilling to take a moment to consider the
homeless revolutionary who was long ago sent to lead a moral movement
from below. They should remember that the story of Christmas
celebrates the birth of a poor, brown-skinned leader who, in the
Gospel of Luke, is born to “scatter those who are proud, bring down
rulers from their thrones, but lift up the humble. He fills the hungry
with good things but sends the rich away empty.”

In a time when more children are on the brink of being born into
poverty, homelessness, and state-sanctioned violence, rather than, as
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “compress our abundance into the
overfed mouths” of the wealthy and corporations, Americans would do
well to recognize that scarcity could vanish and that it’s time to
address systemic inequality.

_Liz Theoharis, a _TomDispatch regular
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is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist.
Director of the __Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social
Justice_ [[link removed]]_ at Union Theological Seminary
in New York City and co-chair of the __Poor People's Campaign: A
National Call for Moral Revival,_
[[link removed]]_ she is the author of _Always
With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor
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_Follow _TomDispatch_ on Twitter [[link removed]] and
join us on Facebook [[link removed]]. Check out
the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the
second in the __Splinterlands__ series) _Frostlands
[[link removed]]_,__
Beverly Gologorsky's novel _Every Body Has a Story
[[link removed]],_
and Tom Engelhardt's _A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]]_,
as well as Alfred McCoy's _In the Shadows of the American Century: The
Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]]_
and John Dower's _The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since
World War II
[[link removed]]_._

Copyright 2020 Liz Theoharis

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