The End of the Pandemic

As tens of millions of vaccinations move us closer and closer towards herd immunity and our old lives, many of us may finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. After almost a year of economic depression, quarantine, and social distancing, herd immunity seems to be our ticket “back to normal.” However, if this pandemic has shown us anything, it is that our “normal” has been painfully inadequate for too many and that, when the pandemic ends, our work to create meaningful change will be just beginning.

The obvious lesson we should glean from this past year is how necessary it is to invest in infectious disease prevention. In the two decades before the first coronavirus case was discovered, scientists, philanthropists, and academics warned us about how necessary investment and preventative work would be. By entering 2020 with a chronically underfunded World Health Organization and CDC, the US set itself up for failure. Already, the virus has cost our economy $16 trillion and spurred 60 million unemployment filings since March, spurring mass devastation. Even after we enter a slow recovery, it will take years to undo the economic and social damage this pandemic has wrought.

However, more importantly, this pandemic has shown how a weak social safety net leaves our fellow Americans without protection in times of crisis. Mass evictions and widespread hunger, poverty, and hopelessness are a reflection of America’s social safety net being one of the most anemic amongst all OECD countries. Without universal paid sick leave, ill workers have gone to work and spread COVID because they can’t afford to stay home. Without universal healthcare, one in four Americans have avoided doctor’s visits because of medical costs. A quarter of Americans have lost savings during the pandemic, even higher amongst Black and Hispanic families—and 38% of Americans who have lost their jobs can’t even last one month on their savings. 

As the pandemic wiped out what little wealth the working class possessed, the top 1% in our society has grown exorbitantly wealthier, with American billionaires gaining $1 trillion in profits between March and November. This immense prosperity is the product of what Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies describes as an “updraft of wealth to the billionaire class…at a time when millions face eviction, destitution, and loss”—the culmination of four decades of upwards wealth transfer in which the top 1% have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%. The exploitation of working people for exorbitant profits has continued through the pandemic. While Jeff Bezos made $48 billion between March and June, negligent underfunding of COVID safety protocols in Amazon warehouses have led the New York attorney general to file a lawsuit over insufficient workplace safety. 

At the end of this pandemic, we should pursue an aggressive expansion of social safety programs, which have been gutted by deficit hawks from both parties. Universal healthcare, housing, food, sick leave, and parental leave are the bare minimum expectations for the wealthiest society in the world: in a civilized nation, every person has the right to a dignified life. We must also double down on our commitment to invest the necessary $20-$40 billion each year on preventative measures to stop the next pandemic before it happens and engage in multilateral partnerships to better human health. Cooperation and investment will be the cornerstones of promoting public health. Most importantly, a total of $3.5 trillion in stimulus spending in less than a year proves what many of us have known all along: Budgets are moral documents constrained not by resources but by political will.

With the end of the pandemic in sight, we have a choice: either reverting to the “old normal,” where almost 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, fueled by subsistence wages and declining quality of life, or building a new society reflective of our needs and values. It is not radical to ask for basic needs to be met—it is humane. This pandemic has opened the gaping wounds unfettered free markets have left after years of deregulation, devolution, and privatization. When it’s over, it is up to us to fix them.

Ranen Miao ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at ranenmiao@wustl.edu.