We're at War With Coronavirus. And Bernie Should Be Our General.
By Dustin Guastella, Jacobin
20 March 20
Containment isn't enough. We need a wartime mobilization to expand coverage,
capacity, and production in order to test, trace, and treat coronavirus. And
Bernie Sanders must play a major role in advocating for more aggressive
measures.
he United States government is not doing nearly enough to handle the
coronavirus pandemic. While containment methods have been sharply increased
through the implementation of social distancing, the effective reduction of
traffic in public spaces, and the closure of nonessential businesses, the
rate of infected persons will likely increase exponentially in the days to
come.
What's more, with too few staffed hospital beds, even with a highly
effective containment strategy many will die from lack of treatment as
health care facilities become flooded those in need of urgent attention. And
while Congress scrambles to deal with the economic fallout of the crisis
many of the existing policy ideas are essentially variations on a
fundamentally defensive theme: tax rebates, tax cuts, relief checks, paid
sick leave.
We can surely slow the spread of the virus through these policies, that is,
we can buy time. Yet to really solve the crisis we need aggressive
government action that goes beyond epidemiologic or economic containment. We
need economic planning and a wartime-like mobilization of existing
resources, personnel, and infrastructure.
Expand Coverage
Firstly, we need an emergency Medicare expansion to cover the costs for
treatment and testing for all citizens. It's clear that government health
care has been far more effective at handling the crisis than patchwork
systems, with South Korea as the world's leading example.
While all countries are using the strong containment methods employed in the
United States, those with integrated health care systems and universal
coverage are better able to quickly steer their health systems in the
direction of treatment and testing. With a single system, countries are able
to aggressively test, treat, and trace cases while slowing the spread of the
disease. But slowing the spread is only effective insofar as we can treat
cases effectively and this means we need to greatly expand the state's
capacity to handle infected patients.
Expand Capacity
Expanding capacity would require a massive expansion of medically staffed
beds for the sick with the goal of ensuring that the elderly and those who
are seriously ill are able to receive critical care. New York governor
Andrew Cuomo rightly argued for the use of the Army Corps of Engineers to
build new facilities but the conversion of existing public schools, which
are currently sitting empty, into care centers for those with mild cases
could provide a major expansion of staffed beds.
Of course, next we would need to figure out how to staff those beds.
Luckily, we have the best funded and most highly organized pool of potential
care center workers anywhere in the world: the United States Armed Forces.
The rapid expansion of frontline medical personnel requires that we train
soldiers (alongside volunteers) in frontline medical treatment to be
deployed throughout the country but especially in hot spots to help triage
with local medical staff.
Only the military has the ability to move thousands of people across the
continent to meet urgent needs, and it's a far better use of their resources
than anything else they could be doing right now.
In a matter of weeks the Public Health Service working in coordination with
nurses unions and physicians associations could train thousands to become
"mild care" front-line medics - for those who are in too severe of condition
to be trusted with self-quarantines but in too mild of condition to justify
ICU.
Expand Production and Distribution
Now even if we were able to expand health coverage and hospital bed capacity
we still have one major obstacle: the production and distribution of needed
medical supplies. Right now - some forty-four days out from the projected
peak of the crisis - we are falling well short of producing enough supplies
to properly test and treat the disease caused by coronavirus. New Jersey
governor Phil Murphy requested over 2 million respirators but received only
84,578.
Here is where the greatest level of economic planning for the production and
distribution of goods will be needed. The government must sequester - or at
least commandeer the management of - existing manufacturing plants in order
to rapidly expand the production of N95 masks, portable respirators, medical
gowns and gloves, protective face-shields, and of course, antiviral
medicines and other pharmacological products needed to treat the disease.
Further, the government must use its existing distribution system, the
United States Postal Service, to distribute these materials to needed
facilities and hot-spots on command.
Given the rapid spread of the virus the capacity to treat it will be greatly
diminished without a massive coordinated effort across public and private
institutions. Yet in a country with well-funded and highly organized
permanent armed services, and with existing public infrastructure available
for conversion in every zip code, the crisis could be contained and the toll
on most Americans could be seriously lessened. But this all supposes the
political will (and skill) is available and to make that happen.
Bernie Sanders Is the Leader We Need
Bernie Sanders fared about as badly as many of us expected on Tuesday and
yesterday he sent an email to his supporters sending a clear message that he
is mulling over his options.
Ironically, it is now when his popularity could be marshaled to the greatest
effect. Bernie is the most trusted politician in the country when it comes
to health care and further, he is the most forceful and imaginative
policymaker in the Democratic caucus.
The Democrats are currently getting badly outflanked by the Trump
administration, with Kamala Harris laughably proposing less than half of
what her GOP counterparts were suggesting for stimulus. Further, Democratic
leaders - relying on a commonsense view of a political consensus which no
longer exists - have failed to properly criticize those Republicans with
economic solutions to the crisis, many are actually attacking Trump from the
right.
And if the Trump administration succeeds in their plans to offer immediate
relief, while the Democrats squawk like stodgy budget hawks, the GOP could
be in office for decades to come - even if their woefully inadequate
policies end up resulting in many more needless deaths.
In order for the Left to steer the ship though, we cannot just offer
different versions of GOP talking points around paychecks and paid sick
leave. To fight on Donald Trump's terrain - to quibble over commas and
decimals in budgetary proposals for stimulus bills, or to question the
distribution method for basic income proposals - is surely a losing
strategy. We need to be more aggressive, and we need a set of policy
solutions built around the need to use the federal government's tremendous
power to expand coverage, capacity, and production in order to test, treat,
and trace the virus.
We need to talk about this like we were mobilizing for war. This isn't just
good policy, it's good politics. We need to show that with a coordinated
planned effort, and a little bravery to take on the corporate elite, we can
win.
And who better to do this than the only senator who wishes to resurrect the
spirit of the New Deal.
Sanders can lead the effort to reimagine government right now if he focuses
heavily on leading the Democratic response to the crisis. And we need
leadership right now, clear and concrete leadership from the only person who
understands what to do.
After all, Bernie can be credited as the architect for the present emergency
tax-rebate basic income proposals, which are largely based on policies he
suggested to handle the dot com crash of the early aughts. And his current
proposals, released Tuesday night, far outpace the Trump administration and
congressional Democrats. They embody the kind of sweeping agenda that could
make this crisis point a moment that ushers in the end of neoliberalism and
the beginning of a new era in economic policy.
Bernie's presidential future looks grim but his ability to fundamentally
reshape government in the service of staving off a crisis of global
proportion has never been greater.
