The news that Ireland is nationalizing its healthcare system for the duration of the coronavirus crisis inspired observers including Rep. Ilhan Omar to call for the same approach in the U.S. as the world’s largest economy faces the disease.
A 2014 report warned that reforms to the NHS would make it vulnerable to pandemics – by making staff redundant, undermining public health and defining spare capacity as waste. It was ignored.
“Sick… guess we didn’t move quick enough after all…” — Stephen King, The Stand.
The Covid-19 Shock Meets an Impending Economic Recession
As of March 2020, the world is back to the future. The global financial crisis of 2007-08, which escalated into a global financial meltdown in September 2008, was supposed to be the big bang crisis, a once in a lifetime event. And yet, here we are again.
Some Canadian organizations are asking the federal government to focus any bailout of the oil industry on workers and families, not corporations.
The request comes in an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, released Tuesday morning and signed by environmental organizations, faith and labour groups that the signatories say represent about 1.3 million people.
“Giving billions of dollars to failing oil and gas companies will not help workers and only prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels,” the letter says.
I’VE SPENT TWO decades studying the transformations that take place under the cover of disaster. I’ve learned that one thing we can count on is this: During moments of cataclysmic change, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes reality. In recent decades, that change has mainly been for the worst — but this has not always been the case. And it need not continue to be in the future.
“‘There is a rich man’s tuberculosis and a poor man’s tuberculosis. The rich man recovers and the poor man dies.’ This succinctly expresses the close embrace of economics and pathology.” – Dr. Norman Bethune, 1932
