We could fix a lot of things

[sabotabby]

@dewline mentioned the Shock Doctrine. That, for anyone who hasn't read it, is Naomi Klein's excellent book about how right-wing governments and corporations use disasters to enforce their ideology on the rest of us. He suggested two can play that game.

This is why I'm only panicky some of the time. Because shit-scared as I am, I'm seeing it happen.

Let us review some ways to mitigate pandemics:

• Universal health care. The US is in a uniquely vulnerable position for a number of reasons, but chief among them is a refusal to test and treat COVID-19 patients for free. Their patchwork healthcare system is already becoming overwhelmed. 
• Universal Pharmacare, a.k.a. why we should have voted NDP in the last election. The fact that we don't have this is likely going to be a problem for us.
• Rethinking how we do education. The Ford government is going to attempt mandatory eLearning, and it's going to fail because they can't even design a license plate. But you know what's even worse? Cramming 40 kids in a classroom built for 25. A huge push in my board has been to shutter underutilized school buildings and move towards closing any school with less than 1000 students. In a small school with extra space, you can do social distancing. In a school at 90% capacity, you can't.
• Building redundancy into staffing. The problem isn't that the virus is going to kill us all. The problem is that the virus is going to overwhelm hospitals. But longer term, it's also going to overwhelm other key institutions when critical people fall ill and have to be quarantined. Just-in-time staffing, which is what most companies and now schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc., do, makes us more vulnerable in a pandemic. We need to have extra nurses, extra caretakers, extra childcare workers, extra cooks, even if they're sitting around doing nothing some of the time, because redundancy allows the company or institution to maintain continuity of operations through a crisis.
• Housing for all. You can't quarantine if you don't have a home, and unhoused/transient populations spread a pandemic faster.
• Loan, debt, and rent forgiveness. Bailouts aren't just for banks. If we allow people to fall into poverty as a result of either getting sick or having their place of work shut down, we worsen the epidemic by having people unhoused or in transient situations.
• Paid sick leave. This goes without saying.
• Robust internet access. So we can work from home when we need to.
• Greater support for disabled, ill, and elderly people. They are the primary people who are at risk and we need to work together to ensure that resources are maximized to help them survive.
• Ending arbitrary detention. Prisons and concentration camps are disease vectors. We have to avoid imprisoning people to the greatest extent possible, especially vulnerable populations.
• Strong communities. More on that in a bit.

What do these things have in common? Oh, only the kind of stuff that the moderate left has been demanding, when it summons the courage.

And at the risk of silver linings, observe these maps of China and extrapolate to a worldwide pandemic. I'm not one of those silver lining types but we have learned that we can probably get away with producing less, driving less, and flying less, and maybe continuous exponential growth that primarily benefits a rich minority at the expense of growing inequality isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Here is the awesome thing, though. People are starting to get it, I think. A pandemic is a collective problem with collective solutions, and the super-rich hiding in their bunkers won't last forever if there's no one to clean their floors. Let's look at a few good news stories.

• Trudeau, who rarely does anything I agree with, is suggesting income supports, basically amounting to a temporary UBI scheme.
• OH LOOK it turns out that Toronto can house the homeless after all! Note that we could have done this any time.
• In Louisiana, a proposal to empty the jails of non-violent offenders.
• San Francisco is putting a moratorium on evictions during the crisis, as is New York.
• I'm not even going to watch this video of Italians singing out of their windows because I've cried enough for one day, thank you very much.

Here in Toronto, within hours of the closures beginning, a Facebook group started up to provide community support. People are making sure that elderly, sick, and disabled folks get the supplies they need, arranging food and childcare, posting where there's toilet paper and where there are shorter lineups, suggesting things to do to maintain sanity, and generally assessing people's needs and capacity to help. Friends have started Slack groups. I've felt moved to tears several times as I've had to reassure friends, students, and co-workers, and other friends have stepped up to try to reassure me.

When I went grocery shopping for some basic supplies, everyone was nice to each other. There weren't huge lineups or hoarding. Everyone is scared but everyone was also really friendly and putting on brave faces. My internet company, TekSavvy, just removed all data caps on everyone's account because they knew people would be relying on the internet more. I've seen a few folks in crisis but I haven't seen a solitary person being an asshole.

Now, this situation may change as we haven't really been hit with a crisis yet. But if we can maintain this level of social solidarity, we have a fighting chance against the crisis hitting.

It is true that there's a strong attempt to use the Shock Doctrine the way it's always been used. Thing is, it...isn't working so well this time. If China hadn't started out covering up the severity of the outbreak, it would have fared better. The US crisis will almost certainly be exacerbated by its tendencies towards secrecy and authoritarianism. If people realize it, this might lead to better political outcomes (I hope without widespread death.)

Thing is, people tend towards the cooperative in emergencies, contrary to every disaster movie and most post-apocalyptic literature. I want to leave you with the article that made me cry today, from the New York Times. It's about the Great Alaska Earthquake in 1964 and I think it says a lot about the resiliency of solidarity and community and how cooperation is the key to surviving horrible events. 

Comments

[sara]

I think we're seeing some of those things, here...but wow I think we're all also in such shock at how fast it's all been going.

I believe we're going to come out the other side but I also think things are about to get much, much worse for a while here.

[sabotabby]

I just read a great article about how people are stepping up in Seattle where the government has failed.

But...

While there are a lot of Americans I care about a whole lot on a personal level, the greatest concentration of them live in the Seattle area and the fact that Washington state is such a clusterfuck right now is breaking my heart.

[sara]

Yeah. It's...I just got off the phone with my brother and my mom, because they are really deeply in denial about how fast things have gone and how serious it is and how likely this is to happen where they are.

And the government...well, we'll see how we do. We're trying. I know the state emergency management division was stood up on Tuesday/Wednesday and I think things started to get a lot more srs bznss very quickly.

My brother kept saying things like, "But society can't just...shut down," and I was like, um, it's great that you think that's not what we're doing this week. But that's what we're doing this week.

[sabotabby]

I'm concerned about how long it can shut down for.

But while we're shutting it down we might as well reboot it and install an upgraded OS.

[sara]

Yeah, although locally, the Gates Foundation and Jeff Bezos do seem to be swinging into action fairly effectively, so I'm not sure this is going to stick a fork in capitalism.

[sabotabby]

It's definitely not a shift that will happen on its own. The rich and powerful will be attempting to use this crisis to their advantage.

[sara]

Well, yes, but at the moment the Gates Foundation is paying for a lot of foundational science and medicine through the Seattle Flu Study (they're actually out in shelters testing kids, which the Dept of Health hasn't got capacity for right now) so I'm not prepared to eat the rich this week. Not all the rich, anyway.

[dewline]

There might be further leveraging afoot. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but over on Facebook, Justin Beach - a longtime acquaintance of mine dating back to my designing a logo for publicbroadcasting.ca back when he founded it to support the locked-out CBC personnel in the summer of 2005 - pointed out a tweet by Chrystia Freeland.

https://twitter.com/cafreeland/status/1238610489564893184

Take it with as much salt as you see fit. But this might be a unique moment of leverage opportunity.

[sabotabby]

I don't trust her farther than I can throw her, but the severity of the crisis might mean that the methods I agree with, politically, are required. Even from neoliberals.

[mallorys_camera]

The US is in a uniquely vulnerable position for a number of reasons, but chief among them is a refusal to test and treat COVID-19 patients for free.

Well. The refusal to test for COVID-19 at all in the U.S.

Almost certainly, this is a move initiated by Trump to keep numbers down. He's said as much publicly.

I hope you are correct that the current crisis reboots society with a more progressive OS.

[sabotabby]

It's shocking. He's absolutely the worst person possible to be in charge. I can't get over that they refused test kits.

[dewline]

Terrifying.

[springheel_jack]

where the pay-to-play comes in is that all the lab capacity is in for-profit lab corps. So even if there were test kits early on, there was little public lab capacity that could be brought into play without paying a high rate per kit, and nobody wanted to do that for the couple weeks it would have mattered. now we've got that part sorted, but it's too late to do anything useful. we're way past the point contact tracing would have helped.

[springheel_jack]

the other problem is we don't have a rapid antibody test yet, at all. The kind we're using requires a swab to go in to a lab for PCR. We needed an antibody test three months ago and it didn't exist. c'est la vie.

[lapinlunaire]

Yeah, this is the sort of scenario where the Shock Doctrine doesn't work very well and makes things worse. I really want to believe people will learn something from this, but I'm very skeptical about human nature and I keep thinking of the many situations thoroughout history that you'd think people would have learnt from.

People not being selfish assholes seems to make a huge difference in how community respond. In Taiwan, apparently it really helped that people stuck to recommendations, e.g. being told to NOT buy masks unnecessarily to avoid shortages, so they didn't.

Unfortunately, here people are being assholes -- wasting masks, hoarding stuff, abandoning their pets, etc. I wish they too could stfu and do what they're told. I'm far from authoritarian but I sincerely believe that an able-minded adult should be able to grasp basic directions and why they matter. If not for the fact that these assholes are a risk to everyone else, I'd be ok with letting them get sick.

I think you're probably right that people become more cooperative in emergencies but if so, it sucks that when things are normal people suck as much as they do.

In short, in some ways I'm optimistic that you're right but emotionally this is having the opposite effect on me and I feel like hate people in general more, not less.

[sabotabby]

I think that there has to be a certain balance between authoritarian measures and transparency. China's success came as a result of it being able to demand things of its citizens that don't fly in democracies, but its authoritarian nature also meant an initial lack of transparency that cost thousands of lives. The US is failing because it has authoritarianism without civic responsibility. Iran is failing because that + 50 years of sanctions.

I'm hoping that we've struck the right balance here. If anything I think our government errs on leaving too much to people's personal discretion, but there's enough civic-mindedness that citizens are filling in the gaps and stores are limiting toilet paper and other essentials. (The toilet paper thing is so stupid—Ontario produces a shit-ton and there's no shortage, it's just that people saw on social media that there was toilet paper hoarding so...they decided to do that too?)

Today I still don't hate people. We'll see how I do as the crisis worsens.

[lapinlunaire]

China's success came as a result of it being able to demand things of its citizens

I don't know. Taiwan was very successful for a country that wasn't the epicentre but was close by and it's not an authoritarian regime afaik. I think it's about people's mindsets. We've also seen this in catastrophes elsewhere, like when elderly citizens banded together to clean up in the aftermath of Fukushima. It ultimately boils down to whether people think keeping shit together is more important than what they personally want in an emergency.

You're spot on about civic-mindedness. I'd say that people here are not civic-minded so they've been doing things like emptying supermarket shelves irrationally. The most civic-mindedness I've been witnessing has been in really specific situations, largely from people from other cultures or from more rural, tight-knit locations.

[sabotabby]

I think Taiwan is an interesting case because they hit the perfect balance. They did take quite extreme measures but also people had the sort of civic-mindedness that America is lacking. Definitely the model to emulate if one has a choice.

[mistersmearcase]

A friend posted an article about stupid fucking idiots showing up in Chicago to celebrate St. Patrick's day because carpe fucking diem, man, can't put my life on hold for some virus. Civic responsibility: not big here.

[sabotabby]

Yup, American individualism and all that. Even the Irish aren't having a parade.

[minoanmiss]

*contempltes*

[sabotabby]

:)

[mistersmearcase]

we can probably get away with producing less, driving less, and flying less

I've been wondering if people will get this and I think it will have to go on for a LONG while if it's not going to just be five billion people saying "oh good, finally we can go back to normal."

[sabotabby]

I am admittedly wanting this so much. I want to go to my concerts and parties. I want to be back at work (though work hasn't been normal for me for a long time). I want to be able to go to the shop whenever I feel like it and have whatever I want to be there. I want to be able to travel and see my friends.

And I feel like I'm maybe in the more-educated-about-this-than-most category? So I can't imagine how it for types who are low-information and selfish.

[mistersmearcase]

I mean, my baggage with the question of travel in particular is obvious. I sometimes feel like I'm regarded as a boor because travel isn't my thing, so in a weird way it's a relief that it's not only not an expectation right now, but a thing we probably can't do for a while. But as far as being able to go to the store and see my friends, yeah, I'd give a lot to know we could go back to normal in some short time span. Right now I'm fine, and in some ways getting something out of the restrictions, but it's been a few days and could be...god knows how long.

[sabotabby]

I sometimes feel like I'm regarded as a boor because travel isn't my thing, so in a weird way it's a relief that it's not only not an expectation right now, but a thing we probably can't do for a while

I get you. I love travelling, personally, but I also feel relief when social events are cancelled, and I have been self-isolating all year. My mom told me that she was temporarily going to suspend nagging me about dating.

I would enjoy this a lot more if I knew it had a definitive endpoint, though.

[ironed_orchid]

I keep thinking that this could be a wonderful opportunity to change the way things work... but that it needs to happen right the fuck now, before too many people suffer.

[sabotabby]

We have an excellent opportunity to reevaluate what we are doing and what we need. For example, they finally cancelled the standardized literacy test and have said it won't affect anyone's graduation. Really? Awesome. So students never really needed it to graduate, and now they can go back to reading books in Grade 10 and actually learning things, at a cost savings of millions.