The pandemic has provided us with several lessons and even -- Robin Sears writes -- at least one gift:
The first lesson of this pandemic is that we must never be caught so flat-footed again. Canada will not soon let its public health infrastructure get this weak and under-funded. Grumbling about influence and delays by competing countries notwithstanding, the success and commitment of the UN, the WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many other national entities both public and private must not end. These organizations have done an admirable job coordinating research, testing and funding.
The second lesson is more painful: some social cultures are positively dangerous in public health terms. Those obsessed with individual rights and “liberty” over solidarity have lost badly. Those graced with courageous leaders and a tradition of trust in their institutions have mostly won.
The most painful lessons of all are the inequities and injustices COVID has revealed:
The most painful cracks in our society have been revealed by COVID: how we treat our parents and grandparents; how blind we are to the cost of homelessness and racism; how many children go to bed hungry. Please let us accept this painful “gift of COVID” with a serious and unshakeable commitment to close some of these cracks. If not out of a humane ethical response, then do get it because the cracks make us all more vulnerable.
But we have also been given a gift:
We began this year on the verge of perhaps the deepest divisions the country has seen since the Quebec referendums. COVID-19 united Canadians in a common struggle. One that I hope we be will able to look back and say, ”We defeated this together as a nation.” If there’s anything positive about the virus, this is it.
If we take the lessons and the gift to heart, we can make Canada a better place for all of us.
Image: Amazon
6 comments:
"Canada will not soon let its public health infrastructure get this weak and under-funded."
Oh really? Have you your annual flu shot? Who gave it to you? Your doctor? A public health nurse? Your pharmacist? Up until a couple of years ago our public health administration held annual flu shot clinics in which most of our seniors and fragile people lined up and were inoculated en masse. Now pharmacists have almost total control.
You can draw your own conclusions but to me it looks like the thin edge of privatization. Nurses take a hit and a bit of the public health budget is given to big corporations.
Certainly, the urge to privatize healthcare is there, Toby -- most notably in Alberta. That's why it's important to pay really careful attention to what their political parties are telling them.
BEWARE
there are those in Canada who have used covid as cover to exacerbate the health system and aggravate the homeless situation. Look no further than Albertas Shandrow and Kenney to find the fundamentalist punishment "of those who God has forsaken"
The addicted , sick , poor or old have little room in their new world
Wouldn't it be great if we had a national epiphany, a restoration of progressive democracy? The thing is that depends on a political enlightenment. That's a tall order. Consider this. Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist whose focus, as far back as his dissertation, has been inequality, conclusively demonstrates that inequality today is neither market nor merit based. It is legislated. Our supposedly democratic governments, whether Canadian, American, British, etc., have enacted laws that have skewed the game in favour of corporations and accumulated wealth. Any Canadian born since the Mulroney era began has known nothing else. This is their reality. Many of those even older take this as their normal, creeping normalcy.
The pandemic ramped up the responsibilities and the powers of these same neoliberal political parties. They have driven the levers of power right to the stops. They have also revealed how power, as they exercise it, is limited. Covid-19 has captured government. It is the focus of debate. The virus, in it's several permutations, commands the government spending power. This is not a criticism of the focus. We can't let society collapse. Yet this pandemic reveals how government struggles with a crisis. What would ensue if, as some in the scientific community warn, we begin to experience these things in a cascade of simultaneous or at least overlapping emergencies? What then? Once Covid-19 joins the Spanish Flu in medical texts, how long will it take us to restore our economic equilibrium if that's even possible? Where will we find the resources to meet the future emergencies said to be looming? How do we harness our resources to serve the long-term public interest rather than short-term corporate and private interests?
I too hope we will come out of the pandemic with a sense of having defeated it together. I have long banged the drum for a rebirth of social cohesion. It would be great if a pandemic could trigger that, a tangible return on our suffering and sacrifice. I think that could happen but only if we chart a new course instead of going back to the path we've been on for the last 40-50 years. Are we willing to demand what is almost revolutionary change? Do we even sense our vulnerability if we don't change?
Modern conservatism has always preached a strong commitment to Social Darwinism, lungta. The pandemic provides an excellent opportunity to put its principles into effect.
Good questions, Mound. You would think that after fifty years of trickle-down baloney we'd stop buying the stuff. COVID has given us a clear picture of our vulnerabilities. And more of the same isn't going to make us less vulnerable.
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