Pandemic questions

There is a push on now to reopen economies worldwide. China was the first, other countries are eager to join them. I find this interesting.

First of all, the idea of an "economy", and that it is so important that we need to get back to the way it was before, even if it puts our health or the health of others at risk.

Second of all, in parallel with this push is the speculation or discussion of how we could do things differently, since the pandemic has highlighted some serious flaws in our "economies".

Among those flaws are:
- the economic inequalities that make some people more vulnerable to disease and death (homelessness, lack of access to healthcare, domestic abuse, the struggles of low income single mothers to survive, not to mention all the other low income folks, etc),
- the way we care for our elders (nursing homes as hotbeds of disease due to inadequate care, isolation and low paid care workers), and
- the inadequate preparation for almost any kind of large scale emergency (lack of both equipment and protocols), even though we have had plenty of learning opportunities in the recent past.

I'm sure there's more. But the point is that many people are hopeful that now that those flaws and inadequacies have been exposed, we will work toward addressing them. A lot of solutions have been proposed. Universal basic income, better funded universal healthcare, much better funded social housing, better urban public transportation systems, better this, better that.

What I wonder is, in our rush to get back to the way things used to be, how much room is there really for any kind of reform? I seriously doubt that there is any room at all. We want our economies back to the way they were, people working and spending to support business, with a little extra toward public amenities.

During this pandemic we have seen a resurgence of the natural world and an improvement in levels of pollution and environmental damage. We are not driving and burning carbon-based fuels nearly as much and that is a positive in the battle against human-caused climate change. But really, how do we make room for continuing those improvements when all we really want is "to get back to normal"?

I hope that there are enough vocal activists to clamour for lasting change.
I hope elders will resist harder to being pushed into inadequate nursing homes.
I hope healthcare and personal support workers will push for more adequate pay, given how necessary their work is.
I hope governments will wake up to those concerns.

In this emergency governments have spent massively to get through it, large amounts of public money are being spent on things that only a few months ago politicians and public service administrators would have told us were just not possible, we just couldn't afford it, not even on a temporary basis.

The thing about government budgets is, it depends on your priorities and public values. Do we keep business on life support, or people? Do we recognize the real dangers of inequalities or do we pay lip service, saying that "these things take time"?

I think we don't have time on our side. We have used it all up.