"COVID has been a perfect illustration of how our government now works. In a crisis, it will provide benefits, but only the absolute minimum it determines necessary to protect the system from political upheaval. And then, as soon as stability is restored, it will take them away."
-------Union organizer Jack Califano
"Several lessons emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and frame our approach to planning for the next pandemic.
"First, there are three 'partners' in this enterprise: the government, the public health establishment, and the communities. Each partner has an important role to play in insuring that we learn these lessons and can meet the next challenge with a better chance at survival. But there is an underlying issue of excess power held by the American oligopoly and the politicians allied with them. They profit in power and wealth from the array of policies David Harvey (2019) labeled 'accumulation by dispossession.'
"Any serious examination of pandemic threat must confront the danger contained in such one-sided power. Part of the way in which the oligopoly has gained and maintained power is by undermining communities and destroying their organizations. While this is good for short-term profit, it poses an enormous threat to long-term survival. Rebuilding community power is an essential part of epidemic control."
--------Pandemic Thinktank
Source: Rob Wallace, The Fault in Our SARS - COVID-19 in the Biden Era, Monthly Review, 2023, pps. 352-3
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