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corona-mar13
Democrats have a similar prescription to fight the coronavirus.
First Response
The two remaining Democratic presidential candidates addressed the nation yesterday, and despite their many differences, reading Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden’s speeches I was struck by how similar they were. You’d expect some parallels—the communitarian, “we’re all in this together” impulse, the blunt assessment of the president’s performance—but what I mean is the policies were the same. In general the entire party has the same message for immediate response to COVID-19, and it reflects a moral as much as a technocratic accounting of the public need.
“Anyone who needs to be tested based on medical guidelines should be tested—at no charge,” said Bernie, I mean Joe Biden. “When we do have a vaccine ready to go, it should also be made widely available, free of charge,” said Bernie, I mean Joe Biden. “A week from now… we could need an instant, 500-bed hospital to isolate and treat patients in any city in the country. We can do that,” said Bernie, I mean Joe Biden.”
When the Democratic Socialists of America are endorsing the Nancy Pelosi-written Families First Coronavirus Response Act, as they did Thursday night, you know that there’s a broad consensus, a very activist consensus, for immediate, compassionate, direct action. I have to think that part of this has to do with the year-plus public debate we’ve been having about our health care system and how to make it a human right for every man, woman, and child in this country.
It turns out that, by laying the groundwork, you can teach the public that a better world is possible. Yes, it was a stilted debate, yes it was dominated by “How will you pay for that” nonsense. But it also laid out the current realities of a for-profit health care system, and our public health system in general, where frontline workers have to make the choice between coming into work sick or losing their pay. And the moral language that primarily Sanders has been using to discuss health care has crept into mainstream liberal voices.
During the financial crisis, Tim Geithner was fond of saying “Plan beats no plan.” He had an idea—bail out the banks—and left reformers for the most part didn’t. So he won. Well, 12 years later we have a plan to deal with a global pandemic, and a health crisis generally. You don’t make people getting treatment reliant on ability to pay, period; you make it available and accessible to all. The Sanders-left has the plan. And the entire Democratic Party is on board with it.
WEBINAR Alert
The Prospect and our friends at the American Economic Liberties Project are teaming up on a webinar on Tuesday, March 17 at 3pm ET. We’re calling it The Coronavirus Challenge.
The coronavirus has revealed much about we make and distribute medicine and other key goods. Over 90 percent of the chemicals that go into our medicine come from China, which was temporarily shut down. Pharmacists and doctors are beginning to notice shortages, in what one trade publication calls the “pharmaceutical version of The Hunger Games.” And it’s not just medicine. We are dependent on Chinese production for everything from bibles to batteries to parts for advanced drones and missiles. The shutdown of production and trade as a result of the coronavirus reveals how our everyday lives and national security are dependent on China.
Join me, AELP Senior Fellow Lucas Kunce and the Brookings Institution’s Rush Doshi, who will offer thoughts on the current crisis. How can we restore resiliency and redundancy to our supply chains? What are the best tools for our policymakers in addressing the current crisis?
RSVP to info-at-prospect-dot-org for The Coronavirus Challenge webinar, and we’ll send you an email about how to participate. Put "coronavirus challenge" in the subject line. That’s Tuesday, March 17 at 3pm ET. We will also be notifying email subscribers later today with a more formal invite.
Vital Stats
According to the CDC, there are 1,215 total U.S. cases of COVID-19 and 36 deaths as of Thursday, March 12. This is almost definitely an undercount. They’ll update this number later today.
The COVID-19 Tracker of testing for the coronavirus estimates about 11,515 tests within the country as of March 12, up from 7,617 the day before. State-level data is available there as well. This still leaves a lot of sick people who want testing and cannot get it.
Congressional Wrangling
As noted yesterday, Senate Republicans went from blasting the House bill and vowing to go on a planned recess to canceling it. Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are negotiating and, to hear Pelosi tell it, they should reach a deal Friday morning.
Senate Republicans may be holdouts, apparently seeking to go into reelection by taking a stand on forcing people to infect their workplaces. I don’t think it will hold; when conservatives on The Wall Street Journal op-ed page are calling for a basic income, the writing’s on the wall.
It looks like nutritional assistance for poor children, free testing for all, state funding for Medicaid, increased food stamps and unemployment benefits, and some form of paid emergency leave are all in. Another provision would give certain facemask manufacturers a temporary liability release, which is really kind of ridiculous, but probably the only way they’ll increase production.
Elsewhere, what Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) did on Thursday to find the executive authority to make all testing free, and secure a promise from the head of the CDC to do so, was nothing short of masterful. For that matter, even Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) did quite a job getting Dr. Anthony Fauci to admit that nobody in government is really in control of the testing debacle. The lack of testing is appalling lawmakers and public health experts, and we know the reason why: It was deliberate under-testing to juke the stats, which is going to get a tragically large number of people killed on this president’s watch.
TAP Coverage
Here's our latest COVID-19 coverage:
David Dayen on the oil price collapse.
Steven Greenhouse on paid sick leave.
Robert Kuttner on fighting the coronavirus-caused economic collapse.
Gabrielle Gurley on social distancing.
Mike Elk on how coronavirus is changing a union organizing drive at Delta.
All of our coverage can be found at prospect.org/coronavirus.
The View from Your Window
I asked on Twitter for people to tell me how they were experiencing the crisis in their part of the country. I received an email from reader B. (I’ll keep her name confidential), a graduate student at the University of Washington, near the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S. She and her husband live in Kirkland, near the infamous Lifecare nursing home. Here’s part of that email:
For white collar workers, we are about one week into work from home and Kirkland itself is pretty dead. It usually has a lovely downtown and about ten percent of the usual pedestrian traffic is out and about. Lots of the local businesses are already struggling.
People are afraid but those of us who can work from home realize we are very lucky. The scariest day for me was March 1. We heard sirens all afternoon, almost every ten minutes, and weren’t sure if it was coronavirus related or not. Now it seems like it was probably related to the Lifecare cases…
I am teaching my first independent course this spring, a lecture with hundreds of students. I am frustrated to have to convert my course materials to online [teaching] with little notice and don’t feel I’m at all appropriately compensated for this work. However, I’m torn—is a crisis the right time to push for labor rights in academia? Should I complain or do it for the good of the country? I imagine lots of other people are asking themselves similar questions.
This has not been widely discussed relative to higher education, but adjunct professors and graduate students are performing effectively uncompensated labor as a result of dramatic changes to the learning environment. It’s not an isolated incident either. Contingent faculty organizing has been raging the past few years, and the wildcat strike at U.C. Santa Cruz over the inability for grad students to afford housing is a good example of the strains here. Questions of digital equity and technical capability for online learning are important, but so is basic worker fairness.
Please, if you have stories about how you’re dealing with COVID-19, email me at ddayen-at-prospect-dot-org.
The Fed Cannon
Just briefly on the Federal Reserve’s $1.5 trillion liquidity action, which didn’t really do the job of slowing down the market flameout, nor did it fix screwy trading markets acting in contradictory fashion. Jeff Spross has a nice breakdown of this. The short version is that the Fed has been trying to fix the overnight bank repurchase (“repo”) lending market for several months. Banks trade bushels of money with each other overnight to settle cash needs. This represents a bigger Fed bazooka to sustain that short-term lending.
Metaphorically, it represents the Fed saying that they’re willing to do “whatever it takes,” mirroring what the European Central Bank chair Mario Draghi said during the worst of the euro crisis to calm investor nerves. Of course, “whatever it takes” for central banks means “whatever it takes for the banks.” Congress gave the Fed tools to lend into the non-financial economy, and I suspect calls will grow for them to actually use it.
Today I Learned
- Ohio health official estimates 100,000 cases… in that state alone. (The Hill)
- An aide to Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro has the virus. He was standing behind Trump last weekend at Mar-a-lago. (The Intercept)
- Empty store shelves nationwide in this tweet thread from the retail worker coalition United for Respect. (Twitter)
- Single-digit new cases in Wuhan for two straight days. Hopeful news. (Reuters)
- Gavin Newsom executive order in California allows the state to commandeer hotels to treat patients. (Los Angeles Times)
- Elizabeth Warren updated her coronavirus response plan. (ElizabethWarren.com)
- A profane website for our times. (StayTheF**kHome.com)
