Can Covid Spawn Public Health ​“New Deal”?

The U.S.‘s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the cracks in the country’s ​“circle of care” — and has presented an opening for social-justice advocates to advance long-term change.

Two veteran activists and academics are making that case in calling for a Public Health New Deal to emerge from the coronavirus crisis.

Yale Law School Professor Amy Kapczynski and Yale School of Medicine Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Gregg Gonsalves made the case during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

Kapczynski and Gonsalves discussed two essays they recently co-wrote for the Boston Review about the structural inequalities laid bare by this crisis, and the need for building a new politics and infrastructure of care during and after the pandemic.

From their perspectives as both academics and veteran organizers, Kapczynski and Gonsalves said today’s crises reveal a deep history of politically determined racial, economic, and social inequality at the core of American society.

“The virus is working kind of like an X‑Ray of our society to show up underlying failures of our government, failures of our social safety net, and failures of our health care system,” said Kapczynski.

She pointed out that a for-profit health care system that is linked to employment inevitably fails on a mass scale when millions upon millions of people suddenly lose their employment.

Not having decent conditions of work, with limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and insufficient, often non-existent, paid sick leave, means that a vast majority of Americans cannot stay healthy on the job. Nor can they afford to stay home sick.

Essential ​“frontline workers,” whether they be in the health care field or grocery store clerks, are forced into incredibly vulnerable situations with few protections for their safety and pay.

“When we need to stay home for a period of time, we have no safety net to catch people as they’re falling,” she said.

While prisoners and undocumented immigrants and homeless people may be the most vulnerable members of society at this present moment, she said, they are not alone.

Just ask laid-off workers still waiting for their unemployment compensation applications to be processed by atrophied state-run labor departments. Or business owners trying to access federal small business relief by navigating a byzantine network of private banks and the Small Business Administration.

“It’s not an accident that we have the worst coronavirus epidemic in the world,” said Gonsalves.

That’s because this country has more people incarcerated than any other in the world, and it’s health care system was built in large part on depriving black and brown people of equal access to hospitals.

“We can’t flatten the curve for one portion of the population and think that we’re going to be able to successfully flatten it across the country overall. The most vulnerable among us are implicated in our own safety.”

“We need to rebuild and democratize the institutions that we have at the same time that we’re working quickly to stem the tide of the pandemic,” added Kapczynski.

She said that rebuilding institutions that focus on distributing food to the hungry, direct cash assistance to workers in need, safe housing and quality health care for everyone, will help ​“expand the circle of care” — now, and well into the future.

In their Boston Review pieces ​“Alone Against the Virus” and ​“Markets v. Lives” and in an open letter submitted in March to federal, state, and local leaders, Gonsalves and Kapczynski argue for the federal government to coordinate production and distribution of personal protective equipment; a dramatic surge in coronavirus testing; a massive infusion of resources and support to clinics and hospitals; direct cash assistance and a bolstered social safety net; the release of elderly prisoners and those at high risk of disease; and safe housing for the homeless, among many other demands.

Kapczynski and Gonsalves were asked about what role local government can play in building such a future. They pointed to municipalities taking the lead on providing housing for the homeless, employment for young people in activities that can provide care for the needy, coordinating the provision of food to the hungry, and making sure that undocumented immigrants feel safe going to the hospital without fearing that they might be apprehended and deported.

Gonsalves cautioned that states often have fixed budgets.

He said that large employers like Yale University, Yale New Haven Hospital, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Aetna, and others are going to have to ​“play a greater role as active members of the community.”

“They’re going to have to step up in a much larger way to fill in the gap,” he said.

Previous articles about political organizing during the pandemic.

• One Year Later, Protesters Pack Zoom
• Pandemic Prison Protests Pioneered
• ​“Food Garage” Feeds Families During Covid
• Pro-Immigrant Crew Tackles Covid Crisis
• Mutual Aid Teams Tackle Covid-19 Challenge