Consider that we squandered our political effort on half-hearted, ineffective measures that will be rolled back just as the second waves of deaths picks up. https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1252379613054918662

The struggle to get the minimum efforts necessary to keep people alive, all of that energy that could have gone toward such as UBI instead of single-time means-tested minimum wage payments.

That was our one chance, our easiest shot.

It will not be easier to do, after most states reopen, after mostly PoC workers are held hostage again with rent payments and utility shutoffs and reopened businesses

That was the one shot we had to prevent or reduce the second, bigger spike of deaths coming soon, and we blew it on airline bailouts and a bipartisan means-tested one-time payment which many won't get til the second wave hits them.

In a month, the discourse will be:

- we tried it, it didn't work
- it is more urgent than ever to reopen
- people have had months to prepare
- we were under the estimate for the first wave

It will be far harder to continue, let alone expand, the pitiful measures we took.

Those pitiful concessions to valuing human life over profit will be discontinued or rolled back just as the death toll spikes again, and it will be impossible to reinstate them.

America took one half-hearted punch and got winded.

The next wave of deaths will make this look like it was well-managed by competent and compassionate people who value human life over profits.

And, on top of it all, by that point there will be a large portion of the population terrified into returning to work, seeing those protection mechanisms rolled back, and feeling completely helpless.

It'll make our current efforts look utterly inadequate, and the even greater efforts necessary at that point will all be politically non-viable at every level of government.

Basically: this summer will be a brutal indictment and at the end of it, only a handful of billionaires will be better off and biden will lose to the other senile rapist.

All because the idea of valuing human life was seen as too radical and too extreme, by both parties, when it would have been easiest to do.