This (as usual, graphically amazing) NYT piece provides a clear reminder of a vital fact: sending "essential workers" out to die young is not an artifact of the pandemic but the core procedure of capitalism. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/13/opinion/inequality-cities-life-expectancy.html

In this regard as in so many others the pandemic provides intensification and the clarity that comes with it, not some new and unique character.

It is worth repeating that this sacrifice of human life is not conducted in the service of life; that is the modesty veil hung over the basic truth that it is conducted, as the entire economy is conducted, in the service of profit.

Essential workers are made to work and along with everyone else are allowed to buy so that profit can be preserved so that firms can stay solvent so that workers can be made to work so that hungry people can be allowed to buy so that...

This procedure, in which the logic of "make work and let buy" rules over life and loads essential workers into early graves, will continue when the pandemic ends unless that logic is itself undone.