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every day I think about how if how if the federal government had wanted to keep the COVID-19 pandemic from being a catastrophe, we'd have done all the things we knew were needed back in February/March, and it would've been safe to resume normal work and socializing by June.
14-day quarantine for international arrivals; national mask mandate with free mask distribution; unconditional $1000/week stipend for every adult plus $500 per dependent minor; 0% 10-year loans to small businesses that don't lay off workers; nationalize food/medicine production;
use nat'l guard to distribute food/Rx free; unconditional 1-year suspension of rent and mortgages with eviction/foreclosure prohibited, tack the lost year onto the end of the mortgage; nationwide free testing and treatment; no nonessential businesses until 2 weeks of 0 cases
if we'd done those stipends for March, April, and May, it would have cost about $3.5 trillion.
just mint the (four) coin(s)
it didn't have to be like this
but on one hand you have Republicans, who actively want the pandemic to keep worsening, both because it hurts marginalized people worse than white men, and because they want to use the chaos to solidify authoritarian control and cancel elections;
and on the other hand you have Democrats, who mostly wouldn't mind taking needed measures to make things better in the short term, but are very worried about the prospect of people wanting things to STAY better, and expecting them to KEEP making things better after the pandemic.
