As reports of overloaded hospitals across the Los Angeles area multiply, too often the situation is addressed along a single axis: how strong a lockdown is required? The tragic situation and the current, persistent error in thinking come from taking a far too short-term view of the situation, rather than thinking through a systemic approach to COVID-19.
Where is the increased hospital capacity that has clearly been needed in view of uncontrolled community spread? Where is the testing capacity to allow for weekly tests of all high-risk individuals, including daily tests for healthcare workers treating those most at risk, such as hospital patients and residents of long-term care facilities? Where are the tens or hundreds of thousands of social workers, able to effectively track cases and take a targeted approach to controlling the spread of the disease? If you receive a positive COVID test result, would you know how to access publicly funded accommodations while you are contagious, to avoid infecting your family members? Do such facilities even exist in your area?
While the short-term view of non-pharmaceutical interventions tends to focus on such questions as whether gyms and movie theaters will operate, and at what capacity, the broader question has always been one of health infrastructure in depth.
Will you act to bring the world into a new paradigm, free of geopolitics, in which the trillions of dollars of resources wasted on excessive military spending can instead be invested in building up a global health infrastructure? Can you be counted on to ensure that the LaRouche economic program takes hold in an increasingly global way, destroying the power of predatory finance and liberating a renaissance of physical economic growth and scientific advance?
The choice to take on the biggest questions lies in your hands, and it far exceeds debates over how many treadmills should be disabled at your gym, or at what time your local restaurant closes its doors.
