We are facing two crises at once, health and economic, that are related in very important ways. The COVID-19 epidemic has done major damage around the world, but it’s highlighting some serious structural problems with the US social model that better-run countries are not so afflicted by.

We are plagued by a deep economic polarization complicated by minimal social protections; severely diminished state capacity, with eroded institutional structures and extremely debased quality of personnel at the highest levels; years of underinvestment in basic infrastructure, both broadly and in health care particularly; and decades of neoliberal policies that have shaped a common sense based on competitive individualism, with little sense of social solidarity. That’s the longer-term context in which we face the acute crisis of this disease — which is almost certainly a portent of what we’ll face as the climate crisis worsens.

To recover from this, we need to do many things, both short and long term. To deal with the health crisis, we obviously need testing kits and a rapid mobilization to build hospitals and intensive care units and manufacture ventilators. It will take state action to do that properly. The market will never do it on its own. It may not be socialism, but if we do it well, it will legitimate a public sector badly in need of legitimation. If China can build hospitals in ten days, there’s no reason we can’t. It’s nice Trump is deploying a couple of navy hospital ships but that’s barely a start.