The Trump administration’s predictable mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the scattershot congressional response both underscore and distract us from a larger problem: the policies and institutions that we count on to provide some semblance of economic security are fundamentally broken.

The last few weeks have laid bare the stunning flaws of the American health-care system and public health infrastructure. They have reminded us how deeply we rely on basic public goods and services. They have demonstrated — in dramatic and terrifying ways — the fragility, the fragmentation, and the sheer inadequacy of the US welfare state.

And they have shown that the costs of this economic and social disaster will be borne unevenly. “In societies where the virus hits,” the New York Times noted earlier this month, “it is deepening the consequences of inequality, pushing many of the burdens onto the losers of today’s polarized economies and labor markets.” Nowhere is that more true than in the United States.