Abdul El-Sayed: “We Need to Remember This Is About People, Not Numbers or a Curve”
In an interview with Jacobin, Medicare for All advocate and former Michigan governor hopeful Abdul El-Sayed explains why the COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable — and why the cruelties of the US's for-profit health and economic system are making everything worse.
Abdul El-Sayed speaks with the news media after campaigning with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally on the campus of Wayne State University on July 28, 2018 in Detroit, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)
Abdul El-Sayed, best known for his insurgent progressive campaign for Michigan governor in 2018, has built a career at the intersection of politics and public health, serving both as a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and as Detroit’s public health commissioner.
Since his underdog run, El-Sayed has emerged as one of the most prominent advocates of Medicare for All, endorsing and campaigning for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary. His new book, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, delves into topics made ever more urgent by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with Jacobin contributor Natalie Shure, El-Sayed offers his thoughts on the political response to the COVID-19 crisis, the depredations of the US’s profit-driven health system, and the causes for hope in this fraught moment.
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