The masters of our capitalist world would like us to believe that COVID-19 was an unforeseeable crisis. They would like us to believe that the pandemic has destroyed an otherwise strong economy. Taken completely off guard by this bolt from the blue, they now tell us coronavirus is forcing us to choose between saving lives and saving the economy. It brings them no joy to tell us that hard choices will indeed need to be made.

This narrative is completely unmoored from reality, but it serves two important purposes. First, it allows capitalists to disguise a multitrillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of Wall Street gamblers and self-serving corporate executives — who quietly kicked off our current financial crisis last year, months before the pandemic began — as a rescue package for the American people suffering from a historic health crisis. Nothing could be further from the truth. If no stronger action is taken, the bankers, financiers, and private equity vultures will survive and thrive — and workers will get screwed.

Second, and possibly more important in the long term, it allows them to avoid the truth: that it was decisions of those very same masters of the universe, devoted adherents to profit-making, that left us catastrophically unprepared for COVID-19.