Like many viruses, COVID-19 is especially dangerous for vulnerable groups such as the elderly or those whose health is already compromised. We can add to this list the American welfare state itself: its preexisting conditions (a patchwork of categorically targeted programs that rest on job- or work-based provision) have made it a susceptible target for the coronavirus’s deadly reach. Its programmatic antibodies (which tend to weaken when they are needed most) have offered little resistance to the spread of economic insecurity. And its symptomatic failures — evident even when the economy is doing well — are starker still as the pandemic unfolds.

“The magnitude of a crisis,” the New York Times editorial board noted somberly in early April, “is determined not just by the impact of the precipitating events but also by the fragility of the system it attacks.” That fragility, in turn, ensures that this pandemic — as it feeds upon and widens existing disparities — will have especially dire consequences for poor and working-class people.

At a moment when our collective health demands a nimble and coordinated response, we are instead saddled with jurisdictional scrums over essential medical supplies and a bewildering array of “shelter in place” policies based on political whims and idiosyncratic metrics.