THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD

In the previous blog, I recounted the history of "The Beveridge Report", a landmark document that shaped the way Britain re-organized itself after the chaotic life-or-death struggle of World War Two. The Report was truly one of the greatest endeavours in the twentieth century, although it is little known today: in fact, it was probably little known at the time. In my blog, I expressed a hope that, in the midst of the existential crisis in which we now find ourselves, someone somewhere is preparing a type of Beveridge Report to re-create our world after we emerge from this pandemic.

My version of what this Beveridge Report would look like would encompass many good ideas from other people. It is clear to me that the pandemic is not just a single phenomenon, or a stand-alone issue requiring maximum effort and a single solution. Like the Second World War, the pandemic has many fronts and presents many symptoms of problems that our society needs to address as an organic whole, and not piecemeal and in an ad hoc fashion.

The pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in our global, unregulated capitalist economic system. The most glaring weakness is in the fragility of the free market. Stock markets react like paranoid schizophrenics to the slightest challenge. Supply chains are extended so far around the world that shortages emerge at the earliest outset of trouble. Corporations and small businesses that extoll the virtues of capitalism and entrepreneurialism cry for government assistance when things get tough. We have seen the rise of less regulated business in the last 40 years or so, and this crisis, along with previous prove that unfettered capitalism is not desirable. A return to a more interventionist and more heavily regulated economic system must be part of the new Beveridge Report. Stock markets must be shut down at the start of a clearly defined crisis. Supply chains need to be tightened up and sourced more locally. And governments must not be afraid to step in and put corporations on shorter leashes. More red tape? Fine, the tape is applied for a reason.

Along with this, the pandemic has forced all of us to reevaluate our definition of and appreciation for work. Prior to the pandemic, there was an unofficial but clearly understood hierarchy of labour. Certain jobs were held high in esteem, usually associated with levels of academic education. Other jobs, involving manual labour or done by large numbers of people, were held in lower esteem: indeed some jobs were the subject of sarcasm and derision by the "higher-ups". That must end now. We have seen how people such as grocery store cashiers, stock handlers, and food preparers are necessary to our society. We see how garbage pickup and recycling sorters are needed. We miss our bartenders, baristas, servers, cooks, dishwashers, cleaners and busboys/girls. We now pay attention to those behind the scenes who keep the drinking water flowing, the sewers working, the electricity coming on at the flip of a switch. We are now singing the praises of truck drivers, postal workers, delivery and courier people, transit workers, dockyard workers and air crew.

The hope is that, after the pandemic, we don't just slide back into our complacency and old ways. What's needed is a plan to ensure that ALL workers earn a decent wage, a wage that will allow them to take care of themselves and their families, that will put food on the table, a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs, take care of their ageing parents and allow for a better future for their children. There must be expanded health, dental and pharma care for ALL people, to keep us all healthy. There must be expanded pensions for ALL citizens beyond the meagre scraps we now hand out to our seniors.

One of the ways that this can be done is though the concept of the Guaranteed Annual Income ( GAI ) that has been proposed by many, including Martin Luther King Jr., and one of the last truly "Progressive" Conservative thinkers and political leaders in Canada, Hugh Segal. Segal was a minister and bureaucrat in the governments of Brian Mulroney, and, in his later years, has advocated for the GAI as a means to eliminate poverty in the world. The GAI would ensure that things like EI, welfare, and pensions would be more efficient. It would establish a figure that a person needs in order to live a good, healthy and productive life. It does not ensure that people can do nothing and live like a king, although there will undoubtedly be abuses and abusers out there, just as there are now. People who work and are paid decent wages will not draw on the GAI unless their wages are below the established figure. And, when a person is sick or doesn't work for legitimate reasons, the GAI kicks in and ensures he/she is comfortable, fed, healthy and has some money to buy necessary products, keeping the economy going. The GAI needs to be part of the new Beveridge Report. Who pays for this ? You will.

The pandemic has also exposed failings in our health care system. Despite our prior beliefs, this pandemic has stressed the system to the breaking point and has shown just how unprepared we are for such things. We don't want to believe that pandemics are possible: we just too clean, too safe, too advanced and too superior for such things to happen. Well, they do and they will again: the next pandemic is just around the corner, ready to explode on us when some unknown virus decides to mutate and look for hosts.

Clearly, the need to get rid of any notion of private, for-profit medicine has to go. The United States is the poster child for for-profit health care and it has suffered badly in this pandemic. That's not to say that countries with a socialized health care system has fared much better: look at the disaster in Italy. But a need to put patients first, before profits, must be the top priority in the new Beveridge Report. And, as stated above, the inclusion of dental and pharma care in the health care system is a must.

But along with this, there needs to be a large, well-funded and dedicated "force" whose sole job it is to prepare for and deal with pandemics, epidemics, and mass casualties. It must be a separate entity from the conventional hospitals and clinics we now have. Thinkers like Robert Reich in the US have advocated for this type of service. Call it the "Pandemic Force" if you wish. The Pandemic Force ( or PF ) would exist as a medical paramilitary entity. Just as the military is composed of personnel, equipment, and bases to train for and deal with the next war ( and eating up billions of public dollars for such an eventuality ) so the PF would be a sizeable force of well -trained and well-equipped professionals who act independently of conventional medical workers. The PF would have its own facilities for housing and training the professionals and for treating the victims of the next pandemic. Plenty of large unused building dot our landscapes: old factories, schools, stores and malls: they could easily be re-purposed for such a use. When there is no pandemic, the PF professionals would be constantly training and re-evaluating their procedures. There would be strict protocols in place for when the PF would be used and how they would supersede conventional medical practice. And they would have the ventilators, medicines, masks and gowns, diagnostic equipment, cleaning and sterilizing equipment, food and nourishment they'd need to exist and do their jobs. The military gets billions of dollars for similar needs: so too, the PF should get what they need, because as previously said, we know the next war is coming: so too, the next pandemic.

In a similar vein, we need to re-think our approach to mental health. We have been in the midst of a mental health crisis in Ontario ( and, I suspect, other jurisdictions as well ) long before the pandemic hit. We don't know how to deal with mental health issues. As a result, we have too many people struggling with REAL problems alone and unsupported. Addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling and sex have ruined lives and torn families apart. People with serious mental health problems are often dealt with by the police with , despite better police training and good intentions, tragic consequences. People with mental health issues are often placed in correctional facilities, left to languish and get sicker, with no hope for a better future.

As I advocated for the so-called PF, there needs to be a separate entity to deal with mental health patients. I have seen how certain outreach programmes are helpful for people living on the streets. These outreaches are small and dependent on funding or donations and, largely, volunteers with little or no training, just good intentions. We need to create a "rapid response force" similar to police, firefighters or paramedics, whose job it is to respond to those who are in a mental health crisis, who are trained in how to deal with such people without resorting to lethal force, and who can administer mental health "first aid". As a second part of such an entity, mental health hospitals should exist exclusively for such patients, separate from conventional hospitals. Anyone who needs mental health services, as out-patients or who need to be checked in, will be allowed to use such facilities. In doing so, we can eliminate the stigma of needing mental health help, and create an atmosphere where real research and development, training and mental health practice can occur.

Many might wonder, if we create these new facilities, what would be the role of regular hospitals and regular health care professionals ? They would be free to practice conventional medicine: accidents, injuries, trauma, acute illness ( heart attacks, strokes, etc ) and chronic illness ( cancer, autoimmune, etc ) , pediatrics and geriatrics. In other words, our conventional hospitals, doctors, nurses and support staff can practice medicine as we expect them to do.

Finally, the Report should deal with environmental and climate change issues and initiatives. Why? This issue was the burning issue of the time immediately before the pandemic hit, and the international conversation revolved around whether there was a need to exert maximum effort to curtail the effects of man-made climate change and environmental degradation. Proponents of such an effort called the issue an "existential crisis", but those opposed could not see the immediate or long-term effects of the change. Now, with the economy slowed down substantially because of the pandemic, we are experiencing improvement: better air quality readings, cleaner water, wildlife returning to old habitat, fewer vehicles choking highways and roadways, fewer jets soaring overhead. The pandemic can be thanked for this opportunity to see what large scale cutbacks in our profligate ways can bring. Now is the time to bring about the end of the gasoline and diesel engines: now is the time to bring more solar, wind, hydro and geothermal generated power: now is the time to expand transit to make the roadways clearer. And internet conferencing removes the need for corporate workers to fly to international destinations as much for face-to-face conferences, although these traditional conferences will undoubtedly still need to happen: just not as frequently.

There are many other things that can be re-thought after the pandemic: retail commerce, travel and tourism and education come to mind. The possibilities are endless. We have a unique opportunity to create a better world from this chaos. There will be those who oppose such changes, mainly because they don't like change itself. Other reasons for opposition will undoubtedly come from those who see a reduction in entrepreneurial gain. Others will react badly to the higher taxation which will be needed to fund these new initiatives.

My solution to the problem of naysayers and doubters and opponents ? Shoot them. Line them up against a wall and shoot them. All of them. And do it in front of their family and friends pour encouragez les autres.

OK, I'm kidding about the above paragraph. There will be opposition, just as there was to the original Beveridge Report in post-war Britain. Atlee, the Prime Minister at the time, merely brushed criticism aside, or ignored it, and forged ahead with the reforms, opposition be damned. That is what we should do here. Ignore it. Treat it for what it is, which is mostly whining by people with limited vision, lazy aspirations and a willingness to let their own interests and greed override the common good.

Thus, I submit my Report. Read it slowly, thoughtfully and more than once. And agree with it … don't make me buy a gun !!   ( just kidding, I hate guns …. archery ? )

HOPE AFTER THE VIRUS

In the early days of the Second World War, Britain was in the fight for its life. All of Britain's European allies had been knocked out of the war by Hitler's Germany. In the Pacific, Britain's possessions and dominions were under threat from the advancing Japanese empire. Britain's own empire was sending help in the form of troops, ships and supplies, but they were not enough. The Soviets were engaged in a life-or-death struggle of their own with the Nazis, and the United States did not enter the war officially until late 1941, but did not ramp up enough men and materiel until late 1942. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, held Britain's war effort together almost literally with his own two hands, and the survival of that island nation was nothing short of a miracle of luck, tenacity and courage.

A second miracle, interestingly, was also happening behind the scenes. While Britain was preoccupied with the war effort, a commission was enacted that would dramatically shape the post-war world and, in no small way, alter the way Britain and many other countries defined their societies and how people would interact with each other. And, most importantly, this commission re-invented the role of government in a way that would be profound and long-lasting.

According to Churchill's biographer, William Manchester, the Prime Minister knew that Britain would have to change after the war. The suffering, the privations experienced by most of the population, the entire way of doing things needed to be put right. Amazing to think of such foresight from a man who was one of the most privileged in Britain, a true blue-blood aristocrat. But he had lived through the turbulent times of the rise of Britain as a world power in the late 19th century, only to see it shattered in the bloodbath of the First World War and the terrible economic uncertainty and upheaval of the 20's and 30's. He knew that the nation would not stand for a return to the status quo after the Second World War. He knew that the whole social structure of class and privilege must come to some type of re-ordering … to ignore that would lead to a possible revolution resembling the Bolshevik experience in Soviet Russia.

Sir William Beveridge

Or so Manchester would have us believe. In reality, this great change came about at the behest of Churchill's health minister, a man named Ernest Brown, who realized that the system of insurance, particularly health insurance was in need of an overhaul. It was a rather clumsy, outdated and inefficient system. Churchill, immersed in the war effort, agreed with Brown that such an overhaul was needed. Brown gave the assignment to an accomplished but little-known man outside of politics called Sir William Beveridge. Beveridge took on the assignment with relish and, while bombs rained on London and the population was transfixed on surviving the existential threat of Nazism, Beveridge and his team created one of the seminal works of social planning, the so-called Beveridge Report.

A summary of the Beveridge Report here would take up much space. The reader can look it up for him/herself. But the nub of the matter is this: not only was Britain's insurance sector reformed, the entire health and welfare system was as well. Churchill, when he saw the Report's final copy was dumfounded by the breadth of the reforms, but Manchester insisted that Churchill would've enacted most of it. Alas, Churchill and his Conservatives were turfed out of office in the post war election of 1945: the British people needed his bulldog spirit during the fighting, but wanted nothing to do with him in peacetime. The new Prime Minister was Labour's Clement Atlee. Atlee endorsed the Beveridge Report whole-heartedly and saw, correctly, Churchill's defeat as a signal that the British people wanted fundamental change. Atlee and his colleagues set about creating, for better or worse, the modern post-war welfare state, with all its social safety nets and programmes.

While Britain languished economically in the 20 years after the war, it can be argued that the working classes in that nation were healthier, better cared for, and paid more fairly for their work. I remember having a conversation with my old Grandad, a Cambois coal miner, about Britain from the end of the war until the late 60's. I never knew if he was a Labour supporter, but he told me, in no uncertain terms, that conditions for working people in Britain improved greatly.

We are now living through a period of great turbulence in the world. The current Covid 19 pandemic is perhaps the tip of the iceberg: we have been enduring a 40 year period ( since the days of Thatcher and Reagan ) where the social safety net has been whittled away, and rampant capitalism has been allowed to flourish. Working people have seen the purchasing power of their wages deteriorate. Power and wealth is more securely concentrated in the hands of a few. Democracy is under attack from human and cyber sources that distort the truth and bend things in the favour of the wealthy. And now this severe pandemic has hit us and made us think of our society and how things are being done, and how they ought to be done.

An enlightened government should, in this time of crisis, endeavor to create another Beveridge Report. While we are all preoccupied with surviving this terrible virus, and while we watch thousands of our fellow citizens fall ill and even die, someone should be working on "The Plan" for the world post-pandemic. There are so many things that need to be re-thought, re-purposed, and re-prioritized. This is the perfect opportunity.

I'd like to believe such a government exists. And I'd like to hope that someone, somewhere, is willing to take on Sir William Beveridge's challenge. Who will plan the brave new world that will be born, kicking and screaming, out of this pandemic? Who has the vision and the guts ?

We need that person NOW !

NOTES ON A VIRUS

In 2003, Lou and I visited Heron Island, a small outcrop on the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland in Australia. We booked a few days at a small resort on Heron at the end of a wonderful but tiring tour of Australia, thinking it would be a nice way to relax and recharge before returning home. It proved to be just that, and, as we usually do, we made some new friends at the resort. They were all farmers from New South Wales and were having a small holiday of their own during the Aussie winter after a hard year of raising cattle and growing rice on the driest continent on earth. Our conversations spanned many topics, and I was amazed to learn of their efforts to grow what I thought was a crop that needed wet conditions in such a dry place. From there, the conversation touched on how humans could manage to do amazing things by altering the environment to meet their needs. Most of us nodded our heads in approval to such modern-day alchemy.

One farmer, however, was noticeably silent. His friends knew him well and knew what was coming of course. He took a pull on his pint of beer, shook his head and began a quiet but well-measured and well-thought dissertation on how all of this was going to be the ruin of all of us. His friends smiled and quietly chuckled: they'd heard this before. But Lou and I listened with great interest. I don't recall his exact words, these 17 years later, but his final offering has stuck in my mind ever since. "Well, it is obvious, isn't it? We're the plague. We're the ones who are ruining things. There's too many of us."

That year, 2003, was the year of SARS. I remember that, as our travel date approached, we were worried whether Australia would let us enter the country. Toronto was one of the epicenters of SARS, and we thought our Canadian passport would open up a world of difficulty for us. It turned out not to be the case. We entered with no difficulty whatsoever, although a couple of Aussies offered some commiserations to us for being the last ones left alive from Toronto to carry on.

Now, we live in 2020 and the word "Covid-19" has taken on the same worrisome connotation as SARS or the Black Death from medieval times. We are, as of this writing, in the process of shutting down the country, with extraordinary measures enacted for the first time since warfare, or since the last major pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-19. We have seen the best of humanity ( such as the selfless and tireless work of people in the health care professions ) and the worst of humanity ( the hoarding and panic buying of basic supplies, and the mindless racism of those who just need a flimsy excuse to hate). We practice "self-isolation" and "social distancing" in order to "flatten the curve" of the statistics of new cases, proving that, if nothing else, our modern times is clever in the invention of catchy phrases.

But the Aussie farmer's words …. " we are the plague" …. ring true most of all. There are just too damned many of us on this planet. We number around 8 billion …. how many other organisms number this many? Insects, yes, and bacteria and germs without a doubt. Maybe fish in the sea or birds in the air ? Maybe. But large, intelligent, social and rapacious animals ? No, we're the highest number. And the results have come home to us in a hard way.

Our numbers have seriously altered the planet on which we live. We take and exploit what we need to maintain our modern lifestyle, and we don't bother to put anything back. We live cheek-by-jowl in huge and ever-growing cities. We breathe each other's breath more than we care to know. We depend on food and other materials from far-flung corners of the globe, just to keep us comfortable, fashionable, over-fed and over-medicated. And we just don't care about the cost whether it be environmental or in our collective and individual health.

The Aussie farmer was commenting directly on the environmental price we humans are exacting on the planet. And that price is going up steadily. Until the advent of Covid-19, the hot topic was climate change and environmental degradation, and it certainly stirred up a lively debate and actually some effort to solve the problem. But it took a new version of the Black Death to make us actually pay attention to our spend-like-a-drunken-sailor ways.

Only when things begin to affect ourselves in a personal way, only when the existential threat of death by sickness, only when we realize that family and friends are in imminent danger of becoming incapacitated and ill, do we take this seriously. Climate change ? How does that affect me? I like warm and sunny weather. If Canada becomes more like Florida, that'd be great ! Wait, what ? I might get sick and die soon? Hell, we'd better do something about it NOW !

There's no doubt that self-isolating and social distancing, along with good handwashing and staying home from work or school will ultimately stop the exponential rise of Covid-19 cases. And soon, there will be a vaccine for it. But, before the cure happens, millions will be affected, and many of them will die.

Will we learn from this ? Will we make a determined effort to lessen our numbers and our impact on the planet. Let's hope we have the time to tell.