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The "protect lives over economy" narrative is misleading and incorrect. The economy is life. Prioritizing life requires a functioning and healthy economy which is able to provide life-nourishing necessities to all. Can't have a shutdown without also providing food and income.
A better narrative is "lives over profit." The economy, as it is, does not provide the life-nourishing necessities needed to maintain a shutdown, yet a shutdown is needed. It is, however, capable of providing these necessities, without collapsing, as long as profits are cut.
Chinese economic growth amid total shutdown proves this fact. It was only possible because the state provided food, shelter, income, and other necessities that usually require resources created by labor. This shutdown squashed the virus and returned life to normal.
Not many in the US have even proposed these necessary measures. Some ask for shutdowns, some ask for stimulus checks, none ask for a total shutdown + state provided income, healthcare, food, shelter, to get through it all. This is a symptom of a weak and unimaginative left.
The left is still talking about redistributing wealth in the middle of a pandemic which made the deep internal contradictions of this economic system visible even to a blind bat.
I mean, really, the US is so far gone that the most left thing that happens here is a demand for a 2000$ check. Amazon's wealth and monopoly infrastructure has made it possible to distribute free food to people across the country. That should be a "progressive" demand.
I say "progressive" because I'm not even talking about permanent nationalization, just a temporary seizure. This is how a pandemic is defeated. In China, the state was forcing factories to produce PPE within a month. If they didn't comply, prison. Threaten Bezos with prison.
The beauty of monopolization is that it creates the centralized mechanisms necessary to do things like this. The state should seize Amazon for a year even, use it's resources to distribute food, provide income, and end the pandemic. That's a "progressive" measure to me.
