Head Tale

Yes, the *next* mass pandemic.

We dodged the bullet a few times with recent outbreaks like SARS, H1N1, Ebola, etc.

But some very smart people foresaw that a devastating worldwide pandemic was inevitable due to the increasing number of viruses that were reaching humans.

This is the result of a combination of humans aggressively moving into animals’ habitats around the world which increases the odds of a zoonosis virus outbreak which is where a virus jumps from an animal to humans. This is compounded by our interconnected world where people regularly wake up in a hotel halfway around the world and go to bed in their own home in Canada or where ever.  Most of the time, this the height of convenience.  But occasionally it’s the gunpowder for a machine gun that sprays dangerous bullets everywhere.

So, we’re already hearing about some of the things I list below proposed as temporary measures. But I think now is the time to find ways to make many of these solutions and innovations permanent to ensure we’re best positioned as a society to deal with the next mass pandemic if/when we get through this one.

(Before listing my ideas, I’ll share one thing I saw on Twitter that made a lot of sense – be prepared to *immediately* shut down all commercial flights out of an affected area.  If we’d done this with Wuhan, things would likely be not as dire or consequential as they’ve so quickly become.)

With that said, you can’t always shut things down at the source so we need to be prepared for another worldwide pandemic…

1. Implement Universal Basic Income
I looked back and considering how much of a fan of the idea I am, I’m surprised that I don’t seem to have written much about Universal Basic Income on this blog.  The only things I found were posts about Andrew Yang’s longshot presidential campaign where we ran on UBI (which he called a “Freedom Dividend’) and saying that his book plus a related book called “Universal Basic Income for Canadians” were two of my favourite books read last year (see Question #24 in my year end summary post last year).  Oh, and I also wrote that one of my “outside the box” ideas for my own personal TED talk would be the related idea of “Maximum Wage”.

Anyhow, quickly if you haven’t heard of it, the idea of Universal Basic Income is that every adult in society receives a monthly payment from the government that gives them enough for the basics of life.  This is an idea that is often seen as appealing across the political spectrum – left-wing people like the idea of everyone in society being treated fairly and equally with no one dropping through the cracks while right-wing people like the idea of a single social safety net program that could be a single solution to reduce bureaucracy and administrative costs of our myriad social programs (welfare, EI, etc. etc.).

There are criticisms too – some think people would just spend the extra money recklessly and still need other supports, how do you structure it (eg. someone in Toronto has different financial needs that someone in Wakaw, Saskatchewan), would anyone work if this was offered (a 1970’s study in Dauphin, MB showed that many fears were unfounded and the program worked incredibly well.  For example, the only groups who worked less were stay-at-home moms and students – two groups that it makes sense to not force to work more anyhow!)

At any rate, UBI deserves its own post on this blog and like I said, for how much I like the idea, I can’t believe I haven’t done that yet.  Not that a blog post would change minds but it’s frustrating to think about how much stronger our position might be a society if we already had UBI when so many people can’t get EI – either because they don’t qualify or because the system is simply overwhelmed and new relief programs are going to take time to rollout.

Former NDP leadership hopeful, Charlie Angus is calling for UBI immediately and MacLean’s magazine is also highlighting the idea in an opinion piece by a conservative activist.

2. Create Sovereign Wealth Funds
Just like how much better positioned we’d be to whether the COVID-19 if we had UBI already established, it’s incredibly unfortunate that a resource rich province like Saskatchewan (or Alberta, who had one but mismanaged it) didn’t establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund to create a “rainy day fund” from a portion of resource revenues instead of letting oil companies make massive profits and spending most of what we took in as governments instead of having a large reserve of cash available.

3. Change Capitalism (Again)
Some of the greatest social upheavals our society has seen came out of another major disaster – the Great Depression of the 1930’s led to the New Deal.  followed by WWII in the early 1940’s which led to the GI Bill.  We’re in another time of growing inequality where billionaires are flourishing, the middle class is shrinking and the working class are being completely ignored.  Billion dollar corporations pay zero in taxes to help support everything in the wider society that they benefit from – educated workforces, highways, healthcare.

There’s some irony that the start of this pandemic was characterized by people hoarding toilet paper and Lysol Wipes which they tried to resell at vast profits before being shut down and villainized.  But this is not much different than the mentality that leads to billionaires – people and corporations – to hoard more wealth then they and their families could spend in a million lifetimes.  Or some companies like Loblaws are choosing to pay frontline workers a couple bucks more an hour for working in this pandemic – something they could’ve easily done in the past *before* the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/kateljacobson/status/1241417309647847425?s=11

Or that companies that hoarded information in a way that led some who believe information should be free to commit suicide are *now* making those same articles free.

aaron schwartz died by suicide in 2013 awaiting trial on federal charges for mass downloading jstor articles. just good to not forget these things at this time, i reckon. he was 26. https://t.co/NYcALJJpR6

— michael wave (@SzMarsupial) March 19, 2020

Or that the company founded by the richest man on the planet starts a relief fund for workers rather than simply pay them living wages.

Amazon set up a relief fund for its employees and is asking us to donate.

Amazon is worth nearly $1 trillion.

Amazon paid a negative federal income tax rate in 2018. They paid nothing but got millions in government subsidies.

How is this real. https://t.co/MiLArAnTdA

— Rob Hart (@robwhart) March 21, 2020

4.  Allow More Telework
It has been growing in popularity over the years but it felt like there was still reluctance from many employers to fully embrace telework – the fear of not having employees in close availability, the loss of control and feeling that people won’t work as hard at home as in the office (a person I know who is a longtime teleworker laughed when I talked to him about this: “Do you think just because someone is chained to a desk in an office, they’re more productive?  I’d argue I’m more productive than 99% of office workers because I can set my own schedule, I have great work-life balance, and I can focus in a way that people in typical office environments rarely can!”)

5. Permit RRSP Withdrawals In Certain Emergencies
This might just be a temporary solution for emergencies like our current pandemic or maybe there’s a way to make it a permanent option.  A self-employed business owner I know proposed that people should be able to withdraw from their RRSPs tax and penalty free right now to access a lot of locked up capital, similar to what people can do to borrow against RSPs in the home buyers program (does that still exist?)

6. Tighten Up Corruption Rules
It was a big scandal (well, not big enough as I don’t think they resigned, let alone are in jail) when it came out that multiple politicians in the US sold off stocks when given information about how bad the pandemic could be instead of moving fast to help people.  There should be a law that elected politicians cannot hold individual stocks (unless in a completely blind trust) or better, they can only hold index funds which gives them incentive to help the entire economy, not just certain companies.

7. Provide Better Education To Young People 
Some of the reason we’re struggling so much as COVID runs wild is because I’m not sure if we’ve done a good job as a society in educating people on various core life skills – from money management to hygiene to media literacy to risk literacy and critical thinking (all those “It’s no worse than the flu” people!) to our basic civic obligations as citizens – so that when we’re faced with a serious situation – pandemic or whatever – people are more likely to have the knowledge and habits to get them through successfully.

8.  Invest in Science and Make It Pervasive In All Sectors 
There are numerous major sectors involved in the response to COVID – private business, education, healthcare, government, religion.  But the only thing that’s truly going to save us from this and future pandemics is having a strong focus on science throughout all of our institutions – in schools and universities and research parks and government labs.  (Okay, maybe religion is the one exception where you won’t find a big focus on science!) 😉

9. Create “Worst Case Scenario” Position in Government?
It’s surprising how many governments were caught flat-footed by this pandemic (and worse, were slow to react, often putting political considerations over those of public safety) and I wonder if there needs to be some sort of neutral, non-political position at the federal level where the whole point is to be a “Debbie Downer” and flag potential upcoming threats?

10. Make Sure You Have Sufficient Healthcare Supplies
Masks.  Ventilators.  And of course toilet paper! 🙂

Bonus: Special Benefit for Healthcare Workers and Others Still Working
There’s a certain inequity that a lot of people who can’t work because of COVID-19 will (rightly) be receiving not only EI cheques but other specially created support cheques for those who don’t qualify for EI – workers in self-quarantine who can’t work, self-employed, students, etc. – but some of the people who are still working and in the direct line of danger – from healthcare workers like doctors and nurses to grocery store clerks and delivery drivers.  It might be a nice gesture to show appreciation for those who are still working to make a rule that any income they make above and beyond their average wage – eg. if a healthcare worker is suddenly putting 70-hour weeks – that their OT wages aren’t taxed.  Or that they get some other special benefit that the rest of society – sitting at home watching Netflix while waiting for this to be over – doesn’t.   (Oh, and it’s important to note that I’m sure all the “taxes are too high/I hate socialism/Justin Trudumb” folks will be turning down any support cheques the government offers them.  Honestly, tying into that point about revamping capitalism, I really hope that one good thing to come out of this pandemic is there’s a greater recognition of how interconnected we all are, how we have to support each other and how no one truly does it on their own.  Instead, government has a huge role to play in the face of major disasters of this type.)