Really great article - I'm curious what DOES predict systematic or structural changes in response to a stress test? I can think of the many infrastructures that failed to change at all (childcare, access to healthcare, workers' protections, etc.). Curious what, if anything, can actually move the needle.
That may be my big disappointment - that the damage to those in the working class and lower income groups didn't cause people to seek change. New York is a great example - the most impoverished neighborhoods had rates of per capita mortality 6x greater than the most affluent. Yet, hardly anyone looks at this as a societal failure. If that hasn't moved the needle, I don't know what will. And that is both sad and terrifying. I think part of the issue though, is that most in society don't see the people on the margins who suffer the largest costs. Often public health isn't for the average person because they can often protect themselves. Its for the people with the least who need help the most. But we seem to show time and again that we don't care or we don't see these people.
It’s so frustrating to see the few improvements we made during the pandemic being rolled back. It’s like we discovered that the roof was leaking and scrambled to put a tarp over it during a rainstorm, jut to take it off once the sun was shining—with no plans to actually patch the hole.
Great example. But I think the hole in the roof was in someone else's house in the next neighborhood over which makes it all the less likely that we show up to fix it after the storm.
Really great article - I'm curious what DOES predict systematic or structural changes in response to a stress test? I can think of the many infrastructures that failed to change at all (childcare, access to healthcare, workers' protections, etc.). Curious what, if anything, can actually move the needle.
That may be my big disappointment - that the damage to those in the working class and lower income groups didn't cause people to seek change. New York is a great example - the most impoverished neighborhoods had rates of per capita mortality 6x greater than the most affluent. Yet, hardly anyone looks at this as a societal failure. If that hasn't moved the needle, I don't know what will. And that is both sad and terrifying. I think part of the issue though, is that most in society don't see the people on the margins who suffer the largest costs. Often public health isn't for the average person because they can often protect themselves. Its for the people with the least who need help the most. But we seem to show time and again that we don't care or we don't see these people.
It’s so frustrating to see the few improvements we made during the pandemic being rolled back. It’s like we discovered that the roof was leaking and scrambled to put a tarp over it during a rainstorm, jut to take it off once the sun was shining—with no plans to actually patch the hole.
Great example. But I think the hole in the roof was in someone else's house in the next neighborhood over which makes it all the less likely that we show up to fix it after the storm.