8: Could This Pandemic End Up Making Our Healthcare System Stronger?

President-elect Joe Biden has made history: This week, he announced that Rep. Deb Haaland would be his pick for head of the Interior Department, the first Native American person ever to a Cabinet-level position, making Biden’s Cabinet the most diverse in history. This kind of representation is important, but it’s not enough, because far from Washington, Native Americans are dying at disproportionate rates from the Coronavirus pandemic. In October, the death rate from Covid-19 on the Navajo Nation was higher than in any state. In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Lakota reservation is fighting to keep roadblocks up to prevent the spread of the virus, despite the order from the state’s governor to take them down. And Neshoba County, Mississippi, home of the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw, had the highest rate of death per capita in the entire of Mississippi due to coronavirus, devastating the tribe. Neshoba: If that rings a bell, it’s probably because it was at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 that then-candidate Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for the Presidency on the platform of “state’s rights,” ushering in four decades of neoliberal policies that have devalued and gutted many of the core functions of government meant to protect us from...deadly epidemics.

On this week’s System Check, Melissa and Dorian follow up on last week’s episode to explore the system of finding a cure for the coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans so far. Finding a vaccine, for sure a scientific feat of epic proportions, is hopeful news. And while necessary, it is not sufficient to understand and transform the systems that have resulted in mind-numbing mass death. We have to push ourselves to also ask the questions: what are the systems that created and sustained the crisis? And how can we bring about a dramatic change not just of the system of science or the system of public health, but rather of the whole ecosystem that made this pandemic possible? We offer a few plausible answers found at the intersection of science, social science and activism.

For insight into these intersecting systems, Melissa and Dorian talk to Gregg Gonsalves, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Associate Professor of Law at Yale University, to help us think about the Covid-19 pandemic beyond a clinical perspective. And he offers ideas about how to build our social immunity to defeat the virus, and the vast inequalities that make it deadlier for far too many.

We then check-in with Alondra Nelson, president of the Social Science Research Council and the Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. She tells us about the creation of the Coronavirus Syllabus, and the necessary efforts to mobilize science and social science for the public good. And she reminds us that the solutions to this pandemic are not only biological and clinical, but also require communities of social and human sciences working collaboratively to tackle exclusion, exploi