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For more than a year the public was complaining about the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. The water was so pungent and foamy that one priest had stopped using it for baptisms. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality, confidently announced, “Anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.” Flint is a majority African-American city. In nearby Detroit, 85% black, schools are heavily infested with rats, roaches and mold. Might those conditions affect the health of an overwhelmingly black student population? In Baltimore, another largely black city, the levels of lead poisoning among children is three times the national rate. Racism is a big part of the social determinants of health. It’s past time we acknowledge that and do something about it.

White privilege. What’s that? White people have choices and advantages simply because of the color of their skin. Many whites are unaware of it. Peggy McIntosh, a noted women’s studies scholar in her classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” wrote: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”

Is it starry-eyed to think about not just regime change but something much larger: system change? The systemic failures of the current crisis and the calamitous fissures it has exposed has raised the question of the efficacy of reform, half-measures and tinkering around the edges. When under duress, the system is agile enough to make some concessions while crucially leaving the fundamental structures of power intact. From the outside systems can look invincible and impregnable. Just tell that to Louis the XVI in 1789 or the Czar in 1917 or the Shah of Iran in 1979 or Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The noted writer, Ursula LeGuin reminds us, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

The five biggest corporations in the world by market value are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. Their head honchos the Zuckerbergs, Gates and Bezos make the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Carnegies of the Gilded Age look like pikers. These “masters of mankind” as Adam Smith called them, love to pay lip service to competition. But you know what? They want absolute domination and control. Monopoly is not a board game for them, it is the essence of their very being. And they rely on state power to secure their position. The big five capitalist firms dominate the means of work and social interaction. Collectively, these technopolies represent a tremendous concentration of power both economic and political which do not bode well for the needs of a democratic society. Their amassing of our data is threatening. What can be done?

What will tomorrow bring in the age of COVID-19? There is so much uncertainty. Arundhati Roy sees an opportunity. She writes, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

It should be abundantly clear that part of the president’s m.o., almost an article of faith, is never accept responsibility when things go wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault: Pelosi, the media, the WHO, Obama, China, immigrants. And if you criticize the leader expect retaliation. Just ask Rick Bright, a top government scientist who was removed from his job he says because he opposed the president’s touting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, as a coronavirus treatment. He has filed a whistleblower complaint. The president has called him “a disgruntled employee.” These are Rick Bright’s words of warning, "Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a nationally coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities. Without clear planning 2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history."

Can you believe it? A hundred thousand U.S. dead and counting. The real number according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert, is “almost certainly higher.” A World Health Organization official warns that the coronavirus may become endemic, i.e., like HIV, “it may never go away.” Science writer and author Sonia Shah states, “Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious pathogens have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they’ve never been seen before.” Years before the sudden arrival of COVID-19, ninety percent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. Unfortunately, they were right. By examining the stories of pandemics past we can begin to better understand our own future, and to prepare for what it holds in store.

The standard narrative about the current crisis is that the coronavirus pathogen triggered an economic collapse. But what is crucially ignored is that neoliberal capitalism was already weak and stressed out, a pre-existing condition, if you will. That systemic weakness went into freefall when the pandemic hit. In its long history, capitalism has produced many booms and busts but this period, particularly since Reagan, has produced spectacular inequalities in wealth and income.  Tens of millions, if they even have a job, live paycheck-to-paycheck. We're all in this together? Right? That's what the signs say. But not the rich. They have their country estates, yachts and island retreats to shelter in place. The big question is: Once the crisis abates are we going to go back to business as usual, or will there be fundamental change?

The term corporation is not in the Constitution, yet this entity has emerged over the years as the most dominant force in society. Although never oppressed like women and minorities, corporations have fought to win equal rights under the Constitution. Today, they have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Corporations have waged a persistent campaign to expand their power and to strike down regulation. They have systematically pursued and won legal privileges through the courts, especially the Supreme Court. Most notoriously, the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision paved the way for unlimited, anonymous money to be spent in elections. The idea that corporations are persons and money is free speech strike at the heart of equality. Justice John Paul Stevens in his Citizens United dissent said, “A democracy cannot function effectively… (if citizens believe) laws are being bought and sold.”

What kind of bizarre twilight zone world are we in? The coronavirus pandemic is a global altering moment. It has exposed huge fissures of vulnerability. The dead from COVID-19 in the U.S. now exceeds Vietnam War levels. The health crisis has triggered an economic crisis. Tens of millions have lost their jobs in the largest mass unemployment since the Great Depression. The bread lines of the 1930s have turned into car lines as people wait for hours to get some free food. The lack of preparation, the shortages of tests and medical equipment plus all the dissembling has been mind-boggling. “I don’t take any responsibility at all,” intones the president. What will emerge from this pandemic emergency? A more equitable decent society living in harmony with the Earth or more rapacious destructive capitalism? The choice is clear.