Read: It would theoretically be salvageable, but under Trump/the Republicans and Biden/the Dems, it won't be.
We had one shot to do it right like China did (Who have been pretty much actually back to normal for months now), but our government on both a federal and state level have just absolutely, royally fucked it all up. Mainly because they were/are too much of greedy, stingy, capitalist assholes to give people the aid they need so that their lives aren't completely destroyed.
After 8 months of annoying-ass variable on/off lockdowns (Instead of doing 1 sustained national lockdown at the beginning), the public will to continue has overall been destroyed, and it ain't comin' back.
Having lost 3 friends and potentially losing my best friend in the near future to this virus (he's been in ICU for 6 days now), I have gotten to the point where my depression over the pandemic has made me completely numbed. Outside of my friends dying, 3 other people I've known and worked with have died. It's a strange feeling to go through so many losses in a short amount of time. People you worked with and were used to seeing every day. My coworkers who have passed all had families and I can't imagine the pain that their spouses and children are going through.
I had a bad feeling this was going to be handled poorly cause I knew the US was not set up well to handle this. My fiancé worked as an EMT for years and used to always tell me about how defunded the hospitals were back in her home state and over the years, these conversations lead me to getting curious about the infrastructure of our medical system and I started to realize that it wasn't just her home state, the one we live in also has defunded hospitals that are ill-equipped. We saw this on the local news too when our state ran out of ventilators back in May.
This is a nightmare after the US has spent 4 decades defunding and destroying institutions that were previously meant to be safety nets to help in a scenario like this. This was a worst case scenario after decades of neoliberal austerity. Look at Cuomo in NY who flat out bragged to the media that he wasn't going to allow a pandemic to prevent him from enacting budget cuts and slashing billions of dollars in medicaid. If anyone back in the 80s screamed that we would have a doomsday scenario like this after the first budget cuts were beginning, their predictions are sadly coming true now.
I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Even if we get a vaccine, the death toll is already so high and it's had a major effect on people's livelihood and economic stability. None of this is counting mental health and I am guessing that will go completely ignored. I know people suffering from extreme anxiety and PTSD as a result of this virus and I myself am starting to really feel my mental stability declining. Americans are always expected and told to just "tough it out" and go back to work. But how much longer can a human being put up with this before they snap? There's going to be a mental health crisis after all this is done and I can just imagine they'll want to dehumanize us further and act like we are criminals.
Jesus, I'm sorry for your losses.
Exactly. Even if there was a vaccine tomorrow, we've not even begun to experience the height of this crisis. Mental health is in fact already going to shit for a ton of people, both due to the crisis itself and the (justified) lockdowns; a non-negligible proportion of covid survivors may also have long term effects even if they didn't die; and finally the economic depression that's coming will probably put the "Great" depression to shame.