This thread by Zeynep Tufekci is a good wrap-up of what occurs when a pandemic meets predatory neoliberal capitalism, unrestrained libertarian fantasias, individualist delusions and sheer incompetence.

Covid-19 is the hammerblow that’s striking now, but its impetus and its power were augured long before by our inaction in protecting our own people: “impossible” as the wealthiest nation in the world to have health care for all, with mega-SUVs unleashed in the streets to run down all who stand in their way, and our plutocrats funding wars while allowing millions of homeowners to be foreclosed on and tossed onto the pavement with all their belongings. And of course, the big one: completely ignoring climate change and even “liberals” casting aspersions on those who said we should prioritize it.

These are all symptoms of the same malady, the same societal malfunction, the same civilizational putrescence that is now manifesting in all-too-literal sense with Covid-19. This is the now, and it’s also the future. That future world will look more like now as climate change worsens, as neoliberalism spasms and expires, as all our ideologies crumble and disperse in the wind leaving nothing but disorder and despair over the fact that we could’ve done something and did not.

We have met the enemy and it is a centrist chanting, “Everything is impossible.”