AS cases of coronavirus in countries across the world begin to flatten out, the UK and US have seen continued growth. But both the UK and Scottish Government have this week expressed optimism that we are at the peak of the immediate Covid-19 crisis, with some hopeful signs that the most acute point might be behind us. There are calls to look forward, not back.

Of course, there are always fears of a second peak, particularly if emergency measures are lifted too early, but what we face now is a long, drawn-out campaign to save as many lives as possible whilst trying to ensure that everybody gets food, healthcare and has their other basic needs met, until a vaccine can be developed.

It is encouraging to see countries that reacted quickly and locked down early, such as New Zealand, already starting to unwind their restrictions. I am envious. It is becoming clear that the UK Government’s delayed response at the beginning means that we are in for several more weeks of the heaviest of lockdowns. I don’t begrudge this because it will save lives, but swifter leadership might have meant tens of thousands would never have been infected at all. Thousands more lives might have been saved and the economic impacts not been quite so shocking.

From the World Health Organisation (WHO), from former Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns, from the frontline staff who have spoken to the Scottish Greens, the expert advice is clear. Our route to an exit strategy while we wait for that vaccine comes through “testing, testing, testing”.

While Nicola Sturgeon has told my colleagues Patrick Harvie and Alison Johnstone she agrees with the test, trace, isolate strategy the WHO recommends, she has also admitted Scotland is not testing to capacity. With all this expert advice, and with those on the frontline crying out to be tested so they can work with vulnerable people, it is more than strange that our testing labs are lying half empty.

That robust test, trace isolate strategy is vital to save lives while allowing society to start functioning again. But the road to recovery also takes us into new territory with respect to cultural norms and privacy. The virus changes everything.

The virus has already changed the Tory Government’s priorities from a focus on reducing the national debt by balancing the books on the backs of the poor, to a focus on boosting the economy through hurried attempts to redraw the social safety net. So many more people are being exposed to the bureaucratic disaster that is Universal Credit and the rest of our shredded welfare system that calls for a Universal Basic Income have become mainstream and are becoming louder. The points-based immigration system that saw many essential workers classified as “low skilled” has been quietly shelved for now, as people become aware of who really are essential workers. While the Conservatives will undoubtedly try to roll back this awakening, hailing a “return to normal”, there can be no going back.

In this, the grimmest and most frightening of times, people have different ways of coping. Some steep themselves in nostalgia for what seemed easier times. From Throwback Thursdays to reruns of old sitcoms, there’s a lot of people harking back.

I tend to fall back on dark humour: “At least this generation’s young people were raised on The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead and Daybreakers, they are trained for this, they never believed the future was going to be anything other than a disaster.” But that isn’t right either. Nostalgia can be a powerful tool – look at what it did for the case for Brexit – but we can start looking towards the future.

THE virus has changed everything and that means that we can rebuild something better. We have the power to make the future better, and we should be using our energy to build the future that we want to see.

Don’t believe the line that the economy was in good shape before this health crisis hit. It wasn’t. Personal debt was sky-high, essential workers were unable to make ends meet and inequality was going up, up, up. Our economy before Covid-19 was anything but robust, a top-heavy structure of a few very rich people balanced on an increasingly fragile framework of essential workers who had no financial safety net. It was very clear that if it wasn’t Covid-19, it was going to be something else that knocked the whole thing to the ground.

Our proposals for building a better future are contained in our Scottish Green New Deal. It means restructuring our economy to be robust, where essential workers are paid a living wage, where so many people don’t fall through our social safety net, where we don’t have to sit in traffic jams and where young people can have genuine hope for a better future. It means taxing pollution rather than work. It means closing down the tax havens and tax avoidance schemes and making the super-rich pay their fair share. It means accelerating schemes for insulating homes and building public transportation. It means building things to last, rather than to be thrown away, and it means prioritising people over profit. That’s a future I can see.

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