The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented catastrophe. It has precipitated the worst global public health crisis in more than a century, and has induced the worst worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression. The pandemic has tested the capacity of our political systems to handle acute emergency, and of our laws and policies to protect the most vulnerable. It has upended our daily routines, strained our coping mechanisms, and exposed, in dramatic detail, the fractures and inequities embedded in our social systems.
