At this point, the coronavirus consumes my every thought. The COVID-19 pandemic spins like a lawnmower inside my head, cutting down anything else that might come to mind other than my intense, intentional focus on the love of friends and family. How bad will it get? How will we fail? Who will die because we were not ready and aren’t doing enough?

But another political thought has recently entered my mind. It is a Bernie Sanders presidency — not one that starts in 2021, but one that could have started in 2017. Without Bernie, we now face a bust, a potential break in our society so powerful and traumatic that our national future is uncertain in a rare, once-in-a-lifetime kind of way. So in the back of my brain, a tiny voice is mournfully asking, “What if Bernie were already president?”

Would we have Medicare for All, or at least Medicare Almost, some compromised version of the Vermont senator’s signature health care policy? I’m certainly not wise enough to speculate on how close Sanders might’ve gotten to the universal coverage he was (and still is) seeking. But I have to wonder if he might’ve been able to spare people the bank-breaking insurance fees that are expected by experts and have been reported by people seeking treatment.

As a University of Michigan doctor told Up North Live this week, the cost of treatment will likely depend on coverage provided by insurance companies, the for-profit industry Sanders wants to make obsolete. But instead of being replaced by the single-payer system Sanders has championed, some fear insurance may be about to get much more expensive; a report from California’s Obamacare marketplace warned that insurance premiums could increase or even spike next year as the insurance industry takes a hit after what had recently been soaring profits.

Were Sanders in the White House right now, his administration might have made enough progress on health care to help ensure that those who get sick with COVID-19 wouldn't have to worry about personally paying for treatment. But instead we have Vice President Mike Pence meeting with insurance company bigwigs and getting a commitment that only testing, not treatment, will be free.

Sanders has also been critical of major drug companies (aka Big Pharma) in his last campaign and this one. If he were president right now, would Gilead Sciences — a Big Pharma heavyweight — be poised to have exclusive rights to distribute an antiviral treatment in the midst of a medical crisis? Would I even have a chance to be dispirited by reports that the company’s stock price is rising on the news that the drug is being used to treat COVID-19 patients, a fact that darkly illustrates the direct link between human life and profit that undergirds our entire health care system?

It’s impossible for me to say where we might stand on the dire health care issues of testing and hospital capacity if Sanders had been sworn in on January 20, 2017. But I feel confident that a Sanders presidency would have drastically shifted how much the horrifying economic impacts of this pandemic hit the working class, the service and gig workers I’m friends with, and the people right now worried about paying rent.

Right now, the messaging from President Donald Trump is that, against the best advice of public health experts, the economy may be reopened because “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem.” The White House and its allies have made it clear that they’re willing to let people die for the sake of the stock market.