This isn’t merely a collection of people wanting more economic activity. They’re treating this as a culture war, buying into all manner of conspiracy theories along the way. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video This is remarkable because shared threats usually create unity and solidarity among human beings. That’s why we’re so constantly drawing the analogy between this pandemic and war: it conjures up imagery of a willing sacrifice and a massive all-hands-on-deck effort that is bigger than our differences. So how big must those differences truly be when they outweigh the fact that literally thousands of people are dying every day? Many have mocked the catchcry that "we’re all in this together", America shows us what it looks like when we really aren’t. It’s tempting to explain this as the product of one fatally vain, incompetent leader. And there’s no doubt that Trump’s response to the crisis has been wildly inconsistent, frequently negligent and hyperpolitical. But that’s as much symptom as cause. A healthy society with such leadership punishes that leadership. It doesn’t tear itself apart in defence of it. What we’re seeing now is the end result of several cancerous decades in American public life. Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:

America had long since become a country with no agreed set of facts, no way of its citizens talking among themselves, and no limit to the hypocrisy and corruption it will tolerate on partisan grounds. You see this in the story of the Republican senator who received a briefing explaining just how diabolical COVID-19 would be, then suspiciously sold off millions of dollars’ worth of stock before the share price crashed, and then finally accused the Democrats of exaggerating the threat. Now she’s been appointed to a task force devising ways of "reopening America". Loading Now consider Britain, where we’ve just learned the already tragic death toll could be 40 per cent higher than we’ve been told. You could choose so many telling moments here, but mine was when Health Secretary Matt Hancock decided to pick a fight with Premier League footballers who had been reluctant to take a pay cut, almost certainly to deflect from his own government’s failings. Sure, there are valid criticisms to be made of the players, but these are the same players who are donating millions of pounds into a special fund for the NHS. All of which raises a question that might be easy to overlook in Britain but seems obvious from here: why the hell is Britain relying on footballers to fund the NHS? At least part of the answer must be a decade of funding cuts in the name of austerity. The idea that the NHS should simply be slimmed down to a "safety net" looks pretty stupid once you start seeing NHS staff making ventilators out of snorkels. If only Britain was part of the EU’s bulk purchasing of ventilators, as it is still entitled to be. Unfortunately it chose not to be for reasons that keep changing. First, because it’s "not in the EU", then because of a "communications error", then as a "political decision" before that last explanation was retracted. Britain was so vulnerable because austerity, rather than more equitable taxation, was its answer to the last economic crisis, which has left behind a hollowed-out welfare state and inequality that one Nobel-prize winning economist said is following an American path.

Loading Australia is a different place. More equal, less economically ravaged, but also less divided by the kind of toxic politics that has beset the US and the UK recently. To be sure, we’ve had a crack at some of these things. Inequality is rising, our economy was beginning to stutter even before COVID, and we’ve given divisive, dysfunctional politics a good go for a decade. But we were nowhere near as far down that path, and right now it’s saving us. We’d lost much of our faith in politics, but retained just enough that we’ve complied remarkably with the restrictions government has imposed. We’re restless, but not yet reckless in the American fashion. Which is why it matters so much what comes next. Already the machines of political contest are whirring into action, the Morrison government setting itself for an aggressive pro-business plan for our post-pandemic economy. Specifically that means tax breaks for businesses, and even a big swing at industrial relations. It’s the road that leads to lower wages, worse conditions and limited tax revenue. And while some of that might end up being economic necessity, if that’s not done perfectly, it’s a road of austerity and increasing inequality that has proven so destructive elsewhere. Obviously, all that will depend on the detail. But we should take this chance to heed the warning from those nations that are presently unravelling. Sacrifice a basic level of equality for economic growth and you risk social and political fracture. There will be much we can’t afford after this, but one of them is losing the threads of social solidarity we still have left, because we’ll need them desperately when the next crisis hits. Waleed Aly is a regular columnist.