We all know the fable of the frog put in a boiling pot that jumps out, while the frog sitting in a pot that slowly boils will be cooked to death, not really aware of its danger until it’s too late.

Coronavirus has made painfully aware to Americans that many of our public and private institutions — our social safety net, public schools, our hospitals — are barely clinging on, if at all, to sustainability, much less functioning efficiently.

Hospitals have been overrun, teachers are terrified at the lack of adequate safety measures in place for the upcoming school year, and millions of Americans laid off due to the pandemic have suffered through woefully underfunded unemployment compensation benefits that barely sustain themselves for a month.

As a bankruptcy practitioner, I am hearing the alarm bells already that a deluge of foreclosures and evictions is coming once many statewide moratoriums soon expire.

It’s no coincidence that other western democracies that have invested in education, single payer health care, living wages, and that have put trust in their scientific and public health experts, have all begun to largely rebound from COVID’s grip.

America, meanwhile, with 4 percent of the world’s population, is lapping the rest of the planet in cases and deaths.

These problems didn’t appear suddenly because of COVID. The problem, rather, is the pandemic has pulled the curtain away from a 40-year trend in America of local, state, and federal policy to defund and privatize every institution possible. The frog is getting boiled to death. Reversing that course has to start in November.