The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the foundations of our socio-economic systems and revealed and magnified the deep inequalities they create. It has also raised awareness about the central role public services can and must play: saving lives; keeping the socio-economic fabric of humanity together; protecting the environment; enabling the attainment of human rights.

With COVID-19, the damage done by decades of underfunding, cutting, and privatizing vital public ser­vices1 materialized into the unsustain­able images of saturated intensive care and emergency units; health and sup­port staff overworked to exhaustion, lacking personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essential supplies; and countless coffins driven by army trucks to freshly dug graves.