In war times, the country has mobilized the workforce with incentives that they needed to and got people into jobs that were productive. We could have and still can do that if we so choose. There was a time in the past where you could get an nurse in the hospital training immediately with basic tasks, and a credentialing program on the order of one year. This crisis has not been so severe has to overcome the regulatory and union issues make this happen.

Nationalize? You realize that the government in Canada is telling the healthcare unions there is no more money?

The UK is determined to not increase pay and benefits for its nationalized healthcare workforce either. It's not a silver bullet, it rather relies on having an informed populace encouraging the government to make intelligent choices.

Same in a mixed system in Australia. There are some temporary covid-related billing incentives for the non-private jabs/visits, but the overall Medicare rates have stagnated.

The virus is in dying days and we have gotten here through the free market.The past few weeks Ive known many who have gotten omicron and all have had what feels like a minor cold and recovered quickly. It was capitalism and the US that made vaccines quickly and distributed them throughout the world. Socialism could never have done rhat. The failures of socialism are proven time and again in country after country. The effort to use this crisis as an excuse to extend the reigns of government control and destroy the free market engine that has brought much good is not persuasive. The desperation is apparent.

I find it strange that you would attribute success to capitalism in this case when there were no free markets involved in the development or sale of these vaccines. The bulk of the funding for the initial research came from government. The testing was done in partnership with the FDA, a government agency whose emergency use authorization was required to allow these vaccines to ship. The sales were made to government entities not individuals or even hospitals. And finally, the medical-pharma industrial complex has exactly nothing to do with free markets and open competition. In short, capitalism doesn't get the credit here. I'm not saying it was socialism that should get the credit, just that none of this involved capitalism as I understand it.