Once This Pandemic Is Over
Channel: David Rovics
Date: 25/03/2020

What everyone who seems to understand the gravity of the situation we are facing with this pandemic keeps saying -- specifically in relation to countries like the United States, so unready to meet this challenge -- is society will never be the same.  I sure hope they're right.

Lyrics:

Once This Pandemic is Over 

This could be a teachable moment, though it more just looks like a mess
How long the moment might last is anyone's guess
For all of the bold propaganda, what kind of system is best
The moments like this one are the test
Where did they stay ahead of the curve, where did they just run out of soap
Once the world shut down its borders, which countries were able to cope 
Once this pandemic is over 

This could be a teachable moment, the moment we find out how much
It can be so hard to get thru just a day when you can't touch
Someone that you know, to hold their hands in yours
How interminable – the walls, the ceilings, floors
How long a day goes on, how lonely life can be
How much we're all a part of a society
Once this pandemic is over 

This could be a teachable moment, where anyone with half a brain 
Understands that we're all just as good as the weakest link in the chain
With exponential growth, one for all and all for one
Is the only way to hope to slow such a viral run
With some of us in mansions and others left in tents
While what's drifting in the air won't be kept out by a fence
Once this pandemic is over 

This could be a teachable moment, tho at the price of many lives lost
To be stratified and divided, death is the cost
After all of the funerals, after we've mourned all the dead
Might we then have a world, bound by a common thread
A thread that is sewn like a virus, and connects us all worldwide
Maybe then we can say there's a reason your grandparents died
Once this pandemic is over