Coronavirus: AOC calls for mortgage and student loan payments to be suspended during epidemic

‘This is not the time for half measures … We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst’

In a live video Instagram post on Thursday afternoon, US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) held a Q&A about coronavirus in which she urged people not to panic and be clear-eyed about the threat.

Emphasising the need to be careful around immunocompromised people, she called for people to stay home.

However, she also recognised how difficult that is for many people with jobs that do not allow them to stay home and cannot miss out on a paycheck — tipped workers, freelancers, and shift workers.

In a follow-up Twitter thread, she said: “Of course, as we know, staying home is much easier said than done.”

“That’s why it’s imperative that we pass emergency measures like guaranteed healthcare, paid leave, eviction moratoriums, and more to protect people in the logistics of making that happen.”

In earlier tweets, she said: “This is not the time for half measures … We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health [and] economic affects [sic].”

She also added to her list: debt relief, waiving work requirements, guaranteeing healthcare, and detention relief at the pre-trial and for the elderly and immigrants.

Later, responding to the Federal Reserve's intervention in financial markets, she said there was “absolutely NO excuse for not pausing student debt collections, planning for mortgage [and] rent relief, etc. We need to care for working people as much as we care for the stock market.”