Not to digress too far but the general public at large won't even push to get funding for their own direct interests (e.g. COVID related stimulus right now). I

Not to digress too far but the general public at large won't even push to get funding for their own direct interests (e.g. COVID related stimulus right now). I don't know how we expect to get the general public to push for science. Much of our society runs on pure momentum and very few people have the power to slightly shift the direction of that momentum. One of the other large radio astronomy observatories in Greenback is also hurting for funding from what I understand. I've worked on a few collaborative research efforts utilizing the data and working with the observatory and the picture painted doesn't look promising there either. That may have changed more recently given the state of Arecibo.