How were we so unprepared for this pandemic?

I assume you must have questioned by now how our society could be so unprepared before the coronavirus pandemic. Medical science has cured countless diseases, why not COVID-19 too? Perhaps it caught them off-guard, you might think, but you would be gravely mistaken. Coronavirus and SARS-related (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) viruses are not a new phenomenon. In fact, there have been two very recent outbreaks; one in 2003 (SARS-CoV) and another one in 2013 (MERS-CoV). They never grew to the extent that COVID-19 has now but still, they were enough to motivate researchers to investigate the coronaviruses scholastically. Dr. Malik Peiris, the pathologist renowned for isolating the SARS virus, stated a few weeks ago that research following the 2003 SARS outbreak came extremely close towards a vaccine for coronaviruses. Well, where is that vaccine now? It turns out that once that outbreak came under control and the number of cases plummeted, there was no longer a market of fearful-ill-consumers to satisfy the profit-seeking attitudes of big-pharmaceutical companies and so they lifted funding for the research.

What goes around, comes around, however, and their greediness left us exposed in this advent of coronaviruses. Their practices did not alter. Up until February, four whole months after the first case of COVID-19 was reported, “Barron’s” magazine stated that none of the top-four vaccine companies had shown any significant interest in the virus. The number of cases did not exceed thirteen thousand, the market was too small and the profit-potential minimal. So, they looked away with apathy until mid-March. Then, when the virus got out of control in Italy and Spain and the first cases appeared in Greece, France, the US and UK, CEOs jumped forth out of their growing fear of missing out on profits. In case you are wondering, yes, they did have the funds and capacity to initiate immediate research. The top 35 pharmaceutical companies made a collective profit of 8.6 trillion dollars (!) between 2000 and 2018 (study published on the Journal of the American Medical Association). Never before has the world had so many available resources. But, like hungry wolves, they only hunt where there is prey to be hunted. Unfortunately, COVID-19 was not appetizing enough for the first four months. And so, their idleness and their apathy has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people: beloved fathers, mothers, and grandparents.

Yet they are not the only ones to blame. Before the outbreak, almost every western government was actively trying to underfund the public health-care sector; leaving hospitals under-staffed, limiting the number of available Intensive Care Units and having doctors criminally under-equipped. “Why?”, you ask. Well, because money gives political power. The private-health industry has long attempted to hold a grip over public healthcare. Only in the U.S. the lobbying efforts of such companies reached an all-time high in 2019 with $594 million being spent (Center of Responsive Politics). And governments have followed their orders closely. The standard way to privatize parts of the public sector is to under-fund them until people get angry and agree to hand them over to private owners. This was, for instance, the method used by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when trying to privatize British Rail. And this is the method used ever since the rise of neo-liberalism, leaving national healthcare services hardly functioning under normal circumstances, let alone amid a pandemic.

Now these governments, striking deals behind closed doors with the private health industry, are giving us orders. The saddest thing is that we can do nothing more than to follow them and ‘stay inside’. Because, as it stands right now, public healthcare is crippled and the hungry wolves at pharmaceutical companies did not bother taking action for our health but instead for our money. Thankfully, their beloved systems, Capitalism and Plutocracy, are falling apart before their eyes. Since, by having companies compete for more and more profit, by allowing the private health industry to exert control over public healthcare and above all, by being ‘high on greed’, they have left the world completely unprepared for what was about to hit it. ‘Staying inside’ was the only viable option, but it led to an unprecedented economic collapse. The International Monetary Fund predicts a dive of the Global GDP to – 3.0 %. A number much lower than that of 0.1%, reached the year after the Financial crash of 2008. And a number perhaps worse than the one noted during the Great Depression of 1930s.

Do not be deceived, however. The upper classes, in accord with their governments, will find a way to preserve their wealth and maintain the system that enriches them. Already, President Trump has signed the largest ‘bail-out’ plan in American History and he will make – you – pay for it. Because, as always, those who pay for the burden are people like you in the middle, lower and working classes. Unless you do not do something about it be prepared for many more ‘coronaviruses’ to come. And, by ‘doing something’, I do not mean simply voting for ‘the other guy’ when elections come. We saw how unsuccessful the progressive movements of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn were at ‘battling the establishment’ when playing by its rules. No government or company will ever ‘truly care for you’ because power and money are a corrupting force. Nature always finds the way to acknowledge our failures. And so, use this failure to expose the oppressive system that has let you down once again. Seek true and direct democracy, because history has taught us that positive change always comes when millions of people come together to fight for it. The people know best what the people need. Either stand up and look at them with the same apathy they looked at you all those years, or remain seated, exploited and ill.

Image credit: Fusion Medical Animation