Corona Virus

Quote: Dunkirk Spirit "No, I don’t read the newspapers, I listen to TV and radio news and current affairs programs. Just been listening to live tv broadcast of health committee meeting, the subject of not screening incoming travelers was brought up by Yvette Cooper, Mat Hancock’s reply was strange, it went along the lines of, testing wasn’t worth doing because there’s already a huge number of confirmed virus cases already in the country.
They're all part of the same group think and attended the same private schools and have been filtered through the same system. They all have the same ideological prejudices and all work within the same narrow parameters of what is considered acceptable opinion. There's not much difference between newspapers, radio or tv news affairs besides the colour of the suit they are wearing. We live under a system of huge propaganda and coercion. Most people will never know that they don't know what is going on.

With regards to the coronavirus it is obvious that there are mistakes (if you want to call them mistakes - some might say that it's a deliberate choice) being made left, right and centre and that is because it isn't beneficial in the short term for capitalists to create long term solutions to a pandemic when they are interested in paying their stockholders huge profits. After the SARS epidemic in 2003 (which was a coronavirus) there has been an age of time and lots of research into animal coronaviruses and of course the scientific community has known of the dangers this posed to human life and society. Understanding this isn't enough. Of course scientists UNDERSTOOD this could happen - so who is to blame here? The scientists? Of course not. Drug companies had the opportunity to do something - of course they didn't as this does not follow capitalist logic i.e. it's not their problem. Somebody's got to pay for it and why should they? So the alternative is the government. Well, the government is there to be the solution when the private sector is in trouble - that's well understood - but if it's just when the public needs something then the why should the government get involved?

Let's take the Trump as an example just for starters. USAID had a program detecting viruses that exist in animal populations that are getting closer to contact with humans because of habitat destruction and global warming. They were identifying thousands of potential viruses and working in China as well as in the US. Trump disbanded the project in October 2019. It's not in their interest to fund programmes that benefit the public if it comes at significant cost. Of course in terms of looking to the future and building our future our governments are vastly subidising the fossil fuel indistries despite them driving us to ecological catastrophe because it's well understood that short-term shareholder's profits are by far the short term priority as opposed to long term health.

Another examole being the production of ventilators. The system we live under means there isn't a surplus of ventilators in case of a catastrophe of course the govenrment could produce more ventilators to make sure that there are enough in the event of a pamdemic but again, this is not in the financial interest of businesses. There was an example in the Obama administration where after the Ebola pandemic the US government contracted a company to produce high quality low-cost ventilators however this company was bought out by another company who was competing with their own brand of ventilators and they tore up the contract with the government on the basis that it wasn't profitable enough.

The question is: what will the public do about it? The answer: not a lot if they think watching the BBC news at 6 will actually provide them with any knowledge of what is actually happening in the world.

If people think the government have done a good job then i'd suggest they're not really aware of what is happening. Which isn't necessarily their fault but they need to do research outside of listening to BBC radio 2 or the guardian (by all means read those things as well - I'm not saying they're compeltely useless because they're not). There has long been things governments could do to help the human population in the event of a pandemic - it's just not in their interest to do so in the short term.

It's not necessarily even about party politics. It's about the overall economic structure of our societies and where those at the tops priorities lie.