Corona Virus

Quote: Adam_Harrison9 "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

Great post Adam.
The similarity between SARS and Corona Virus is unfortunately so close.
SARS was "controlled" in a sense, whereas Corona has not been for whatever reason and I don't want to get into politics as I don't do politics.
I suppose we could look at the the animal-human contamination, which is there.
However, I disagree re Ventilators.
I work for a medical company and I can state as a fact, they are produced as per demand. There has never been a "surplus" of them.
For example, if Barnsley Hospital ITU wanted x10, chances are they would be on the shelf ready.
However, if they wanted x25 that may be a slight issue - and I have seen this scenario in January for another hospital who had the money and ordered them.
Cheers