This is the second part of a series I am writing about the new development in The Great Pandemic. Find the first installment, ‘How We Got to This Point’ here.
Part three will be along after Christmas. I think that will be enough.
To sum up how we got to where we are with Covid; there are very powerful interests in the world who do not want the pandemic to be eradicated. Some find that they benefit from it. Others cannot fit it into their thinking and so refuse to believe it is something which cannot just be ‘lived with’.
Below this level of miscreants have been the world’s wishing fools in mid level positions of authority, who have convinced themselves that vaccines by themselves will stop the virus. They also assumed that the virus would become less potent over time. The first two years of the pandemic have been wasted opportunity; nothing done to repair society’s vulnerability, the means of dealing with it not built up but allowed to wear down.
It is like this; vaccines and antibiotics always lose their effectiveness when they are not used properly. The reason they are usually used improperly is because the diseases which they treat are usually caused and spread by the abuse of resources and of people which go with any oligarchic system. They are regarded as a technological quick fix so that harmful behaviour patterns can continue.
Any oligarchic system is a breeder of infectious diseases. It favours industrialized, battery raising of livestock. It encourages unhealthy lifestyles in people, thus impairing natural immunity. The health of human populations is also impaired by bad health care caused by profit making and by cheapjacking public medical systems.
Capitalist oligarchy produces poorly designed and constructed buildings without proper air circulation. It crams people, especially low status ones, into these buildings.
It makes it hard for low status people to refuse unhealthy work places, or to take days off and withdraw when they are unwell. Worst of all, it makes problematic what should be fairly easy to do; shut down the economy for a few weeks, while supplying all essentials.
Almost everything which needs to be done to eliminate covid19 proves to be something which should be done anyway. In some countries, people routinely wear masks when there is a virus going around, or they are going into places where a virus can spread. In any well governed country, the medical system is planned for a large reserve capacity in the event of any pandemic or other emergency.
Thus, we see there is no real question about what ought to have happened in response to the Omicron wave. It is also clear that this has not happened and will not happen soon due to the system we are within. The questions are; what is going to happen now, and what must happen to make happen what must finally happen.
Regarding this, some otherwise useful commentators on the covid crisis are critical of ‘predicting the future’. In order to plan anything, you have to know what you want to do and what obstacles you are likely to encounter. Therefore, thinking of the way out of the present situation inevitably entails predicting events.
As for what is going to happen now that the predicted mutation of covid is on the loose, we can think of a worst case and a best case in order to ground our thinking. The best case is that Omicron turns out to be not as bad as it presently seems. As well, governments may finally take the lesson that influence agents for business interests are never good advisers and instead listen to those who have shown that they know what they are talking about.
In the best case, governments everywhere imitate those governments which have been successful in controlling the epidemic. A lockdown is inevitable and must be done strictly and once. It must be maintained not just until the virus is eradicated, but until an adequate infrastructure for ‘test, trace and isolate’, is finally in place.
The worst case is if covid keeps getting more potent and governments merely throw up their hands. In this case, they may continue for awhile trying to convince the public that everything is fine, the pandemic is not such a big problem. Or, that there is no choice but to learn to live ‘comfortably’ with it.
A refusal to respond to a serious pandemic has always led to economic and social collapse and it will in this case. First, the hospital system will collapse. Transportation and other vital systems will begin falling apart because the people to staff them are either ill or afraid to work.
Key businesses will start to close. Store shelves will empty. People will start to be evicted when unable to pay rent.
The economies of countries which refuse to deal with omicron will begin to collapse. This will not greatly perturb industrial capitalists because they will believe that once the crisis is over they will be in a position to restore their profit margins. In other words, they will likely treat it just like a severe recession.
Financial capitalists will initially be happy with the chaos. They will be able to buy up more assets and more government debt. How long it takes them to decide things have gone far enough will depend partly on how inflation develops.
The thing to understand about inflation is that there is more than one cause of inflation or its opposite, deflation. Industrial capitalists actually cause price inflation by charging more when goods are in short supply. Financial capitalists do not want too much inflation as it decreases the relative value of their holdings.
At some point a sufficient number of the oligarchy will reach the consensus that things have gone far enough, it is causing too much instability. It will become clear that the virus s not going to just burn itself out and people are not going to just adapt and learn to live with it. Then measures will be imposed to really bring the pandemic to a halt.
These measures will be far harsher than what would have been necessary if done earlier, and if done with some regard for the well being of the population. They will be especially hard on the working classes, underclasses, and other ‘nobodies’. Life after Omicron will be much more austere and repressive than before.
There is another future scenario to be gamed out. That is, that the populations of many countries rise up against all this nonsense and try to force correct pandemic measures to be implemented. How this alternative will play out in different countries is very unpredictable but it will have some profound effects.
I will take a fast and furious look at these in the last part of this series.
Indeed, the insane theater here in the USA certainly did distract from the core issues we should have all been fighting for. Medicare for All and proper provisions and safety nets to get us through the crisis. Oh, but nooooo. We get what? Gangland wars and more duopoly conspiracy hysterias. McCarthyism and the Cultural Wars are never ever gonna end.
Agree with you for so many reasons. These were some of the complaints I lodged from the very beginning. Only a little at odds with equating immunizations/vaccines with antibiotics. Nonetheless, just vaccines are obviously not the answer. It was disgraceful that we have not provided for our people so they could have isolated better, or had better support for our front line workers. On another story, look what happened here.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/627/645/304/forced-to-work-during-deadly-tornadoes-14-people-lost-their-lives.-demand-justice/#:~:text=Apparently%2C%20Mayfield%27s%20candle%20factory%20%22had%20been%20%27going%2024%2F7%27,Kentucky%27s%20history%20ripped%20through%20Mayfield%2C%20it%20turned%20deadly.