Here is a review of the webinar “How To Top the Pandemic” I watched recently. It was very informative. You can watch it here. It is pretty long, over three hours, but it had a large panel of well informed people.
Do you want to cover the whole front of the debate about what kind of response is needed to the present situation? This is the thing to watch, and to inform your own decisions about what has to be finally done about covid.
The first point made is that everyone knew this was coming. People trained in public health related disciplines had been warning about it for years. Yet when it broke, public officials had no idea what to do and listened to the worst possible advice.
The pandemic is being worsened by the contempt for human life shown by the elites of most countries. The policies of some governments have been outright criminal, a “let the bodies pile high” mentality. This has been in some of the supposedly more ‘advanced’ countries.
The damage caused by the covid virus is far beyond just deaths. The long term effects, the “long covid”, could cause economic and social damage for generations.
The message the webinar’s convenors want to convey is that the pandemic must be ended. It can only be ended by a world wide uprising putting scientists in control of health measures.
About the Trotskies and their dreams
World Socialist Website is a media arm of the fourth International; the Trotskyists. They are the heirs of the Marxists who lost the power struggle against the Stalinists after the Bolshevik revolution and the death of Lenin. They oppose capitalism and the version of Marxism they call “Stalinism.” With the end of the Soviet Union they have become more influential.
Their basic idea is that capitalism cannot be opposed in just one country. A world wide revolution will be required, led by an international working class. This international class exists mostly in their dreams.
But the obvious need is for a transnational approach to dealing with covid. It is seen to be difficult to apply any pandemic measure under a capitalist system. This all fits well with the Trotskyist ideology.
The good and bad of the webinar
Some of the best of this webinar were modules in which people explained what they are doing in their communities to force proper covid protection from government, and for it to cease the “herd immunity” nonsense. One woman who leads a strike against school openings in the United Kingdom describes the government’s approach as ‘scorched earth’ against school kids. She describes the ridiculous excuses given by government officials for this behaviour.
I am originally from Alberta, Canada. So it cheers me that Alberta seems to be a big centre of resistance to the covidocracy. I encountered two people I have been following on twitter.
One is an emergency room doctor who has taken a leading role in organizing public resistance in Alberta, to the “Herd Immunity” nonsense coming from the radical right wing government there. The group “Protect our Province Alberta” did some street marches at first but quickly developed an effective communications strategy. They soon had much more credibility than the government and were able to blunt the worst of its covid policies.
Doctor Vipond was adamant that developing strong advocacy groups were the key to fighting covid. The case count in Alberta is now falling rapidly. Next door in Saskatchewan, which adopted the same polices at the same time, but where a strong advocacy movement did not develop, covid is reaching the disaster point.
Another doctor, a PHD in epidemology, works at a university in Alberta. She has helped organize the “#zerocovidcanada” movement. She best explained the different choices in dealing with covid, and their consequences.
Doctor Gasperowicz shows the effect in each Canadian province of the government deciding the public has to “live with” the virus. They are soon living with a massive increase in cases and a collapsing medical system. She also makes the important point that an elimination strategy intrudes least on people’s personal freedom.
Even more significant, she insists that covid could be eliminated in Canada in two months if we really tried. Some other panel members think that is too optimistic. This was the most interesting part of the discussion.
On the bad side were some serious time wasters. If you have attended some leftish forums you have run into these kinds of people. An administrator from Pakistan wanted to grind through a very dry paper on the effects of covid in rural areas of that country. He clearly could have gone on for three or four hours but he was told to sum up after ten minutes and then cut off.
As well, we had from some sort of official of a London bus drivers union give an old style leftie windbag ‘martyrs speech’ about who all had died and left families behind. He was also soon cut off.
How transmission happens
This was one of the most useful modules in this webinar.
One of the biggest things making covid worse is the inability of people in authority positions to understand what covid is and how it works. Especially, how it is transmitted. There is much speculation about the cause of the unwillingness to admit that it is an airborne disease.
That is, it goes through the air, like smoke. It is spread when people are crowded together for a significant time where air circulation is insufficient. Things like plexiglass barriers are useless. Good masks are a very effective prevention. Good indoor air filtration is also very useful.
Covid is not spread in droplets. It does not live on surfaces. Therefore cleaning and sanitizing is useless. In fact, the chemicals used in this are unhealthy. The “six feet apart” rule is also dubious.
Mitigation, suppression, elimination, eradication.
The pandemic choice responses are these; to try to mitigate the virus to prevent overwhelming the hospital system. To suppress, to reduce the health effects on the population. Or to eliminate, to remove the virus from the population. Eradication means to eliminate it permanently from the earth, as some infectious diseases have been.
The first two options work on the idea of ‘herd immunity’. That is, eventually most of the population become immune and the virus disappears, having no one left to infect. People talking about herd immunity in human populations do not know what they are talking about. This is for herds of animals held in enclosed spaces.
Because the pandemic is global, places where covid has been eliminated will be constantly reseeded from outside. Thus elimination will only work locally and temporarily, and elimination and eradication require a global approach.
If the virus does not peter out on its own in the next years, then the prognosis is grim. It either goes on forever, or there is the kind of world revolution that could bring about a global authority which can implement the global approach.
Will it go away or must it be eradicated?
The point was repeatedly made that many smaller countries easily eliminated the virus but kept getting reseeded from countries where it was being allowed to run, and their governments eventually caved in to internal pressure from business organizations.
Covid is mainly a crisis of failed leadership and equity. Yet the costs and difficulties of elimination are huge. Many national elites will decide they do not want to pay it and just take the reduced productivity back by squeezing their populations even harder.
One forlorn hope some panel members seemed to have is that a reorganized and funded World Health Organization will be able to lead a world wide campaign against covid. But a new WHO will still have to deal with these truculent elites in many countries, with a ‘herd immunity’ mentality.
Going forward.
When this covid thing first started, I expected authorities do do what was necessary and to have it under control in a few months. After seeing the incompetence and often criminality of most governments, I expected that it would take several years for the virus to burn itself out. Now I am almost convinced that the disease will go on almost indefinitely, with effects on productivity and living standards world wide.
In many third world countries where vaccination has been impossible, many people have now been infected with covid several times. Vaccines seem to wear off over time. A world wide campaign to give everyone regular booster shots seems impossible to mount. A ray of hope here is the effort of several countries to reverse engineer the mRNA type vaccines, the most effective ones, with intent to distribute them in defiance of patents.
What my World Socialist friends seem unable to grasp is that each country has a different political situation. In some countries a mass uprising, to put scientists in control of pandemic measures, is possible. In other countries that could lead to massacres of the population, worse than the worst effects of the pandemic.
As a kind of ‘minority report’ in this forum, some speakers have talked about strengthening International institutions to be able to deal more effectively with these kinds of situations. Reference was made to the independent panel which sat last spring and came up with the “make this the last Pandemic” report.
I am skeptical that covid can be eliminated or that new pandemics can be prevented, given the attitudes of much of the world’s ruling classes. Nonetheless, the reports recommendations provide something to build on. Download a summary of it here.
I do not do crystal ball gazing. All this could play out in many ways. I am not sure in my own mind how the covid crisis needs to be responded to. But this webinar is an excellent exploration of the real options.
There seems to be no way to live with covid and no way to eliminate it. No global solution is possible right now. However, local resistance can have some effects, especially where the public has some resources to fight with.
That is not quite the message a Trotskyist wants to hear.