COVID-19 and the Global Pandemic of Anti-Blackness

By Ewuare X. Osayande

Originally published at the author’s website.

The initial word was that Black folks couldn’t catch it. Rumors began spreading that Black people were immune to the virus. But what we have learned and continue to learn with each passing day as the global death toll rises is that Black life is quite susceptible to this virus. But not in a way that makes sense biologically. Black people are not genetically predisposed to this novel coronavirus. What we are is generationally predisposed to an anti-Black discrimination that has weakened our communal immune system leaving each of us vulnerable to this virus in ways people in other communities are not.

Wherever Black people are in this world, we exist mostly on the social margins, isolated and disproportionately impacted by policies and social practices rooted in notions of white supremacy that undermine our collective capacity for health, wealth and safety. Whether on the continent of Africa or throughout the Black Diaspora, our health and safety have been severely hampered by a global social order that has rested upon a racialized ranking that necessitates Black existence be fixed at its bottom to enable and justify whiteness to exist at its apex. Since the 1500s, this arrangement has had deadly implications for Black people. As the bodies pile in over-crowded morgues, hospital rooms and rented trailers in the US and in all the places where Black people live, this virus is exposing the pillars of that structure in ways that are as horrific as when European slave ships set sail from Africa to the Americas.

For the first month or so most of the news coverage in the United States addressed the issue without consideration of race. This was touted as a virus that was wreaking havoc on all segments of the population equally. Then Milwaukee happened. The first casualties in that predominantly white working-class city were all Black men. And when more Black people continued to die, the community there began to ask questions that forced a narrative change. Initial reports claimed that the upsurge in the Black community was due to Black people not heeding the warnings and precautions. Then as activists began to call out the contradictions in the news coverage, more honest reports emerged identifying racial disparities in all areas of life as the true underlying conditions that account for the sky rocketing rates of infection and death in Black communities.

Yet, scant attention had been paid to the impact that generations of discrimination in health care, housing, education, employment — the fundamental pillars of the society — has had on Black people’s overall health. Even less attention has been given to the need for strategies to redress the underlying social and economic constraints that continue to suffocate the life of Black possibilities and opportunity. That Black people in Flint are forced to tackle this pandemic without clean water is a telling indictment. Black communities have already been dealing with pandemic-like concerns for decades in the US. And as much as we would want to believe that money solves all problems, this virus is showing us that wealth or its lack is not much of a deciding factor.

Less than a week after Milwaukee, officials in the wealthiest predominantly Black county in the country, Prince George’s County in Maryland, were rushing to meet the surge in expected hospitalizations as a result of the virus spread. A few days later, the county had amassed the largest concentration of positive cases in the state.

These disparate conditions facing African Americans are further compounded by the everyday racism that puts Black life at risk. Despite the directives from all levels of government for every person to cover their nose and mouth when in public, video footage of Black people being accosted and harassed by police are seen with a regularity that is beyond baffling. Some show Black persons escorted out of grocery stores under claims of looking suspicious. In the videos we see them being followed by police as they exit stores as white customers enter wearing the exact same masks on their faces. The very racism that is responsible for the weakened immune systems of Black people due to stress and anxiety have not shown any signs of reprieve in this time of extreme grieving.

For most Black people, there is no sanctuary. There is no salvage from the turmoil of being turned away at the very places established to provide care. Each week new stories emerge on social media and national news outlets of Black people dying just days after being denied admission at hospitals despite showing symptoms of the virus.

At the time of this writing, the Black mortality rate from this Corona-virus is more than twice that of Latinos and Asians and almost three times the rate of white mortality in the US. According to the APM Research Lab, “in some places, the multiple between Black and White mortality rates greatly exceeds the 2.6 overall figure that we’ve constructed from all available data for the nation. In Kansas and Wisconsin, Black residents are 7 times more likely to die than White residents. In Washington D.C., the rate among Blacks is 6 times higher than Whites, while in Michigan and Missouri, it is 5 times greater. In Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, New York State, Oregon and South Carolina, Blacks are 3–4 times more likely to die of the virus than Whites.” This is incomprehensible.

African-Americans represent approximately 13 percent of the US population. In the UK, the Black population is less than 5 percent, yet the Black mortality rate from the coronavirus is running at more than three times the rate of whites there, far outdistancing other minority and immigrant groups in the process. The London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies has released a study that attempts to get at an explanation for these stark disparities. What the researchers are clear on is that Black workers in Britain are over-represented in “key worker roles,” what here in the US would be considered essential and front-line workers. What these studies have yet to get clear on is how anti-black racism, itself, is a key factor.

Britain’s own prime minister, Boris Johnson, whom many consider a Trump knock-off, recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection that had him on life-support. Yet, even his near-death experience has not led to the creation of a plan for the most impacted communities. In the land that not too long ago tried to remove its Black citizens, British leaders are lax in their concern for Black life.

Back here in the states, all concern for Black life has been overlooked as attention has been focused on the spectacle of armed white militias and white evangelicals storming Democratically-run state capitols demanding that their governors reopen the economy. Trump, for his part, calls these noose-wielding, swastika wearing, confederate flag waving Americans “very good people” and encourages governors to “give a little.” Yet Trump has not given much of any support to communities ransacked by this virus. In fact, the governor of Maryland has reportedly put the national guard on watch of essential PPE stockpiles to block Trump’s efforts at intercepting state supply. Re-opening state economies and public facilities en masse right now would amount to a national death sentence for Black America.

That death sentence has already been enacted unofficially in Brazil. In the country with the highest population of Black people in the diaspora, Black people are dying at rates that dwarf all other communities there. First brought to the country by the wealthy returning to major cities where Black people work in menial jobs and as house servants, the virus has now spread into the over-crowded favelas where residents live without running water and proper sanitation.

In many ways, the Brazilian government mirrors that of the US response. Both nations are led by capitalists who came to power with claims to clean up government corruption with campaigns mired in rightwing conservative rhetoric with winks to white nationalists and militia groups. Both nations have class-based economies that keep Black and Brown workers locked in poverty, discrimination, intimidation and violence, where police regularly engage in flagrant acts of brutality, assault and abuse. None of this coincidence. Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro flaunt their friendship before the world. Their strategic alliance as political leaders are linked in a whiteness that revels in anti-black violence that is both rhetorical and real. Both men have dismissed the guidance of medical experts on how to reduce the spread in their respective countries. Touting a tough-guy image reminiscent of Mussolini, Bolsonaro has gone as far as making impromptu appearances in densely populated areas as public acts of disregard of the pandemic. But this is not about lack of understanding or ignorance. Both leaders were receiving briefs months before the virus’ arrival on their respective shores. These are malicious acts representative of a political class that seeks to coddle a Christian evangelical base that has long kept social distance from science as they await the return of their white savior. For them, this pandemic is prophecy fulfilled.

Yet, even science has not been the friend of Black people during this pandemic. At the height of the crisis, when governments were desperate to find potential cures, two French “medical experts” went on live TV with one, Dr. Jean-Paul Mira (who heads up an intensive care unit in a Paris hospital), saying, “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” Although this was met with some criticism from various sectors, the fact that two esteemed doctors would casually call for experimenting on a population of people is more than revolting. It speaks to the kind of anti-blackness that has plagued African populations since France colonized most of the continent. It speaks to a world that is willing to promote experts and leaders willing to push the envelope of acceptable parameters of denigration of Black lives. It shows us how little progress has been made since the 1921 publication of René Maran’s classic anti-colonial novel, Batouala, in which the lead character says, “We are nothing but flesh out of which taxes may be ground. … The white men are killing us slowly.”

But perhaps nothing shows the inhumane levels of anti-blackness in this time of COVID-19 than the experiences of Africans in China.

Despite being the target of Trump’s racist campaigns that seek to deflect blame for his abysmal failures to curtail this virus’ impact onto the Chinese government, China has concocted its own racist narrative which has targeted Africans throughout China. Video footage of Africans kicked out of their places of residence onto the streets without any means of support from local or national agencies sent shock-waves of anger throughout Africa. In Guangzhou there have been cases of Africans having their passports taken by police further jeopardizing their safety. Conditions deteriorated so terribly that rumors began to spread of African officials planning to send planes to return their countrymen and women back home.

The African presence in China is a direct result of the strategic inroads the Chinese government has made with African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria. Since becoming Africa’s largest trade partner more than a decade ago, China has invested billions in infrastructure development with an emphasis on port and railroad construction. Yet, what is clear is that these investments will do little to change the excessive class-stratification and extreme levels of income disparity that exist throughout Africa.

These recent events suggest a pattern of abuse all too familiar to African workers and migrants in search of a financial foothold in a global economy predicated on an exploitation that disregards their humanity to the point of death. The world may have shuttered when Trump compared countries in African to excrement, but shitty is a most accurate term to describe the response around the world to the Black COVID-19 mortality rate.

At the time of this writing, more Black people have now died in the US from this coronavirus than were lynched during segregation. Never in a white supremacist’s wildest dreams could they have imagined a plague that would wipe out thousands of Black lives in a matter of a couple of months. When the germs clear and the air is breathable again without fear, this moment in human history will be marked by the toll it has taken on Black life. It will reveal a turbulent world economic order crumbling on the backs of an essential Black labor pool kept at subsistence levels of health with no sufficient safeguards in place. Will all that may be uncertain and unknowable about our world right now, one thing is for sure — the pandemic of anti-blackness, its symptoms and effects, will remain long after the coronavirus COVID-19 has come and gone.

Ewuare X. Osayande is a writer and activist. The author of several books, his latest is a collection of poetry entitled Black Phoenix Uprising. Learn more about his work at Osayande.org.

Fight the Virus, Not China! The History and Background of Trump’s Racist COVID-19 Rhetoric

(Getty images)

By Derek R. Ford

Many are increasingly and quite justifiably outraged at Trump’s repeated attempts to link the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 to both the city of Wuhan and the entire country of China.

Meanwhile, others on the right link COVID-19 to China not just geographically but culturally. John Cornyn, a U.S. Senator from Texas said the pandemic stemmed from “the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that.” Some were quick to point out that in the state he represents, “several towns host annual festivals where residents milk rattlesnakes for venom to be used in antivenin and fry up filets of snake flesh as a novelty snack.” Others noted that “Mad Cow” disease originated in England, and the H1N1 flu originated in the U.S. and Mexico.

While mainstream journalists have, to some extent, pushed back against this racism, they’ve quickly backed down when Trump characteristically defends his position or refuses to comment. As Elie Mystal pointed out in The Nation, Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics quickly moved away from the topic by noting he was “switching gears to a larger question.” Mystal writes that, “If the media were doing their job, this would be the story: The president of the United States is putting lives at risk during a global pandemic by inciting violence against fellow Americans.”

Trump’s racism and xenophobia is nothing new. Yet neither is the imperialist and racist demonization of China and Chinese people. This history, both recent and stretching back a century ago, is one in which not only are Democrats and Republicans complicit, but so too are the corporate news media.

Coronavirus coverage was anti-China from the beginning

From the earliest coverage, US media and politicians did everything they could to mobilize the Coronavirus as part of a broader anti-China demonization campaign. Sometimes this included outright lies and fabrications, like when the New York Times reported that Dr. Li Wenliang, an early identifier of the novel coronavirus, was arrested by Chinese authorities in the middle of the night for “whistleblowing.”

As K.J. Noh reported for Counterpunch, Dr. Li wasn’t a “whistleblower.” He didn’t report anything to authorities but sent a private message to seven colleagues (that included a confidential medical record). Others had, however, reported early signs of a novel virus to the proper authorities, and they weren’t reprimanded at all. Perhaps the reason that Dr. Li didn’t notify even his own hospital administration was because he had no qualifications on the matter.

Of no small importance was that Dr. Li was never arrested! Instead, he “was called in, lightly reprimanded (talked to, and signed a document not to spread rumors) and went straight back to work.”

The coverage was part of an attempt to portray the government of the People’s Republic of China as ineffective, repressive, and chaotic, willing to do anything to hide the truth.

While China’s response was bound to entail errors, as any response would, the World Health Organization found it worthy of praise, including its transparency.

Indeed, China took extraordinary, coordinated, and swift efforts to contain the virus, including the importation of 20,000 medical workers to Hubei province, the emergency construction of hospitals, the provision of electricity to people even if they couldn’t pay (and not just a deferral of bills), the forbidding of price increases, free treatment of medical expenses, and more.

Instead of learning from and helping China (not to mention preparing for an outbreak in the U.S.), the US establishment focused all of its energy on China bashing. This had devastating consequences. In his important article for Liberation News, Saul Kanowitz documented just a few of them, from stores posting signs that exclude Chinese people from entering and Chinese restaurants being vandalized to high school students in California assaulting a classmate. China towns across the U.S. were empty. Even Asian people who weren’t Chinese were assaulted and harassed.

“Chinese Toy Terror”

In her 2012 book, Animacies, Mel Y. Chen (2012, Duke University Press) documents the racist and imperialist anti-China propaganda that dominated public discourse in the 2007 “lead panic.” The discovery of lead in toys made in China featured prominently in the domestic hysteria. News coverage and warnings, bolstered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Fud and Drug Administration, and others, Chen notes, had three things in common:

“First, they pointed to the dangers of lead intoxication as opposed to other toxins. Second, they emphasized the vulnerability of American children to this toxin. Third, they had a common point of origination: China, for decades a major supplier of consumer products to the United States and responsible for various stages in the production stream” (160).

Chen gives a number of blog and news headlines clearly formulating lead as a weapon of China against poor U.S. children, like “Why is China Poisoning Our Babies?” and “Chinese Toy Terror.”

Not coincidentally, Chen observes, this was just one year after China superseded the U.S. in global exports.

This campaign itself drew on previous campaigns demonizing China and its people, perhaps most significantly the “Yellow Peril” of the early 20th century, during which the U.S. barred Asian immigration through the Immigration Act of 1917.

The racism of the anti-Chinese “lead panic” of 2007 is most apparent when contrasted with the long struggles against lead-based paint in the U.S. Grassroots campaigns were largely successful in creating awareness about lead paint and banning its future use. Yet lead poisoning continued in poor and working-class communities, particularly Black communities.

And, of course, lead continues to contaminate drinking water in cities across the U.S. In my own county of Marion, Indiana, school water tested positive for led in more than half of the schools and child care sites in the county. A 2019 health department report found that lead levels were between 20 and 8,630 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold is 15 parts per billion. This was included in the internal report obtained by IndyStar journalist Suzette Hackney, not the public report they released.

Fight the virus, not the people!

While it’s true that Trump is anxious for a scapegoat to blame for his administration’s appalling response to the current pandemic, this doesn’t entirely explain his efforts to identify COVID-19 with China.

The Democratic Party and the corporate media are mostly outraged at the blatancy of Trump’s anti-China racism, because when it comes to demonizing China, they play their dutiful role. The entire U.S. political establishment is firm in its orientation toward China: it must be defeated. Since the 1949 revolution that overthrew colonialism and established the People’s Republic of China, the consensus in Washington has been one of counterrevolution in China.

As China strength and importance continues to grow, the U.S. is increasingly in direct confrontation with China on military, economic, and political matters.

The response of progressive people in the U.S. has to be as deep and wide as the ruling class’ anti-China campaign. We must condemn not only the overtly racist rhetoric of Trump, but the entire demonization campaign against China, both right now and after the COVID-19 crisis has passed.

Social Distance with a Vengeance

(Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

By Werner Lange

Long before the practice of social distancing became the new normal, there was the concept of social distance. Named after its founder, the Bogardus Social Distance Scale was developed within the Chicago School of Sociology during the turbulent 1920s to empirically measure the degree of affinity (or lack thereof) Americans felt for members of various racial and ethnic groups in our highly diverse society. Seven categories of “social distance” were established ranging from willingness to marry a member of specified groups to outright exclusion of all such group members from the USA;  the higher the number on a scale of 1 to 7, the lower the affinity and greater the felt social distance. Not surprising for a white-supremacist society, European-Americans consistently ranked as having the lowest social distance standing in several nationwide surveys over a 40 year period, while Americans of color had the highest.

Particularly instructive for our troubling times is the comparatively high social distance score consistently expressed toward the Chinese, an ethnic group that has  never fully escaped the racist stigmatization of the “Yellow Peril”. In fact, precisely that virulent castigation gained new life with repeated recent presidential denunciations of the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus”. Not satisfied with raising the specter of a new deadly Yellow Peril, Trump used his press conference of March 19 to even evoke the ugly spirit of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by congratulating himself for having “called for a ban for people coming in from China”. Such Sinophobia is viciously echoed at increasingly alarming rates in the streets of America and in the halls of Congress, where a US Senator recently blamed the “culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs” for the coronavirus pandemic.

These utterly racist mindsets are not far from genocidal ones, patterns of barbaric thought and behavior hardly alien to the American experience as evidenced by the smallpox infestation of blankets given to Mandan Native Americans in 1837. In the midst of this pandemic, depraved visions of genocide once again rear their ugly heads. What else could have motivated the Trump regime to attempt, by a billion dollar bribe, to acquire exclusive rights and use of a developing coronavirus vaccine from German scientists? The prospect of witnessing others succumb by the millions to the pandemic while chosen Americans are safely vaccinated evidently fits the racist, even genocidal, game plan of this criminal regime.

That barbaric game plan is all too evident in regard to Iran. As of mid-March, Iran has suffered over 1,280 fatalities and 17,300 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, the third highest of any nation in the world. Especially vulnerable are some hundred thousand Iranians who have survived the chemical weapons attacks by Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war but suffer from various lung ailments from that brutal conflict. Rather than lift the onerous sanctions imposed on Iran which deprive the beleaguered Iranian people of urgently needed medications and supplies, the Trump regime resorted to a new round of draconian sanctions on March 17 to intensify its “maximum pressure campaign” illegally implemented in 2018. The sanctions, a clear form of collective punishment, have already imposed enormous suffering upon countless Iranians. With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, these immoral sanctions are guaranteed to dramatically increase the Iranian body count, something that only a genocidal mindset could wish and seek. Yet with remarkably few exceptions, a roaring silence emanates from our national leaders regarding the calamity caused by these criminal sanctions. And the criminals themselves, ones responsible for the recent assassination of a beloved Iranian leader, likely greet the growing calamity in Iran with glee. There is no room for such barbarism in the greater moral universe to emerge from this crisis.

The social distance scale did not envision genocide as an option, and social distancing in our times is designed to keep people six feet apart to help prevent putting them six feet under. Hopefully we, as a more enlightened human family, will come out of this pandemic with an operative mindset much different than before.  Once this crisis is over we need to practice just the opposite of social distancing physically and massively implement social proximity mentally by finally overcoming the racist legacy manifested and measured by the social distance scale, let alone forever cleanse the world of genocidal thoughts and practices. We must recognize, like never before, that we are one human family united by a common origin and common destiny. Whether that destiny is to be peaceful co-existence or no existence largely depends of the extent to which, we, as one wounded but healed global family, make a paradigm shift from hate to love.

Capitalism is an Incubator for Pandemics. Socialism is the Solution.

[Image: Antonio Calanni/AP]

By Mike Pappas and Tatiana Cozzarelli

Republished from Left Voice.

A new coronavirus called “SARS-CoV-2” — known colloquially by the name of the disease it causes called “coronavirus disease 2019” or “COVID-19” — is wreaking havoc around the world. In Italy, the death toll has risen to 366 today and the country just extended its quarantine measures nationwide. In China, production has shut down at factories across the country. According to the WHO, over 100,000 cases have been confirmed in over 100 countries and the death toll is now up to 3,809 as of this writing. The stock market in the U.S. fell by 7% today and  we may be headed towards another 2008-like recession.

Reports range from 200-400 (213 per WHO and 434 per NBC News) confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., but there are likely many many more that have not been detected, as health facilities still do not have a readily available rapid test for diagnosis. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) botched a first response, sending out faulty testing kits that required a recall. At this point in the U.S. the CDC is refusing to report how many have been tested, but we know the number tested in the US is extremely low largely due to the immense hurdles government officials have put in place. The FDA recently announced over 2 million tests should be shipped to labs by Monday with an additional 4 million by the end of the week. This could lead to a great increase in confirmed cases around the country. We are also seeing reproduction of racist, xenophobic tropes and attacks as fear of the epidemic grows. 

The spread of the coronavirus is exposing all of the contradictions of capitalism. It shows why socialism is urgent.

Coronavirus in Capitalism

It is only going to get worse. The spread of the virus is impossible to stop — and this is due to social reasons more than biological ones. While doctors recommend that people stay home when they are feeling sick in order to reduce the possibility of spreading the virus, working-class people just can’t afford to stay home at the first sight of a cough. 

Contrary to Donald Trump’s recent suggestions that many with COVID-19 should “even go to work,” the CDC recommends that those who are infected by the virus should be quarantined. This poses a problem under capitalism for members of the working class who cannot afford to simply take off work unannounced. New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio recently suggested avoiding crowded subway cars or working from home if possible, but many rely on public transit. Suggestions from government leaders show their disconnect from the working class. 58% Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings and around 40% of Americans could not afford an unexpected bill of $400. So for many, staying home or not using public transit is simply not an option.

Even more people avoid the doctor when we get sick. With or without insurance, a trip to the hospital means racking up massive medical bills. The Guardian reports that 25% of Americans say they or a family member have delayed medical treatment due to the costs of care. In May 2019, The American Cancer Society found that 56% of adults report having at least one medical financial hardship. Medical debt remains the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country. One third of all donations on the fundraising site GoFundMe go to covering healthcare costs. That is the healthcare system of the wealthiest country in the world: GoFundMe.

Clearly, this is a very dangerous scenario. Already, people are being saddled with massive bills if they seek tests for the coronavirus. The Miami Herald wrote a story about Osmel Martinez Azcue who went to the hospital for flu-like symptoms after a work trip to China. While luckily it was found that he had the flu, the hospital visit cost $3,270, according to a notice from his insurance company. Business Insider made a chart of the possible costs associated with going to the hospital for COVID-19:

Of course, these costs will be no problem for some. The three richest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans. The concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists is part of capitalism’s DNA. But as Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkson highlight extensively in their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, people in more equal societies are healthier. They live longer, have lower infant mortality, and have high self-ratings of health. Inequality leads to poorer overall health.

So how does this relate to COVID-19? The main theory for these outcomes is that inequality of wealth and power in a society leads to a state of chronic stress. This wreaks havoc on bodily systems such as the cardiovascular system and the immune system, leaving individuals more susceptible to health problems. This means as societies become more and more unequal, we will see individuals more and more susceptible to infection. Capitalism’s inequality puts us all at greater risk as COVID-19 spreads.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) In Socialism

COVID-19 highlights the need for socialism to face epidemics like these. And by socialism, we don’t mean Medicare for All or New Deal liberalism. Medicare for All is not enough to face pandemics like the coronavirus. We mean a society in which human needs govern production, not the drive for profit. It’s a society without capitalists, where production and reproduction is democratically planned by the working class and oppressed. In this kind of society, we would be able to respond to the COVID-19 infinitely better than in capitalism. 

In a socialist society, both prevention and responses to outbreaks of illness would change drastically. Supplies such as hand soap, hand sanitizer, and surface sanitizing wipes or sprays are in extremely high demand at this time. We are already seeing shortages of key supplies around the world. The need for profit maximization under capitalism has led companies to drastically raise their prices in this time of high demand. For example, the Washington Post has reported drastic increases in prices of products such as Purell Hand Sanitizer. Under capitalism, scarcity leads to greater profit.

Capitalism has led to a globalized system of production containing industries at disparate ends of the globe that truly depend on each other to function. This allows for a capitalist’s exploitation of a worker in a factory in China producing iPhones that goes unnoticed by an Apple customer here in the U.S.. It also allows corporations to drive down costs in one area of the world that may have weaker protections for workers. While this is beneficial for capitalists, outbreaks of illnesses such as COVID-19 highlight clear weaknesses in this system. A large portion of the basic materials used to make new medicines come from China. Since industry is so affected by viral spread, production of supplies has been drastically cut. This delays the ability for a rapid response in other countries such as the U.S.. 

A central aspect of socialism is a democratically run planned economy: an economy in which all resources are allocated according to need, instead of ability to pay. Need is decided democratically by both producers and consumersWith the means of production under workers’ control, we would be able to quickly increase production of these products in an emergency. 

Furthermore, with the elimination of the barriers between intellectual and manual labor, increasing numbers of workers would be familiarized with the entire production process and ready to jump in where needed. In worker cooperatives within capitalism like MadyGraf in Argentina and Mondragon in Spain, workers already learn all aspects of production. This allows workers to shift to areas where extra effort is needed. 

Socialism cannot exist in only one country, so a global planned economy would be key in these moments. If one country is experiencing a shortage, others would have to make up for it. This is key for reigning in global epidemics like the coronavirus: it will only be stopped if we stop it everywhere. In a global planned economy, this would be a much easier task. 

Staying Home

If one does get sick, making a decision to protect oneself and others by taking time off should never lead them to have to worry about losing their job, paying their rent, putting food on the table, or being able to provide for their children. Under capitalism services such as housing and healthcare are reduced to commodities. This often presents people with the ultimatum: work while sick and potentially expose others, or stay home and risk losing your job.

Under socialism, the increased mechanization of production and the elimination of unnecessary jobs — goodbye advertising industry! goodbye health insurance industry! — would already drastically reduce the number of hours that we would need to work. We would be spending vast hours of the day making art or hanging out with friends and family. 

During disease outbreaks, we would be able to stay home at the first sign of a cold, in addition to getting tested right away. In a planned economy, we could allocate resources where they are most needed, and take into account a decrease in the workforce due to illness. 

Where Are the Coronavirus Therapies?

Currently, multiple for-profit companies are attempting to test (sometimes new, sometimes previously rejected and now recycled) therapies to see if they can treat or prevent COVID-19. While there are attempts to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, this vaccine would not be ready for testing in human trials for a few months according to Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Yet even last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar refused to guarantee a newly developed coronavirus vaccine would be affordable to all stating, “we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” The statement is ironic to say the least coming from the former top lobbyist to Eli Lilly who served at a time when the company’s drug prices went up significantly.

Companies such as Gilead Sciences, Moderna Therapeutics, and GlaxoSmithKline all have various therapies in development. Each company’s interest in maximizing profits around their particular COVID-19 therapy has kept them from being able to pool their resources and data to develop therapies in the most expeditious manner possible. The state of COVID-19 research exposes the lies about capitalism “stimulating innovation.”

It is also important to note that much of the drug development deemed “corporate innovation” could not have been possible without taxpayer-funded government research. Bills such as the Bayh-Dole Act allow for corporations to purchase patents on molecules or substances that have been developed at publicly funded institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), then jack up the prices to maximize profits. A study conducted by the Center for Integration of Science and Industry (CISI) analyzed the relationship between government funded research and every new drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. Researchers found “each of the 210 medicines approved for market came out of research supported by the NIH.”

Expropriation of the capitalists would mean the public would no longer have to subsidize private corporate profits. The nationalization of the pharmaceutical industry would allow for both intellectual and financial resources to be pooled to tackle the globe’s challenges, instead of focussing on blockbuster drugs that benefit only a few. In the case of COVID-19, we would see a mass mobilization and coordination of the world’s greatest minds to pool resources and more quickly develop effective therapies. In fact, there would likely be more doctors and scientists as people who want to study these fields are no longer confronted with insurmountable debt

Health Care in Socialism

Under socialism, the entire healthcare industry would be run democratically by doctors, nurses, employees, and patients. This would be drastically different from the current system in which wealthy capitalists make the major decisions in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturing firms, and insurance companies (the key players that make up the “medical industrial complex”). In the case of the COVID-19, health care would be a human right, and not a means to make money. This would allow for every individual concerned to obtain testing and treatment without fear of economic ruin. If hospitalization or quarantine was needed, a patient and family would be able to focus on what was best for their health instead of worrying whether a hospital bill would destroy them economically.

The purview of what is considered “health care” would also need to expand. An individual’s overall living situation and social environment would be key to addressing their health. This would mean a health system under socialism would address issues such as pending climate collapse. While a connection between COVID-19 and climate change has yet to be established, rising global temperatures — largely driven by 100 largest corporations and the military-industrial complex — will increase the emergence of new disease agents in the future. Shorter winters, changes in water cycles, and migration of wildlife closer to humans all increase the risk of new disease exposure.

Capitalism created the conditions of the epidemic. Capitalist “solutions” are insufficient and exacerbate the crisis, meaning more sickness and more death. Capitalism has been an incubator for the continual spread of the coronavirus. Health care under this system will always be woefully inadequate in addressing epidemics. The coronavirus highlights the fact that we must move to a more social analysis of health and well-being. We are all connected to each other, to nature, and to the environment around us. Socialism will restructure society based on those relationships.

At the same time, socialism is not a utopia. There will likely be epidemics or pandemics in socialism as well. However, a socialist society — one in which all production is organized in a planned economy under workers’ control — would best be able to allocate resources and put the creative and scientific energy of people to the task.