July 15, 2022
Three graphs on Canada
The diseased capitalist century
Global health leaders issued a “red alert” on child health as they unveiled data showing the biggest sustained drop in childhood vaccinations in about 30 years.
We are witnessing the reemergence of easily preventable diseases.
the percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) fell 5 percentage points between 2019 and 2021 to 81 per cent, its lowest level since 2008.
The data also underlined the growing threat from measles, with the number receiving a first dose of vaccine against the disease dropping to 81 per cent in 2021, also the lowest level since 2008.
WHO and Unicef have outlined that the hope for a 2021 recovery of inoculation stats have been dashed.
Compared to 2019, 6.7mn more children missed a third dose of the polio vaccine and 3.5mn did not get the first dose of the HPV vaccine, which protects girls against cervical cancer later in life. Globally, more than a quarter of the coverage of HPV vaccines achieved in 2019 had been lost, they said.
What is rather upsetting is that the fight against covid-19 could be done at the same time as the fight against all the other diseases that we are combating.
Unfortunately, real solutions to the current problem are missing from the UN agency reports. Mostly because they cannot articulate that the real problem is the broken neoclassical economic model that both agencies have adopted for vaccine and global health systems.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said tackling Covid-19 needed to go hand in hand with vaccinating for “killer diseases like measles, pneumonia and diarrhoea. It’s not a question of either/or, it’s possible to do both,” he added.
They warned that “monumental efforts” would be required to reach universal levels of coverage and to prevent outbreaks.
Socialism and the Omicron sub-variant BA.2.75
The new strain of Omicron has been unofficially nicknamed Centaurus. The major transmission started in India, but has already spread to Europe, Japan, the UK and the US.
The concern is that it has high "immune escape" qualities, meaning that it can easily infect you even if you have had all the vaccines and had the virus. This is similar to BA.5 which is driving the current wave of infections.
Similarly to other coronavirus viruses, Sars-Cov-2 is mutating at an extremely high rate and will continue to do so as long as we allow mass infection.
Why is this the case? Because the larger the numbers of people getting infected, the greater the chance of mutation. And, that's the situation we have chosen.
Contagion controls have not been brought in, testing is limited, mask wearing is a confusing whiplash of social pressures from one instance to another, people still have an inability to measure the risk of an environment, and decision makers are proudly ignorant people who do not understand anything and announce large, in person meetings with only "optional" contagion measures in place.
The problem stems from 50 years of neoliberal individualism which has robbed humans of consciousness, of their understanding of larger/mass/macro effects.
The idea of a society-wide program are rejected out-of-hand because of the reaction of a fringe. Push back against social imposition is based on the loose idea that humans "must be social". That anything harder than not trying at all causes too much anxiety for leaders who might have to know more than nothing before making a decision.
The worst part of all of this is that ideologues in power have made us lie to ourselves that getting this virus "isn't that bad" because people do not die at the same rate as they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
However, unlike the impacts of getting a bad cold, the impacts of covid-19 infection are cumulative. And, the people who are most at risk are the same people who are most oppressed.
If this sounds familiar, it is because we have seen this all before.
Socialists have faced all these excuses for a century or more.
Poverty is too difficult to eliminate. Capitalism is not that oppressive if the economy is growing. Imperialism happens somewhere else. The economy is too much work to understand for elected leaders to make the correct decisions—leave it to the "market". People are inherently greedy and a small fringe respond negatively to social sharing of wealth.
There are some who say that they cannot fight capitalism, climate change, economic crises, and global health crises like covid-19. But, we must understand that it is the same fight.
It is not just that capitalism is happening at the same time as the virus is spreading, the virus is the direct result of capitalism and the anti-social ideologies that it creates and feeds on.
Unlike liberals, as socialists we understand that the decision is not between doing nothing and doing something that destroys the economy or forces people into labour camps (or isolation in their homes).
To defeat this crisis, deal with the climate crisis, stop the systemic social and economic oppression of people, socialists must stand opposed to the dominant narrative that "nothing can be done". This is the same fight as the one against "there is no alternative" or "free markets".
The choice is between capitalists making profit and a better society. The choice for a society where we invest in health, comfort, and happiness and are not beholden to the gods of profit, greed, and inequality.
Something can always be done and armed with the correct information we can make choices that alter society for the better. And, the first step in our struggle has not changed, it is to reject the dominant capitalist narrative, remove the defeatist liberal blinders, and see the world as it really is.