COVID-19: The Mutilated World Is Moved by the Nurses and Doctors
March 19, 2020 There is no substitute, as this catastrophe unfolds, to
transfer priorities from privatization to the creation of a robust public
sector at the very least for health, says Vijay Prashad.
Luc Kordas, Coney Island, 2016.
By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
SARS-Co-2 or COVID-19 moves swiftly across the planet, leaving no region
untouched. It is a powerful virus, with a long enough incubation period to
hide the symptoms and therefore to gather more and more people in its deadly
arms.
Slowly, the world is shutting down, fear is overtaking us. But fear is not
an option. The virus is deadly, but it is not the virus alone that engenders
fear. Much of the world is afraid because people realise that we live in
institutional deserts, that our elected leaders are mostly incompetent, and
that the profit motive has focused so much of human potential on money
rather than on humanity. The deep loneliness that has fallen like a shroud
on the world comes from that realisation as much as from the enforced social
isolation. A majority of the world's heads of governments rely upon fear to
bewilder their populations; they thrive on panics of one kind or another.
They simply do not have the moral fibre to lead us as this pandemic rushes
through our lives.
Haris Nukem, Counting Blessings, 2019.
Haris Nukem, Counting Blessings, 2019.
In an unlikely place, the Financial Times, the Africa editor David Pilling
writes of the catastrophe occasioned by the shift from public health to
private health. There is, he writes, 'the temptation to view health through
a personal lens', as non-communicable diseases such as cancer, hypertension,
and diabetes eclipse other ailments; the antidote to these ailments has been
seen as personal (a fitness regimen) and private (expensive medical
insurance). As private medical colleges, private hospitals, and private
pharmaceutical companies have ballooned, the public system has withered.
This development, Pilling notes, 'ignores two facts. One is that the most
effective health interventions, from clean water to antibiotics and
vaccines, have all been collective. The second is that infectious diseases
have not been defeated. They have, at best, been kept at bay'. There is no
substitute, as this catastrophe unfolds, to transfer priorities from
privatisation to the creation of a robust public sector at the very least
for health.
"I would prefer a planet of nurses rather than a planet of bankers."
Even in the most threadbare health systems, cannibalised by austerity, it is
the nurses and doctors, the ambulance paramedics and the janitors, who have
been heroic in their work; doctors and nurses are being called back from
retirement, working now long hours with no time to rest. They are working
beyond exhaustion to stem the tide against the virus. In this mutilated
world, those who hold us together by the bonds of love and fellowship are
our heroes, marvellous people who are willing to put themselves in harm's
way to protect their fellow humans. Care givers - whether in families or in
institutions - never get sufficient credit for the enormous burden they have
shouldered as politicians have gutted the State and society. I would prefer
a planet of nurses rather than a planet of bankers.
Thami Mnyele, Things Fall Apart, 1976.
Thami Mnyele, Things Fall Apart, 1976.
News from Italy is startling, but it is a prelude of what might happen if
the virus fully enters the favelas and bastis of the world. It is little
known that the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 had its worst impact in Western
India; of those millions who died in that pandemic, 60 percent were from
this part of India, and those who died were weakened already by malnutrition
enforced by British colonial policy. Today, the hungry live in these belts
of slums that thus far have not been dramatically hit by the virus. If death
begins to stalk those areas, where medical care has been severely depleted,
the numbers of those who will die shall be startling, the wretchedness of
the class structure evident in the mortuary.
The poet Margaret Randall, whose memoir I Never Left Home has just been
published, has sent us a poem that sets the mood for this period:
COVID-19
When the death toll is expected
to be in the millions
chances are
someone you love will die.
The plagues of old revisit us now
and we scramble
to stay safe, stay
sane and present for others,
help neighbours, buy only
what we need,
from store shelves emptying
to a beat of fear.
Let us share facemasks
like the Chinese
and wash our hands
in silent prayer.
Let us sing from balconies
imagined and real
like Italians
in nationwide lockdown.
Let us be kind to one another
and organise the remedies
and solutions
irresponsible leaders put at risk.
If this is the Big One,
let us go out
with dignity, if a rehearsal
let us finally propose to live in peace.
Chinese doctors in the Altai mountains.
Chinese doctors in the Altai mountains.
Humans have for centuries confronted with great sorrow little understood
cataclysmic death, plagues and cholera being the most notable. When the
catastrophes strike, it is often women - as nurses, as mothers, and as
sisters - who have held society together. Mysterious and mystical
explanations have abounded. Science has helped us break through the deep
fatalism that has bewildered people; now we seek explanations in the
sequencing of genes and in the creation of vaccines. It is belief in reason,
science, and solidarity that sent Chinese doctors and nurses to the ends of
their country, such as into the Altai Mountains, to heal people and to
contain this very dangerous virus that has engulfed us in anxiety and death;
it is this that sent them, along with Cuban doctors, to Iran, Iraq, and
Italy to assist countries in distress. Their arrival reminds us of a
century-long history of socialist doctors and nurses who have thrown
themselves into international solidarity for the sake of humanity. These are
people who share an ethical landscape with the Indian communist doctors and
their people's polyclinics that we wrote about in Dossier no. 25 (February
2020). This is the socialist tradition.
Sanctions are a crime, Caracas, Venezuela, 2020.
Sanctions are a crime, Caracas, Venezuela, 2020.
And then there is the imperialist tradition. As COVID-19 spreads, and as
Iran was struck hard, a humanitarian response from the United States would
have been to end all murderous sanctions and let Iran import medical
equipment and supplies. The same applies to Venezuela, where COVID-19 has
now begun its march. Paola Estrada of the International People's Assembly
and I spoke to the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who told us
that his country is facing 'difficulties for the timely acquisition of
medicines'. But Venezuela, like Iran, has been assisted by the Chinese, the
Cubans, and the World Health Organisation. They are resolved to break the
embargo of imperialism and to break the chain of viral transmission.
'Sanctions are a crime', they say in Venezuela. The US unilateral sanctions
take on a special criminal significance in the midst of this pandemic.
Equally criminal is that the siege of Gaza (Palestine) continues, with two
million people trapped by the Israeli blockade in a deeply congested area.
The Palestinian nurses, doctors, and medical support staff, as well as the
teachers and social workers who have, for decades, held together their
fragile society do not get as much credit for keeping Palestinian society
alive and resilient. One of them was Razan al-Najjar, a twenty-one-year old
medic who was nursing unarmed protestors in the Great March of Return; they
were being shot at by Israeli snipers. One sniper aimed his rifle at her and
deliberately murdered her on 1 June 2018. There are thousands of nurses,
doctors, and medical workers like Razan al-Najjar who are working hard to
maintain the collapsing society in Yemen, where - due to the Saudi/Emirati
war - more than half of the population lacks the very basic healthcare and
nutrition. Imagine what the scourge of COVID-19 will do in Gaza and in
Yemen? That blockade, this war must end.
Malak Mattar, Gaza lockdown before the coronavirus, 2020.
Malak Mattar, Gaza lockdown before the coronavirus, 2020.
The World Health Organisation has been working hard, despite insignificant
funding, to stave off the spread of the virus. If you are able to donate
some money, please do so to WHO's Solidarity Response Fund. Stand up to
defend this mutilated world by helping the caregivers whose labour is the
salve to see us through to the other side of this ruin.
