Pandemics: Public Health, So-Called "Free-Thinkers", and 'Comparing Apples and Oranges'

Those who vehemently oppose the lockdowns and aggressively advocate that state of emergency measures be lifted prematurely tend to push and hold most if not all of these extremely confused and contradictory narratives:

1) Sue China, everything is their fault, they created the Coronavirus, etc.

2) The virus is not real. The pandemic is a hoax and the lockdowns are "authoritarian,", "fascist", and/or "totalitarian".

3) Praise Sweden for their "herd immunity", no-lockdown approach where "no one has died".

4) It's just like the flu. Everyone is just overreacting. Those people who died were really old or unhealthy anyway.

5) The flu is more deadly, more people die from it. The deaths are exaggerated and/or have been falsified to claim that this patient died from the Coronavirus!

Nevermind the fact that "herd immunity" -- which 'anti-lockdown' libertarians advocate for without a vaccine -- reeks of eugenics, because it entails letting the virus to run wildly out of control and allowing it to cull the most vulnerable populations. However, addressing one by one all the over-the-top, conspiracy theories surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, as well as the underlying reactionary nature of the anti-lockdown protests seen in North America, would be an excessively long laundry list that goes beyond the scope of this brief commentary. 

Nevertheless, those self-styled "free-thinkers" who are of the opinion that the lockdowns are somehow worse than the highly infectious and deadly virus itself fail to distinguish between public health and financial capital institutions. Not only do they fail to distinguish between public health and financial capital institutions, but it has become very apparent that many of them also fail to differentiate medical personnel from the likes of war criminals such as the Clintons, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Barack Obama, etc. 

During a recent episode of Mother of All Talk Shows, host George Galloway reprimanded a caller for trying to compare what he believes to be the "pandemic hoax" to the hysteria generated from the fabricated stories of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq published in Western mainstream media. And rightly so, because to compare the virus to the "Weapons of Mass Destruction"-narrative used against Iraq is like comparing apples and oranges, figuratively speaking. 

When American mainstream media publishes lies and falsehoods about countries targeted by U.S. imperialism  -- such as Syria, Venezuela, the DPRK, Cuba, and Nicaragua -- it is clearly politically motivated. More specifically, it's rooted in geopolitics and imperialism and there is a clear profit motive underneath it all. These serve to carry out Wall Street's interest. They were not solely put forward for the purposes of scaring people or making people have irrational fears about Iraqis; the tactic of fear-mongering alone is not enough to drive wars if there is no profit incentive. Now, as for a virus on the other hand: what money is there to be made? In fact, most Western governments are reeling from the loss of money that comes from the damage their economies have taken from the Coronavirus pandemic.

It is true that Iraqis and Serbs were highly demonized during the 1990's and early 2000's, as vicious propaganda campaigns were waged against Ba'athist Iraq and whatever was left of Yugoslavia. But, one should keep in mind that the xenophobia and racism are the side-effects and are symptomatic of imperialism, an advanced stage of the wider system of capitalism. Those imperialist propaganda campaigns, which were tantamount to libel, certainly helped to turn public opinion against entire nations, which helped the imperialist powers to gain the consent they needed to 'seal the deal' for the wars on Iraq and Yugoslavia. With that in mind, one has to ask: how do we even begin to extrapolate "humanitarian" pretexts used specifically for imperialist wars of aggression and apply them to a deadly, novel virus that came from nature [1] ? Of course, it should be fairly obvious that "Saddam's top secret stash of Weapons of Mass Destruction" were not real, nor was there any scientific evidence that a "genocide against Albanians" took place in the former Yugoslavia; but the virus itself is very much real. As unfounded and unjust as it was, and nevermind how ridiculous the notion that Saddam had any control over all of the world's oil resources was, the fear-mongering against Saddam, Iraqis, Serbs, and Milosevic was actually profitable and was in line with Wall Street's interests. Meanwhile, raising alarms over COVID-19 is justifiable but, at the same time, it is also actually harmful to capitalists' profits -- hence why some sections of the capitalist class are downplaying the seriousness of the virus and clamoring for governments to re-open the economy prematurely, willing to risk the lives of their employees whom they've always seen as disposable. If anything, downplaying the seriousness of the virus or claiming that it doesn't exist is not so "anti-mainstream" as many of these "free-thinkers" would like to think. 

Ironically: when these self-identified "free-thinkers" flippantly insist that, "It's just a cold," and say, "Well, those people we're really old and were unhealthy anyway! Everyone eventually dies anyway!" they sound eerily like Madeleine Albright when she casually remarked on the 500,000 Iraqi children killed by U.S. sanctions during the 1990's, saying, "It's a hard choice, but I think, we think, it's worth it."

Recommended Reading List:

• Tim Anderson, "Public Health, COVID-19 and Recovery."
• Communist Party of Great Britain - Marxist-Leninist (CPGB-ML), "Britain’s response to Covid-19 pt 1: ‘Take it on the chin’."
• Cody Cottier, "Why Bats Are Breeding Grounds for Deadly Diseases Like Ebola and SARS."
• Stephen Gowans, "If you think the coronavirus lockdown is worse than the disease, you don’t understand the disease."
• The Logic of Science, "Dying the way that nature intended: Appeal to nature fallacies."
• Caleb Maupin, "Pandemic Intensifies Divisions Among US Elite."
• Michael Roberts, "COVID-19 and containment."

_______________________________

1. Now, if one were to compare the "Weapons of Mass Destruction"-narrative to the lie put forth by the Wall Street Journal and neo-con pundits about the virus being a "bioweapon" manufactured by China in a Wuhan lab, I would've been fine with that. Especially since there are actual parallels to be drawn between both cases:

(1) The "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was a pretext for direct U.S. military invasion of Iraq; the "Wuhan Virus lab leak" is certainly ramping up to be a pretext for a U.S. war against China, whom they see as a rising and credible rival world superpower.

(2) Both narratives -- U.S. foreign policy's expressions of anti-Iraq and anti-China sentiment -- certainly have encouraged xenophobic and racist sentiments.

(3) There was no evidence to suggest at all that those things happened. For one thing, Iraq mistakenly gave up its most powerful weapons arsenal back in the 1990's out of desperation because of how terrible the sanctions were; and so, they had no WMD by the time the 2000's rolled in, and certainly none by the time the 2003 invasion began. As for the virus: just like many other viruses and diseases, it did not originate from any lab; it originated from nature, most likely from live bats (from their feces, urine, and saliva) in the wild as many scientists have pointed out. Also, even though Wuhan was considered the epicenter, there were already reports of highly strange and abnormally severe (as in, double the severity) pneumonia cases in Italy and France around October 2019 -- meaning that it did not necessarily begin in China. Regardless, and as I already mentioned above, there is a profit to be made from the fear-mongering that comes with demonizing targeted nations, no matter how ridiculous the justifications are, especially when those justifications help fuel the drive for war and eventually lead to stealing wealth from those nations.

But of course, ironically, some of these libertarian edgelords (who can't seem to decide whether the virus is real or not) actually do parrot the same ridiculous assertion made by the Wall Street Journal (a Western mainstream source, fyi...) --- which makes the irony all the more laughable, considering that their contrarian-for-the-sake-of-being-contrarian stances aren't so contrarian after all.

*

Side note about bioweapons: In order for a disease to be a bioweapon in the more modern era, it would mean that the culprit nation (imperialist nation) using or intending to use it has already developed a vaccine and are prepared. But here's the thing: the U.S. has no vaccine and is just as if not more so ill-prepared than everyone else. And the same goes for nations who are targeted and victimized by U.S. imperialism, if they ever intend to use bioweapons as a last resort, self-defense mechanism against a direct invasion by U.S. troops: they, too, would need to have already developed a vaccine long before they even think of using it.

When the U.S. used bioweapons (biological warfare) against North Korea during the Korean War, it was discovered upon investigation that they had used anthrax and cholera on the population. By that time, both diseases already had corresponding vaccines that were among the earliest to have been developed; of course, the vaccines were not necessarily distributed to the rest of the world at the same time since it was a slow, rollout process.

If anyone were to use the novel Coronavirus as a bioweapon, it would have to be somewhere down the future when there already is a vaccine available in most places. Because if the U.S. is going to launch it at i.e. a children's hospital and/or maternity wards in the DPRK, then of course the CIA and U.S. military have to be protected themselves. And if the DPRK (a victim of U.S. imperialism) were to use it as last resort, self-defense weapon in addition to their nuclear weapons, they do would need to make it absolutely mandatory that anyone joining their army is vaccinated. Thus, it's highly unlikely that the novel Coronavirus can be used as a bioweapon at this time. If China were to use it as a bioweapon at this point in time, it would be suicidal because it would backfire very quickly.