COVID-19 has been reinforcing fear, anxiety and
uncertainty; with the absence of a vaccine, it is expected to retain its
position as a leading cause of death around the world; making it a good time to
reflect on the nature of our postmodern existence.
Global issues like this pandemic can serve as reminders that
Nation States, along with their borders, sovereignties and recognized
territories represent an organizational model for our species and the resources
available on this planet. The natural bonds connecting humans are deeper than the
artificially established governments with their political structures and armed
forces.
A state of interdependence among the peoples of the world can
best be observed whenever we choose to reflect on how major events, successes,
or failures in one spot impact lives in a distant place.
1-
What Got Us Here?
2-
Poverty as a Global Issue
3-
Ignorance as a Global Issue
4-
Governments’ Transnational Guilt
5-
Budgeting Priorities and State Oppression
1- What Got Us Here?
Plenty of memes were created to make fun of the Chinese
people for eating bats, overlooking the historical background of the issue. Wildlife farming started in China in the 1970s under Moa Zedong, after tens of
millions of Chinese citizens starved to death, when his state controlled food
production failed to address the needs of the population. His successor, Deng
Xiaoping lifted state controls on rural farming and introduced legislation that
encouraged the expansion of wet markets. Under these laws the government became
responsible for protecting those who develop and utilize wildlife resources. It
is not a surprise that “Zoonotic diseases” such as swine flu, HIV, bird flu,
SARS, Ebola… which are transmitted from animals to humans spread easily within
these markets, where traditional livestock is combined with rats, bats, snakes,
and other wild animals; crowds of customers head over there to buy meat, while
animal excrement, intestines, blood, and all forms of waste from different
species get mixed in narrow spaces.
These practices are not exclusively Chinese; the United Nations’ biodiversity chief has called for a global ban on wildlife markets,
to help prevent future pandemics.
2- Poverty as a Global Issue
The less fortunate in multiple Asian and African countries
will likely keep shopping for food from wet markets, simply because it is more
affordable, which will remain to be a main reason for spreading other viruses. The
simple sum website published an article in October 2019 comparing the shopping experience in wet markets with local supermarkets, the author highlighted multiple
advantages for wet markets, including the variety of products, superior specifications
for certain food items, and price; beef and mutton were among the items
included in the comparison:
The homeless people in New York that Mayor Bill Di Blasio decided to kick out of train stations in order to keep public transportation safe for essential workers
can easily contract the virus and spread it within the community… same goes for
poor and homeless people around the world, especially in underdeveloped
countries, as they represent higher percentages of the populations.
Thus poverty as a global issue will keep playing a major role
in spreading more viruses in the future, especially when 44% of the world’s
wealth is owned by the richest 1%.
3- Ignorance as a Global Issue
Rapid urbanization in Asia and the Pacific regions involves
the destruction of forest land to create residential areas, which brought wild animals
closer to domestic animals and humans within cities. The deforestation process also
implies the loss of habitat for some predators that feed off rodents, which
helps increase the rodent population (rats, squirrels, beavers…) and allow for
higher chances for the transmission of zoonotic diseases to humans.
Bushmeat
is a catchphrase for the meat of wild animals; bushmeat hunting is a clear and
primary path for zoonotic disease transmission. The practice is spread in
sub-Saharan Africa, and multiple studies tackled Zoonotic Risk Disease in countries like Uganda. Animals are also being poached for
decoration purposes, and because some of their body parts are used as
ingredients for the development of traditional Chinese medications which are consumed as remedies for multiple conditions,
including erectile dysfunction. These medications have been maintaining their
popularity in multiple markets, despite the lack of scientific evidence to prove
that they help resolve any of the conditions they supposedly cure.
Ignorance, corruption, complacency, profiteering… are among
the factors contributing to deforestation, however, ignorance plays a bigger role
when it comes to poaching, especially when medicine is regarded as the end
product.
Just like poverty,
ignorance is not exclusively African or Asian, for instance the right wing
protesters in the United States who demonstrated against the lock down without wearing
masks and gloves, or even maintaining social distancing are helping spread the virus.
Just like poverty, a high level of ignorance in one part of
the world will help spread these viruses to the entire planet.
4- Governments’ Transnational Guilt
The whole idea of state sovereignty is linked with the
premise that laws and regulations within a country will only influence its own
population. This notion can be disputed under normal circumstances, as many
decisions made by government officials can have a greater impact on people who
live in other countries than on those who live within the country’s borders.
It has been the common case for big companies in the US to
benefit from the exploitation of labor in other countries. Apple as a prominent
example of these companies is exposed in Brian Merchant’s book, The One Device: The Secret History of the IPhone, in which he reveals the
devastating working conditions in the enormous complex in China where IPhones
are produced, which led some workers to commit suicide. Such practices are made
possible through a combination of legislations in these countries; allowing big
companies to make huge profits by exploiting “cheap workforce” in some
countries, while the unemployment rate keeps increasing in the US and other
developed nations. This is a clear example of how officials in multiple countries
can disregard the interests of their respective populations to maintain power and
help big businesses hoard wealth. The current pandemic makes it even easier to realize
how living conditions in one country may keep influencing lives in another.
When the Chinese authorities first discovered COVID-19 they tried to keep it a secret,
instead of warning other governments and populations of such an imminent threat.
This decision simply implied that the virus will be spread in other countries and
people in and out of China will be infected without prior warnings. When this
threat became a reality, most governments acted with various degrees of
negligence.
Imagine a head of a household named Daniel who lives
in Limbe city in Cameroon, a daily wage earner who works at a
coffee shop and could not stay at home these days; he had to keep working in
order to feed his family. He got infected with this virus, which was
transmitted to him by a representative of an Egyptian export company,
after serving him a cup of coffee. This Egyptian employee was infected days
earlier, after mingling with some Italian friends in Egypt…
In this case, we can start with the Chinese government’s
catastrophic response to the crisis at its early stage, and remind ourselves
that politicians in Italy kept undermining the threat of the virus, some of
them were shaking hands with their supporters in late February to convey a message that
Coronavirus was not going to halt the economy. On February 21, the first
official case of COVID-19 in Italy was recorded, by March 22 all movements of
people were prohibited and nonessential businesses were closed. Even the
actions of local officials in Italy have greatly influenced the transmission of the virus; governmental
actions in Veneto were more proactive compared to those in the region of
Lombardy. Extensive testing, proactive tracing of potential positives, specific
measures aimed at protecting essential workers, home diagnosis and care… are
factors that contributed to lowering infection and mortality rates in Veneto,
actions over there were not perfect, yet helped reduce global infections
compared to actions applied in Lombardy.
The Egyptian government kept allowing flights to come into
the country from Italy, China, and other countries where infection rates were skyrocketing, beside the fact that jails continue to be jammed with political
prisoners who cannot even dream of social distancing, just because they
committed the “crime” of expressing an opinion opposed to the ruling regime.
Military conscripts experience similar conditions, which are usually less
severe, yet military units are among the perfect places for a virus to spread. Ever
since President Sisi seized power, all male school graduates and dropouts who reached the age
of 18 years have been drafted to serve the army for 1 to 3 years, as long as
they have at least one brother and declared “fit for duty”.
Add to these factors the failure of government officials in
Cameroon to protect citizens. Modern day Cameroon was a part of the
German colony of Kamerun, which was invaded by Allied forces during the First
World War, and partitioned into two parts in 1916, one of which was ruled by
the British government and the other one was ruled by the French. The two parts
reunited and declared independence in 1961; issues related to social and
economic injustice have led to the recent breakout of a civil war in Cameroon. Separationists
in the English speaking part of the country (North West and South West regions)
have been calling for its independence, to establish a free state under the
name of “Ambazonia”. In 2016, Anglophone peaceful protests were met with force
by the Cameroonian military, which led to the outbreak of armed conflicts between
separationists and the government in 2017. Now, the people of Cameroon are facing the threat of the pandemic and the devastating impact of the civil war simultaneously. One third of the population in the North West and
South West Regions need humanitarian aid, and only 17% of schools in these
regions are functional.
Imagine how the whole situation could have been different if the
separationists were successful in their attempt and gained independence, or if
some peaceful resolution was reached with the government to put an end to the
extreme inequality and injustice in the country. What could have been the
nation’s response to the pandemic? Would Daniel from Limbe city still get
infected?
Given that the virus was transmitted to him through an Egyptian
citizen, what if the uprising in Egypt 2011 was successfully turned into a full blown revolution,
what if the reforms demanded by protesters back then were accomplished? What
could have happened if the country had a bit more of freedom, social justice,
democracy…? We can imagine that such a transformation would have led to a much
better response from the government to the current global crisis, for instance massive
testing and tracing would have been made possible if each human
life was valued; in such case it was highly likely that the virus would not
have been imported into the country and exported to people who live in other countries,
like Daniel.
Following the same logic, one may imagine a different outcome
for the protests against economic inequality in Rome 2011. If these
demonstrations were a little more successful, Italy might have had less political
corruption, the response to this crisis could have been different. The
government’s policies that led to the importation of the virus, farming it among
the population within the country and exporting it to other countries including
Egypt could have changed… Daniel could have survived.
What if separationists in Tibet, East Turkestan and other lands
currently occupied by the Chinese government successfully gained their
independence? Or at least managed to abolish China’s Concentration Camps? The government might have been pressured to keep the
remainder of its population happier; a bit less oppression, a taste of economic
equality, a few reforms in the health care system might have been helpful; if the
government felt the need to be transparent from the beginning of the current
crisis, lives could have been saved inside China and all over the world…
Daniel’s kids would not have had to lose their father and his wife would not have had to face a new reality after losing his emotional support as a husband and his
financial support as the family’s bread earner.
If you live in New York, Trump’s actions or lack thereof
surely endangered your life like anyone else in the country, yet State
officials should also be condemned for mishandling the situation. Tom Friedman,
the former Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it
was possible to reduce mortality between 50% and 80% if some social distancing measures, including
closing schools, nonessential stores and restaurants were adopted by Governor
Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio two weeks earlier. Recent reports
indicate that the virus was largely transmitted to New York through Europe, so
you may logically consider blaming officials in Italy, England and other
countries for allowing the virus to spread among the populations over there and
knowingly letting it roam the planet including your own city, after blaming the
Chinese officials for trying to undermine the threat of the virus, while
keeping in mind that you have been betrayed by elected officials from the two dominant
political parties, at the State and the Country levels.
The Republican Attorney General of Missouri is reportedly suing the Chinese government for “misrepresentation, concealment, and retaliation
to conceal the gravity and seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak from the rest of
the world”. The action is mostly perceived as a part of the Republican Party’s
effort to shift the blame from Republican officials, including mayors,
governors and the President of the United States… to China, letting their
government or the nation as a whole bear the blame alone.
5- Budgeting Priorities and State Oppression
Governments have been spending on weapons instead of
investing in medical research, despite the fact that scientists have been warning for years about the potential development and adaptation of coronaviruses, and other pandemics that are yet expected to occur over the
next few decades.
Militarism was always framed as the means to protect the
civilian population; top politicians in most countries are always ready to
magnify threats, whether real or imaginary to increase military budgets and
benefit a few interest groups accordingly. The military industrial complex in
the United States is not a unique example; the same model is adopted by multiple governments around the world with a few modifications to suit each country’s
resources and limitations.
Governments will keep relying on Nationalism and National Exceptionalism to help maintain their control over populations,
just like Trump is keeping his supporters happy with the new ban on immigration,
building on his previous efforts to scapegoat minorities.
The current pandemic will allow governments to invest in surveillance
technologies to enhance contact tracing, helping multiple nations move closer
toward the dystopian level of the Digital Dictatorship in China.
It is useful to remember that these regimes are not necessarily
owned by local billionaires, from a certain perspective, living under a
unipolar system dominated by the United States implies that whoever can buy influence
over US officials can dominate the eco-political scene in the rest of the world. Specific
spheres of influence might be disputable and may require investigation;
however, the concept in its basic form remains concrete.
Whether you live in Cameroon or in the UK, your life is considered worthless by a bunch of politicians who are controlled by a tiny
group of powerful wealthy individuals. They have the means to protect
themselves from the laws they have chosen to impose upon you and the
willingness to sacrifice more lives as expected pandemics breakout in the near
future.
A mix of compassion and solidarity is the required basis for
the peoples of the world to cooperate in order to face this virus, the long
standing issues including famines, poverty, suppression of basic civil
liberties… and prepare for the forecasted catastrophes, whether potential pandemics
or the bigger threat of climate change.
Attempts in any part of the world to secure justice, eradicate
oppression, get money out of politics, recognize health care and education as
human rights, demand environmentally friendly practices across industries…
cannot be considered “local issues”, they must maintain the support of people
around the world, regardless of their birthplaces and nationalities.
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اييييه يابني العظمة دي!
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