Yesterday (and today as well!) I was pretty much quarantined in my office because I had someone working to replace all of the flooring in my house. (I was going to do it but my knees made a very compelling case to just outsource the job. Listen to your body!) I spent my time reading the September issue of Scientific American and one of the articles I read really struck a chord with me given the political environment we find ourselves in today as we try to confront this global pandemic. This particular issue of Scientific American is the 175th anniversary issue, and reflects back over some of the articles that have been written throughout their history.
The particular article that struck me, “Return of the Germs,” reviews some of the statements made regarding infectious diseases and states that after conquering diseases like small pox, polio and the development of a number of antibiotics, we seemed to have lulled ourselves into a sense of complacency. That complacency was shattered when HIV surfaced – there are now almost 75 million people infected with HIV. A group of scientists met in the early 90’s to discuss infectious diseases and the emergence of AIDS and other potential diseases. “Scientists and politicians had become complacent, they said, confident in the protection offered by antibiotics and vaccines and inattentive to the communicable-disease threats posed by population growth, climate warming, rapid international travel, and the destruction of wildlands for settlements and mega-farms.”1
“We forgot what rampant infectious disease looked like,” says Katherine Hirschfield, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, who studies public health in failing states. “Science built us a better world, and then we got cocky and overconfident and decided we didn’t have to invest in it anymore.”1
I think it’s pretty obvious, given the situation we’re currently in that we were clearly not prepared for this pandemic. Yes, it’s a new virus. But there have been warnings for years that something like this might happen and those warnings were ignored. There is no other way to explain the lack of PPE, ventilators, and just basic supplies, let alone a national response plan. Hopefully this will be a lesson for us.
However, the thing that struck me most about the article was something that I hadn’t really given some serious thought to before. We will likely get a vaccine and perhaps the government will be more prepared next time, but will that really solve the problem?
“Poverty has more impact than any of our technical interventions,” says Peter J. Hotez, a physician and vaccine developer and founding dean of the Baylor University National School of Tropical Medicine. “Political collapse, climate change, urbanization, deforestation; these are what’s holding us back. We can develop all the vaccines and drugs we want, but unless we figure out a way to deal with these issues, we’ll always be behind.”1 That is the political trap we currently find ourselves in. We believe that if we can just get a vaccine against the coronavirus, all will be well with the world. The problem, it turns out, seems to me much bigger than that.
“As research by British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett has shown, unequal societies are unhealthy ones: the larger the gap in income between a country’s wealthiest and poorest, the more likely that country is to experience lower life expectancy and higher rates of chronic disease, teen births, and infant mortality.”
Wealth inequality is a huge problem around the world and that is certainly true here in America. Since the recession of 2008, the top 20% of income earners have seen their net worth increase 78% whereas the bottom 20% have seen their net worth decrease by 30%.2 Unfortunately, most of the policies that are espoused by Trump and the Republican Party tend to exacerbate this problem. Tax cuts favor the rich. Fewer regulations favor the rich.
The focus on these short-term goals which are designed to put more money into the pockets of those people who don’t really need the money are creating an environment where pandemics such as we are currently experiencing will flourish. Poorer people don’t have the luxury of not going to work so they will tend to go to work when they are sick – because they have to in order to make the mortgage payments and pay their bills. If they don’t have sufficient medical insurance, they may not get treatment when they should. It’s also more difficult to social distance for those forced to live in crowded areas. And the simple fact is, the more ‘poor’ people who get infected during a pandemic, the higher probability that even ‘rich’ people will get infected.
As Donald Trump found out, a virus driving a pandemic doesn’t care how much money you have or how important you think you are. It doesn’t care about much of anything other than finding its next victim. All of those people who are screaming about ‘socialism’ need to get it through their collective skulls that investing tax dollars to correct some of the rampant societal ills plaguing this country is really a better investment than stashing more money under the mattress. In fact, it might even save their lives or the lives of people they care about. A stronger society at all levels is probably the best vaccine there is against future pandemics.
We certainly need to be better prepared medically and logistically for the next pandemic, but unless there are significant structural and societal changes in the years ahead, any vaccine will just be a Band-Aid akin to giving crutches to someone with a broken ankle. It will work for a while but it won’t address the underlying problem. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure as hell don’t want to go through this again.
They say that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Perhaps for all of our collective sanity, it’s time to try a different approach. Unfortunately, no one has yet developed vaccines against greed, bigotry and ignorance so its likely to be an uphill battle.
- “Return of the Germs”, Maryn McKenna, Scientific American, Sept 2020
- https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2019-11-14/wealth-in-america-inequality-persists-in-household-wealth
Excellent article. Unfortunately, we need to find a cure for stupidity. Tribalism needs to be abolished to end this cycle. Until people stop listening to those they admire by following every word out of their mouth is an absolute truth and to start learning what critical thinking is by verifying information, I see no end to this downward cycle.