How will we know the pandemic is scientifically ‘over’? What if authoritarian governments extend it?
Hari Kumar 29 March, 2020.
Introduction:
No doubt all progressives and leftists agree that the current time is a very swift changing one, and one that is fraught with confusions. On the 17 March, 2020 we put some views on the medical and immediate economic crisis of the COVID 19 pandemic. Since then, a lot more left articles have been published. These collectively give us a good picture of the crisis from the left viewpoint. Taken together they make some common points.
These collectively emphasise:
How the pandemic has hit workers and the most vulnerable (unemployed, those in debt, immigrants, refugees etc.) the most;
How the chronic under-funding of health care systems has been exposed amid rocketing health care needs;
How health care workers are not protected – rather they are put at dangerous risk by an under-financed and ill-prepared health care system;
That the capitalist states have created an ever more inhumane and ruthless profit machine that under the guise of ‘neo-liberalisms’ has disemboweled any support systems for the working classes, and has undermined the infra-structures of states in a manner endangering the whole working class;
That the capitalist class will bail its own class out with state monies, but much less of this will filter down to the working class and rising numbers of unemployed.
The present theses concern the following questions:
When will we know the health crisis is ‘over’ or at least diminished to allow relaxation of ‘social distancing’?
What demands should the working class make in the short term?
What hampers the working class in its long term goals?