The Killer’s Henchman: Capitalism and the Covid-19 Disaster

Summer 2021, the WHO announced that pandemic would end when the world chooses to end it. Though all necessary public health measures were available, it didn’t end. Those measures, used in China, New Zealand, Vietnam and a few others, were ignored elsewhere. The virus ran riot as half measures were used when hospitals were unable to handle strain. The vaccine turned out to be more mirage than oasis. Poor- and middle-income countries meanwhile experienced a global vaccine apartheid, waiting for crumbs to fall from the rich countries’ table, as new, possibly more virulent variants, threatened to emerge.Stephen Gowans investigates why, when all the tools to avert a catastrophe were available, the world failed to prevent the Covid-19 disaster. Examining the business opportunities and pressures that helped shape the world’s failed response, he concludes that the novel coronavirus, a killer, had a helper in bringing about the calamity: capitalism, the killer’s henchman. He shows how capitalism, its incentives, and its power to dominate the political process, impeded the protection of public health.