The tragedy is immediate, real, epic and unfolding before our eyes. And we think to ourselves, “My God! This is America!” About states being forced to bid against each other for ventilators, about doctors’ dilemmas over which patient should get one and which left to die. We follow the statistics, and hear the stories of overwhelmed hospitals in the US, of underpaid, overworked nurses having to make masks out of garbage bin liners and old raincoats, risking everything to bring succour to the sick. Night after night, from halfway across the world, some of us watch the New York governor’s press briefings with a fascination that is hard to explain. Narendra Modi with the US president and his wife Melania at a packed rally in Ahmedabad on February 24 - part of a lavish official visit © eyevine But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage? They don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally.
The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest - thus far - in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade and international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake has locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes.īut unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of thousands, perhaps more. More than 50,000 people have died already. The number of cases worldwide this week crept over a million.
0 kommentar(er)
