Is coronavirus pandemic a reality check?

Coronavirus is here. The deadly respiratory disease is now in every corner of the globe. The virus pandemic has stilled air travel, shut down borders, closed schools and market places, and reduced social gatherings to the minimum across the world.

Is coronavirus just a flu outbreak or a reality check for our fabricated development dogma created by ‘the few’? I am neither talking about the health nor socio-economic carnage resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with the health miseries, the virus has clearly exposed the lapses in our so-called sophisticated ‘healthcare system’ and social and economic loopholes through which the rich rules the poor. The failure in fighting the pandemic has raised some questions.

Isn’t it a wake-up call for the proponents of the post-truth who love to live in the bubbles of rhetoric or falsehood cashing in social sensitivity? Or for those who always seek a divine miracle to have an enigmatic solution whenever in a disaster even in this 21^st century? But the sad thing is coronavirus has no alternative truth. The fact is coronavirus infects and kills. Nonsensical rhetoric may be met with crass popularity, but it can’t heal the virus. To put up a fight it needs facilities, care and coordinated support from society.

The division of ‘US and THEY’ that nourishes the populist system does not work in fighting this pandemic. It rather reverses. You cannot say that this is applicable for a certain religious group or a political party or a certain social class. It is a reality. Only equal cooperation and access, and concerted efforts from all sectors of a society can heal us.

Another big question is whether this is a reality check for our unequal healthcare system that is clearly tailored for the rich? The world’s healthcare system has been shaped like social classes. If you have money, you have access to the better healthcare. Healthcare was always given lesser priority than that of our military hardware and luxuries. The world has now more arms than essential drugs. We have fatter budgets to stock up the arsenals rather to purchase medicines. We increase more military camps rather than hospitals or laboratories for life-saving research. As Noam Chomsky said, “The more you can increase fear of drugs …, the more you control all of the people.”

The first coronavirus patient was detected in Italy on 30 January more than one and half months into the COVID-19 outbreak in China’s Wuhan. The first virus case in China, according to the South Morning China Post, may have been reported in 17 November 2019 as a 55-year-old individual in China. As of 16 March, It has killed 6,516 and infected more than 169,552 in 137 countries and territories. China has finally managed to contain, not completely, the spread of viruses building gigantic hospitals and all-out quarantine measures sealing off 7 cities. All credit goes to the authoritarian rules.

Journalist Kamal Ahmed from London wrote a few days ago that the area of Italy that has been hit the hardest has the capacity of critical care for six persons out of a thousand. If this pace of infection continues the country will fail to support the rapidly increasing old patients. The UK is famous for its healthcare system, but the country’s critical care is much lower than that of Italy. Italy’s the death toll has already surpassed China. I am not talking about the constructing critical care units over night. This is simply the reality to which we belong.

The virus pandemic has evoked another question. Is this a reality check for the capitalist system where the poor are destined to remain poor and rich to be richer? When it is about the healthcare, it makes the rich more secure and poor more insecure. We live in a world where ‘a sports star is paid in millions of dollars’, but a researcher struggles to arrange project finance.

In the United States, the pandemic has exposed the ‘depth of inequality and showed the sheer number of people living on the edge in the world's largest economy.’ Speaking to the CNBC Johns Hopkins University’s professor Gerard Anderson said an uninsured patient ‘could expect to pay at least $500-$1,000 just to get tested for the virus, and a 10-day hospital stay could amount to a bill of at least $75,000.’ The number of uninsured patients, as the Census Bureau reported, was 28.6 million in 2018.

When an epidemic breaks out, the big conglomerates, as we often see, offer a large chunk of money. It has become quite a trend nowadays, but why didn’t they build hospitals beforehand with the money? Isn’t that legit fare question? Why didn’t they capacitate the people? We can echo Noam Chomsky: “It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions – you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.”

Is this a reality check for the inflated social and economic progress, highly unequal and deeply divided? We always feel proud to be free netizens in this era of scientific advancement and communicative development. The technology has made the world flat. Isn’t that a myth? The giant structures and the fanciest lifestyle may have a grave meaning to certain quarters. But it does not protect us from the virus. The world has also now more fashion clothing than medicines. But, to have a shield against the ominous disease, we need more drugs than clothing and more medicine than arms.

Yet, it is neither about China nor Italy nor the United States. It is the reality we are going through. It is the system, we have been in, is made just for ‘the few’. COVID-19 outbreak has taught us a lesson we really need to realise. Yet, the virus is blind. The noxious flu has no class-discrimination. The mighty virus does not respect any borders either.

*Toriqul Islam is a journalist at Prothom Alo. He can be reached at [email protected].