Pandemic Perspectives on Medicine and Militarism

ABSTRACT

The past, present and likely future of “pandemic perspectives” are here briefly examined: as embedded in the contemporary structure of speculative-based production, unsustainable path-dependent dynamics augur a difficult future of enhanced ecological ruptures under the current regime of accumulation. This has hastened pandemic moments, now including COVID-19 in 2020. Of particular note is the striking case of the wallowing US beset by multiple “market failures” all along its medical supply chain and an absence of state capacity. Such historic conjunctures have tested the apparatuses of social reproduction: they can force profound restructuring, altering the path of accumulation along with the underlying societal order. This was the case in Western Europe as the ravages of the Black Death (1346–1353) contributed to the destabilization feudalism. However, in its wake, the “second serfdom” flourished in Eastern Europe. Here we analyze, in three linked sections, some aspects of the political economy of infectious disease.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• science & technology
• big pharma
• pharmaceutics

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the observations presented by two anonymous reviewers as well as the excellent comments provided by the editor of this journal.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The WHO mentions three types of symptoms: common symptoms (fever, dry cough and exhaustion), uncommon symptoms (aches and pains, sore throat, diarrhea, conjunctivitis, loss of taste and smell, finger discoloration, skin rash), and serious symptoms (breathing difficulties, chest pressure, loss of speech and movement). In addition, there is asymptotic “silent transmission.”

2 The virus was isolated on January 7, 2020 and the genetic sequence determined on January 12, 2020 (World Health Organization 2020).

3 To develop a vaccine it is necessary to know and manipulate a particular microbe. Therefore, the “domestication” of viruses has been necessary and this has required the creation of high-security laboratories to ensure that the very virus that is being manipulated could not escape and spark the very epidemic that medicine sought to thwart.

4 On the origins of the Korean War see Stone (1971).

5 The PREP Act was signed into law in the United States in 2005. The acronym stands for Public Readiness and Preparedness Act (Lovells 2020; US Department of Health & Human Services 2019).

6 As the pandemic ground on through its fifth month in 2020 in the United States, and as it devastated indigenous populations in much of the massive Amazon region in Brazil, some eager buyers in both nations awaited the October 2020 arrival of Ferrari’s F8 Spider, priced at $397,000. With a 710-horsepower engine, it has been described as “the summer’s juiciest forbidden fruit” (Ulrich 2020). At the other end of the spectrum, by October, 28% of all US households with children suffered food insecurity—double the pre-pandemic rate (Bleich et al. 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guillermo Foladori

Guillermo Foladori is Professor at the Doctoral Program on Development Studies (UAED), Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico.

James M. Cypher

James M. Cypher is professor Emeritus at the Doctoral Program on Development Studies (UAED), Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico.