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Important but missing from lots of long term covid strategy is an account of why previous disease elimination attempts were failing. Often mobilised to paint covid elimination as impossible but not fleshed out fully.
Prior to 2020 we were already aiming to try eliminate many diseases, often those diseases had similar logistical difficulties that allegedly make covid elimination apparently nonsensical.
My thoughts on why many disease elimination attempts were stalling prior to 2020 was that political will and financial resources required to achieve it in many countries in the global south could only be realised when said disease clearly stood in the way of imperialist goals of
finding new labour markets (and new markets in selling goods to these workers). Hence why philanthrocapitalism is booming, it’s about getting industry partners and pliable governments in the global south in the same room while doing piecemeal elimination work as a PR exercise
It’s also not hard to see in the UK and US that covid response has prioritised capital accumulation at the expense of workers. Both failures can be linked back to the world economy existing to funnel nearly all the money in the world into the pockets of the already richest.
It seems that we’ve now coalesced on “low endemicity” as a common understanding of where we either should or inevitably will end up. Low endemicity from the UK point of view is just tacit vaccine nationalism. We vaccinate everyone here and the disease continues elsewhere
It’s telling that the example being given for “low endemicity” is measles, a disease that is eliminated across much of the world except in countries that cannot afford to vaccinate. The DRC has a measles outbreak every 4 year or so.
The last one was in 2019 and it killed around 6000, mostly children under 5.
Given the effectiveness of the vaccines developed we might well reach elimination in this country. Same in many others that can afford to do so. The question is then where we go once we have eliminated in many rich countries (no local transmission)
Do we do border control to prevent variants that arrive, worrying about the possibility that we go through this all over again if a variant escapes immunity efficiently? Do we trust that we can outrun the virus with massive yearly vaccination efforts?
I’d argue that what we should do is go big: eradication, and not just covid. Just like how I didn’t think it was acceptable that other diseases persisted due to global inequality before covid, I don’t think it’s okay that we settle for making covid the same as other diseases
Infectious diseases are not inevitable, they transmit in countries that have had their economies structurally adjusted to extract resources from them at minimal cost, which includes having no healthcare. They transmit in the ruins of imperialist wars and in IDP/refugee camps.
I’d like to rescue zero covid from being a debate about whether the UK borders shut or not. Zero covid to me is a question of whether we can aspire to a world where there are no lines that can be drawn on a map between receiving a vaccine or not.
Zero covid is about whether the money that billionaires have made during this pandemic is better off sat in their bank accounts or whether it should be used to radically transform the global economy into one that enables every person food, shelter and protection from poor health
I don’t really want lockdowns and border controls, I want the tools that we are using to end mass death here to reach everyone. We know social inequality has driven this pandemic, well let’s demand an end to social inequality then.
No new normal, a new better than before, we could not continue as before. I was and still remain sceptical of technical reasons that might prevent eradication. It’s about political will and priorities. Of course it will be difficult, but we have to try.
