A Profitable Pandemic: How The Government Prioritizes Corporate Interests Over Public Health
We are living in the fourth year of the pandemic. January 2024 had the second largest spike in COVID-19 cases of the entire pandemic, falling only behind the Omicron variant spike in 2022. Estimates suggest that 740 million people worldwide have been infected by COVID-19, but scientists worry that cases have been vastly underestimated due to poor testing quality. By the end of 2022, it was estimated that half of the U.S. had been infected with COVID-19.
COVID-19 is dangerous and often fatal to several populations, including the elderly, children under two, people of color, people with asthma, people with poor access to healthcare and people with various other health conditions. Four in every 10 Americans are at a higher risk of COVID complications. Over 1.1 million Americans have died from this disease in four years, giving it a fluctuating place in the top four causes of deaths for Americans following heart disease, cancer and accidents. Since the beginning, the U.S. government’s actions mirror the victim-blaming of the AIDS epidemic: those who are vulnerable to illness are not worth saving. Epidemiology estimates from the Fall of 2020 suggested that Trump’s policies early in the pandemic produced hundreds of thousands of needless deaths when compared to other countries. Since then, our government under Biden has only gotten more lax with its COVID policies.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, scientists have known that although the virus spreads through the respiratory system like the flu, every part of the body is vulnerable because it attacks T-cells that every organ has. Long-COVID contributes to heart disease and cancer, as well as persistent symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, pain and difficulty breathing. It can also attack our body’s immune system, making us more susceptible to more severe and fatal consequences for catching diseases, including COVID-19. In 2023, an estimated 20 million Americans are to be living with symptoms of Long COVID. Between 38,000 and 152,000 Americans developed it daily in March 2024. The estimates are similar for this upcoming June based on wastewater data. As a rule of thumb, scientists estimate that each COVID-19 infection carries a 10-20% risk of developing long-COVID symptoms.
Because of the virus’ speed of transmission and various other characteristics, scientists do not believe that herd immunity will eradicate COVID-19 the way it did for the Influenza virus of 1918. Evidence suggests that COVID will keep spreading and surging in waves, as demonstrated earlier this year.
Our government is doing everything it can to pretend there is no pandemic. Major bourgeois news outlets are telling us that the pandemic is over, not because they are dutifully reporting science, but rather it’s in the ruling class’s best interest. This state-sponsored exploitation is nothing new. Lenin pointed out how the irreconcilable and antagonistic class interests between the ruling class of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is maintained through the state. Rather than acting as a neutral arbiter representing the people’s interests, the state acts as an instrument of class rule that protects and enacts the interest of the bourgeoisie. The state does this, not only with explicit acts of violence through its police and army, but also via “the creation of ‘order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The CDC is yet another state organ defining normal as whatever follows the interest of capital, not people.
In February, the CDC reduced the isolation period granted for COVID from five days to one day of being fever free. Individuals tend to be most contagious between three and seven days of being infected with symptoms often ending around day four. Their guidelines are not informed by science, but instead capitulate to the demands of the ruling capitalist class who have a vested interest in forcing their sick employees back to work as early as possible. The federal government has also rolled back masking mandates and mandatory testing in public establishments, making existing in public a threat to our health, especially for people with elevated risk factors.
COVID-19 has been a catastrophe for the working class, and the bourgeoisie, along with the media, doesn’t care. In rare moments, they reckon with the sickness in our government’s response to COVID or mention that COVID is the third leading cause of death. It does so nearly unanimously with a single word: “Failure.”
This is a misdirection. Failing is when one does not achieve the desired outcome. What the pandemic demonstrates more acutely is not the ineptitude of governing officials, but their unconcern for the health and well-being of the poor and working classes. Mass infections and mass death are an inevitable byproduct of capitalism during a pandemic. The goal is to get us back to work; the plan is to convince us that getting sick is normal.
Our government will never prioritize our lives and health over corporate profits. We as socialists recognize the inherent value of each individual. The capitalist mode of production assigns value based on your ability to contribute to society, such that the political system will do very little to provide a safety net for those it cannot profit from. Everyone deserves to be safe, and we should fight for a world that does not consider it too costly to care about people
In the meantime, it has been up to the people ourselves to keep us safe from the pandemic. The People’s CDC, as well as many individual scientists who share their work with the public, have provided invaluable resources for staying informed on COVID-19. The work of individuals and communities is putting the inaction of our government to shame.