WHY THE PANDEMIC CONTINUES
……. we reach such biased conclusions that just because African scientists identified the latest Covid problem, the problem must be African.
Meanwhile, research on the new variant is being compromised because the necessary materials cannot be flown into South Africa due to the travel restrictions.
The result is that tackling Omicron is compromised right at the very time when any new intelligence of the virus is critical.
There is no starker example of how jingoism is a shot in the foot.
…….We are caught between two equally powerful forces: the profoundly embedded ways we strive for short-term capital extraction at any cost, and a virus that thrives on the disorder this reckless pursuit of profit creates – as though it has been designed in the lab of a Thanos-like demigod raging against humankind’s propensity for self-destruction.
……..As we enter the third year of the pandemic, yet again bewildered by how the virus continues to be one step ahead, it feels like there will be no release until we repent.
Until it is understood that there is no return to “normal” without dismantling the very notion of what that normal is, the pandemic will continue to resurge.
NESRINE MALIK