Pandemics and World Capitalism – Communism Will Liberate Science to Serve Humanity

In the present moment, it is instructive to review past epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some species of wild animals are vectors of pathogens that can pass to other animals, to livestock on farms and then to humans. Domestic and farm animals share the greatest number of viruses with humans and, like pigs, are carriers of eight times more pathogens than wild mammals. Human activity brings our species into contact with viruses that our immune system is not familiar with. The Ebola, HIV, and Covid-19 viruses thrived in animals before infecting humans.

Influenza is a viral disease transmitted to humans by animals. It mainly infects birds, both wild and domesticated. The passage to humans often occurs through pigs. It is caused by an RNA virus characterized by a significant ability to mutate and to integrate the genetic material of different viruses. Some of the human influenza viruses are derived from mutated viruses, the genes of which are a recombination in pigs and chickens of previous animal viruses. They circulate for a period of time ranging from one year to a decade and then disappear; they can reappear in winter in temperate countries and all year round in tropical and subtropical countries. Influenza, of types A (the most virulent and greatest risk of pandemic), B, C, D, usually causes between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths a year worldwide, mostly children and the elderly suffering from chronic diseases. According to the Pasteur Institute, in France 10,000 to 15,000 deaths are recorded each year due to seasonal flu, with 2-8 million infected and a mortality rate of 0.1%.

Coronaviruses, identified in 1965, are a large family of RNA viruses. With the quills of their crowns, they adhere to cells through a specific receptor to penetrate and multiply. They are widespread in birds and mammals and some can be transmitted to humans, being the third most common cause of upper respiratory tract infection. Some are very common, others very virulent because, like all RNA viruses, they have considerable genetic variability due to mutation and recombination. The more pathogenic variants attack lung cells, compromising the cells of the vessel walls and causing asphyxiation.

The insane population density in the monstrous and unhealthy metropolises of capitalism, the intensive breeding of animals, and the convulsive movement of goods and people imposed by the capitalist system of production are an explosive cocktail for diffusion of these diseases. The Covid-19 virus emerged from China in the context of the explosion of that country’s industrial activities, and of immense urbanization with unhealthy working and housing conditions, just like the other big capitalisms of previous centuries.

Epidemics occurred in England in the eighteenth century, where capitalism first developed. Farmers planted fodder in a monoculture for the breeding of cattle, and cattle imported from continental Europe brought soil diseases with them.

The 1890 epidemic of rinderpest (a viral disease of cattle and buffalo) in Africa originated in Europe, which was then experiencing a great growth in agriculture. The Italians brought it to East Africa; then it spread to South Africa (where it exterminated the herds of the white supremacist Cecil Rhodes). By killing 80-90% of the livestock, it caused unprecedented famine in the predominantly pastoral societies of sub-Saharan Africa. The lack grazing animals created a habitat for the tsetse fly which spreads sleeping sickness, limiting the region’s repopulation.

Lyme disease, caused by a bacterium carried by ticks, had spread in North America before arriving in Europe, where it decimated animals before moving on to humans.

The influenza of 1917-19 was called Spanish Flu because only Spain, a neutral country in World War I, made it public news, while other governments imposed disinformation and military secrecy: it was forbidden to talk about the outbreak and no protective measures were taken. For the safety of world capital not enough proletarians had died on the war fronts!

The “Spanish” flu originated in 1917 in Kansas, where there was intensive pig and poultry farming. Its spread to a third of the world population was accelerated by the war and the movement of troops. It killed at least 40 million people, many in India and China, and mostly young adults. Finally it disappeared, inexplicably. The high mortality rate was also due to malnutrition, the unhealthy living conditions of the soldiers and the population (including secondary bacterial infections) and mainly affected the poorest strata of society. Today we know that most of the deaths were not from the virus but from a bacterial infection, pneumococcal pneumonia, now fought with antibiotics. The virus was finally identified in 1931 in pigs: the A/H1N1 virus, which circulated in humans until 1958.

The 1956-58 ’Asian’ flu pandemic was caused by the recombination of several other flu viruses, including H1N1, in wild ducks in southwestern China. The resulting A/H2N2 virus was responsible for the deaths of over two million people worldwide.

The virus circulated for eleven years, finally leading to the third influenza pandemic of the 20th century: the “Hong Kong” flu, from the summer of 1968 to the spring of 1970. The A/H2N2 virus, which in the meantime had caused seasonal influenza epidemics, was replaced by the A/H3N2 virus. It left central China in February 1968 and spread through air transport, which had become more accessible by that time, causing one million deaths, of which 50,000 in the USA (autumn 1969) and 40,000 (winter 1969-70) in France. Even then the hospitals were overwhelmed. However, the international press remained measured and reassuring; the term “pandemic” was not even used, and it went almost unnoticed by the population.

The practice of mass vaccination then started, and international alert and research networks were strengthened.

It was with the economic crises of 1975-82 and the launch of austerity plans at a global level, which forced the reduction of health care spending in many countries, that we moved from under-information to hyper-information on infectious risks. From the 1980s, after the great economic crisis which convinced the world bourgeoisie to adopt the austerity policies of economic pseudo-liberalism, the dissemination of information on epidemics, such as AIDS and the contaminated blood scandal, also began. The discretion of the media turned into its opposite, denouncing the unfaithful executives; since then experts of all kinds have followed one another on the screens, often quarreling among themselves; continuous hygiene lessons are given. Catastrophism becomes a kind of show that the population grows tired of.

The mad cow disease outbreak in the late 1980-1990s, which began in Great Britain, was caused by ruminants fed on the remains of sick animals. An abnormal protein, called a prion, by simple contact with brain tissues causes irreversible neurological degeneration. Transmission to humans was very low, but the “scandal” highlighted the dark paths of factory meat production.

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, emerged in 2002-2003 with a new coronavirus. It appeared in China in 1997, originating in bats and then passed on to civets and then to humans. The epidemic hit 30 countries but killed only 800 people, and none in Europe. Then it inexplicably disappeared in August 2003.

Avian influenza H5N1, a variant of flu virus A, infected wild ducks and domestic animals, mainly chickens and pigs, in 2004, but is difficult to transmit to humans. In 1983, that disease raged in Pennsylvania, forcing the slaughter of 17 million chickens. And in 2004 an outbreak in Southeast Asia spread to the rest of the world. The World Health Organization thought it possible that avian flu could cause a human pandemic with up to 100 million deaths. This did not happen.

The influenza pandemic with the A/H1N1 pdm09 virus of 2009 is known as the swine flu. This virus first appeared in Mexico on a farm, an H1N1 variant that brought together viral segments of four viruses of different origins: North American pig, European and Asian pig, avian, and human influenzas. Official publications described the possibility of extreme mortality. Governments ordered widespread vaccination of the population. This flu, which began in the summer, ended suddenly in December with the arrival of the seasonal flu.

We observe here that the seasonal flu of early 2020, with the usual H3N2 and B viruses, did not circulate in the presence of Covid-19.

2014-16 saw an outbreak of the Ebola virus and the resulting hemorrhagic fever. Originating in bats, the virus first infected chimpanzees and then humans. The first human cases appeared in 1976 in Congo, but the epidemic finally occurred in 2014-2016 in Congo and in West Africa in 2018. The death rate was frightening: 50% according to the WHO. In 2015, there were 20,000 infected and 9,000 deaths.

In 2010, a cholera epidemic was brought to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers of the United Nations.

At the end of 2012 there was an outbreak the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The disease began in bats in Saudi Arabia, and then transmitted to camels. MERS remained mysteriously localized to the Arabian Peninsula, with an additional minority of cases in South Korea.

In 2013, the new H7N9 virus infected birds and chickens on factory farms. It killed only 250 humans and remained localized in China.

Finally, Covid-19 is still ongoing. As was the case in the Spanish flu, the virus was able to spread rapidly due to the increased circulation of human beings. It appeared in Wuhan, mainland China, in December 2019. The origin is believed to be in the large bat colonies of the region, then passed on to the pangolin, a prized meat in China. Wuhan is a hot and humid region, highly urbanized and industrialized. Agro-industry, with its intensive livestock farming, presses against the crowded city and suburbs; these brought together animals that favor viral mutations and the conditions for their spread to and among humans. Mortality was very high at the beginning of the pandemic because the cases examined were all already very serious; estimates later dropped from 5.6% to 0.5%. The disease has spread to the rest of Asia and the world through the movement of people. In 80% of cases the symptoms are moderate and mortality mainly concerns very elderly people, especially those with underlying conditions or in a state of poverty. The body responds to the disease, which can go unnoticed, especially in young people, with an immune reaction; in some cases this response is disproportionate and targets the cells of the respiratory mucosa that transfer oxygen to the blood. Covid-19 also causes damage to the vascular walls. At this point the disease is no longer viral but autoimmune. But many elements are still incomprehensible. Because epidemics sometimes remain localized, because they cease, there are questions that science has not yet answered.The Road Ahead

The race for profit drives the world dominated by the capitalist mode of production (along with its irrationality), plunging the very intelligence and survival instinct of the species into chaos. This generates the spread – expanded by bourgeois propaganda – of a general distrust of science and openness to irrational and esoteric “new age” ideas. Some prostrate themselves in front of an “anti-science”, opposing to its methods of study and research the lazy ignorance and individualism of the petty bourgeoisie, which flaunts its pessimism – a sense of impotence, uselessness and death, resigned to its next ruin and without a future.

Behind these sentiments, the regime of capital hides its inability to foresee and prepare plans for responding to entirely predictable emergencies. This would cause unnecessary expense!

On the social level, states take advantage of the emergency to prohibit trade union meetings and strikes, but never prohibit work itself in the confined spaces of factories, construction sites, and warehouses.

To all this it must be added that managers, including health care managers, serve the health of capital rather than that of people, thirsty for earnings and now strangled by the economic crisis, of which has been enormously deepened by the collapse of consumption, despite the fact that production continues. The workers must risk their lives, as soldiers at the front, in the merciless economic and commercial war between the various world bourgeoisies.

Because the great fear of the bourgeoisie is not Covid but the revolt of the exploited workers of the world!

Only the world proletariat, armed with its economic organizations and its class party, is able to prepare its dictatorship, which will make possible the destruction of the capitalist mode of production, always deadly and criminal, and give life to communist society – the bases of which have been present for more than a century – with its science, finally free, placed at the service of all humanity.