The Monster Enters
‘The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.’
Katherine Ann Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider
In The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism, Mike Davis’ updated edition of his 2005 book The Monster at Our Door, Davis puts forward a scathing critique of the driving role that capitalism has played in creating a world in which we are so unnervingly and increasingly vulnerable to pandemics, and how predictable and avoidable this was. The arrival of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) was no real shock to those in this field; its elder sibling SARS-CoV had, as Davis puts it so matter of factly, ‘scared the pants off the world back in 2003’, with MERs – another iteration appearing in Saudi Arabia less than a decade later – taking over 1000 lives. While Davis’ in depth analysis of previous pandemics and the science behind both them and the current COVID-19 crisis is extremely illuminating, what I found to be the most salient argument is that which makes abundantly clear that capitalism has not simply eroded the capacity of the majority of countries around the world to adequately respond to pandemics, but that is has done this while simultaneously providing the perfect conditions for pandemics to increase in both ferocity and number. The former point, while true, is a familiar refrain to those of us on the political left of any stripe; the latter seems to be relatively novel in terms of an actual articulation, and that is why it is so vitally important that we fully grasp the truth of it. ‘The new age of plagues, like previous pandemic epochs, is directly the result of economic globalisation.’ Davis notes that, ‘The Black Death, for instance, was the inadvertent consequence of the Mongol conquest of inner Eurasia, which allowed Chinese rodents to hitchhike along the trade routes from northern China to Central Europe and the Mediterranean.’ This point has been evidenced repeatedly both in the current crisis and those previous to it, where trade routes, travel routes, and the ever increasing confluence of the two spread the virus from one side of the earth to the other in the blink of an eye. The global spread of COVID-19 was essentially inevitable from the moment it emerged due to the nature of the globalised capitalist economic system.
Davis first penned The Monster at Our Door 15 years ago, citing multinational capital as the ‘driver of disease evolution’. The destruction of tropical forests, the disastrous swell of slums and informal employment, and the apparently endless growth of factory farming created an environment that is almost perfect for disease to evolve, spread, and fester. The logging and burning of forests results in the systematic eradication of the necessary border between humans and birds, bats, mammals, and the wild viruses that come with them. If factory farming had been designed with the sole intent of creating an environment in which to incubate novel viruses, it would be considered a resounding success; the obscene density of, to take one example, poultry farms – where in Northern Georgia and Arkansas alone 1 billion chickens are killed each year – has created the perfect conditions for viruses to mutate and spread, in close proximity to human workers. Gargantuan feedlots and factory farming create stress on animals’ immune systems which, beyond being inhumane, accelerate and enhance the evolution of viruses from avian flu to coronaviruses. The density of the global slums ensure that viruses can spread easily, and the poor sanitary and living conditions allow that spread between already immunocompromised people, while informal employment often gives people little chance to isolate and take time off when sick. Poverty is its own comorbidity; not only are the poor more likely to live in these environments and find themselves unable to isolate effectively, but hunger and exhaustion plays its own role in lessening the ability to fight off illness.
The experience of the current pandemic is remarkably similar to that of those previous to it, from the Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Spanish Flu of 1918, to SARS in 2003:
‘urban populations locked inside their apartments, the flight of rich to their country homes, the cancellation of public events and schools, desperate trips to the markets that often end with infection; society’s reliance upon hero nurses, the lack of beds in hospitals, the mad search for masks, and the widespread suspicion that alien powers are at work (Jews, a passing comet, German saboteurs, the Chinese).’
The cramped housing situations that plague vast swathes of the urban poor is compounded by inadequate construction. The SARS outbreak of 2003 found its way inside a Hong Kong tower block home to 264 apartments – in just a few days the number of infected residents was 321. While the exact mode of transmission was never fully verified, the common consensus – and that of the Department of Health – is that it was spread through a defective plumbing system. This faulty plumbing is believed to have spread SARS by bringing the inhabitants of Kowloon’s Tower Block E ‘into contact with small droplets containing the viruses from the contaminated sewage.’ It should go without saying that this is unsanitary at the best of times, but particularly during a pandemic it can be the difference between life and death. ‘The Amoy Gardens incident was particularly troubling’, Davis explains, ‘because it demonstrated that in conditions of extreme urban density – such as those found in high-rise housing, hospitals, and slums – viral transmission might be potently amplified by faulty ventilation and sewage systems, or, worse, by those systems’ absence’. It is clear that while the capitalist drive for profits continues to exist, corners will be cut in construction and maintenance – particularly in areas designed for and inhabited by the global poor. And the ramifications of this will be felt by those most vulnerable, from Grenfell to Kowloon.
A COVID-19 vaccine appears to be on the horizon. Pfizer’s, for example, appears to have a 95% success rate. However, as Davis drives home, given that flu pandemics are both predictable and currently inevitable, a universal flu vaccine must be prioritised in order to not just put an end to the current pandemic but to prevent the next one. The ‘disinterest by bottom liners in the pharmaceutical industry’ has put this vital pursuit on the back burner, and despite the unceasing chorus of voices in the media and politics declaring that capitalism encourages innovation one simple truth remains: the capitalist profit motive hinders investment and innovation. It is no surprise that Cuba developed a lung cancer vaccine rather than any of the myriad wealthy capitalist states that infest our world. A report from the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) quoted by Davis makes this clear:
‘There is a key misalignment between the social and private returns from medical research and development and capital investment in pandemic vaccines. R&D and investment costs are only recouped by sales when the pandemic risk occurs. Part of the value of vaccines that can mitigate future pandemic risks, however, is their insurance value today that provides protection against possible damage. This insurance value accrues even if the pandemic does not occur in the future, and it implies that the social value of faster production and better vaccines is much larger than its private return to developers. This divergence leads to under-provision in vaccine innovation because it does not get rewarded for its insurance value.’
An illustration of this is given by Dr Peter Hotetz, lead researcher of a group of scientists who had previously developed a MERS vaccine and who had developed a SARS vaccine which he believes would have provided cross-protection against COVID if it had been produced in quantity, but who had been unable to find the funding to enable this. This abdication of duty in the name of profit is the same beast that causes nations such as the USA to attempt to create its own COVID-19 tests rather than use ones that have already been proven to work, and the same beast that results in out of date, inadequate, and, in many cases, non-existent PPE.
In Davis’ New Left Review article carrying the same name as his book, he makes clear that COVID-19 has proved, beyond any doubt, that capitalist globalisation is unsustainable on a biological level without a genuinely international public health organisation that exists outside of the realm of profit – something we know cannot be delivered by a capitalist economy. Cuba’s doctors have consistently been the first to arrive at the front line of the fight against public health disasters in the Global South; they are ‘reliable shock troops’, but this alone will not be enough to turn the tide going forwards. China has spearheaded the operation to provide medical experts, testing, ventilators, and PPE to those in need, including Italy, whose European neighbours turned their backs on them. This, too, while admirable and desperately necessary is vastly inadequate when compared to the global system of healthcare we need.
It would seem, now, that an end to COVID, or at least a reduction in the scope of its influence on our day-to-day lives, is just over the hill. We are not there yet, but a vaccine is now expected to be in use within months rather than years – although it is by no means guaranteed that the roll out of such vaccines will be performed adequately, nor that these vaccines will reach all countries or even classes equally. Based on the history of coronavirus colds, Davis writes, the immunity of survivors – and assumably that of those vaccinated – is likely to be short lived, so COVID is here to stay in one form or another. Beyond guesswork about the success that the vaccines may have, though, is the fact that another pandemic is on the horizon, particularly that of an avian flu – H5N1, the ‘original flu monster’, now has siblings that would make it blush. ‘Permanent bio-protection against new plagues’, Davis says, ‘accordingly, would require more than vaccines. It would need the suppression of these “structures of disease emergence” through revolutionary reforms in agriculture and urban living that no large capitalist or state-capitalist country would ever willingly undertake.’ This is the resounding clarion call that runs throughout every page and chapter of The Monster Enters – that without an end to global slums, healthcare for profit, and the dismantling of the current factory farming and agriculture system, there will be no respite from this scourge. Until capitalism is buried, once and for all, we will live in a world in which pandemics continue to rage, with ever increasing frequency. In Davis’ astute words, written prior to COVID-19: ‘now, with a real Monster at our door – as terrible as any in science fiction – will we wake up in time?’ The answer this time was no, we must not make the same mistake again.
The Monster Enters: Covid-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism
Mike Davis
OR Books, 2020
9781682193037