People First

Valuing things over people is an embarrassing indictment to humanity’s conscience

The 2019 coronavirus disease (2019-nCoV, more widely known as COVID-19), is a human disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Emphasising the human dimension of this voracious pandemic that has rapidly morphed into a global health emergency of unprecedented proportion is nontrivial and as urgent as it gets.

The inordinate attention to things rather than to people even before the coronavirus crisis wanes is an embarrassing affront to humanity[1]. If there is one lesson to be drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic it is that people must be the main foci of attention in both academic and public discourse.  A system that values things more than people was bound to lead to the sorts of tragic outcomes and impacts currently witnessed across the world as nations scramble to fight the pandemic.

As if in lock and step, governments have been quick off the block to vote for hefty stimulus packages to bail out businesses. But, the pace with which testing, contact tracking and isolation has been doled out has, with a few exceptions, been lacklustre as best[2]^,[3].This is in spite of an overwhelming consensus among epidemiologists and the scientific community that, short of a vaccine, testing, tracing and isolation is the most effective bulwark humanity has to fight the pandemic.

In a characteristic mainstream valuation of (material) things over people, the lead story in The Economist of May 14, 2020, titled “Has covid-19 killed globalisation?” argues that the open system of trade (not people) that has hitherto been dominant is “suffering a body-blow due to lockdowns that have sealed borders and disrupted commerce”. To support this viewpoint, the following statistics is given:

“The number of passengers at Heathrow has dropped by 97% year-on-year; Mexican car exports fell by 90% in April; 21% of transpacific container-sailings in May have been cancelled. As economies reopen, activity will recover, but don’t expect a quick return to a carefree world of unfettered movement and free trade”.                

If there was any doubt, the above quotation, among many (see, for example, the article titled “The pandemic’s coming geopolitical second wave” in May issue of The Atlantic for a European perspective), puts to rest any pretence that proponents of globalisation care for much more than about protectionism, economic growth, finance, markets, costs, global trade, and foreign direct investment. Whatever the validity of contrary views, nothing can diminish the gravity of this matter. It is people’s lives at stake here!

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[1] An editorial published on in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet (Vo 395, Issue 10236, May 16, 2020) suggests that the US prioritised politics over public health in its COVID-19 response. Incidentally, this is not the first time that an administration is playing politics with public health (see Editorial of The Lancet Vol 370, July 21, 2007).    

[2] Writing in the Financial Time of April, 3 2020, acclaimed novelist Arundhati Roy narrates how the Indian government bungled at each and every step of its response to the coronavirus pandemic, pointing out, for example, that…”the calamitous lack of planning or preparedness (that) turned the world’s biggest, most punitive lockdown into the exact opposite of what it was meant to achieve” (https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca).

[3] Commenting on Kenyan politics, acclaimed journalist Tom Mshindi characterises it as “a battle that is of little benefit to the majority of Kenyans confronting life and death situations in the devastation Covid-19 is leaving in its wake, the floods and the inevitable starvation that will follow (Daily Nation of May 16, 2020).