Cassandra Voices

Author: Justin Frewen

  • Covid-19: are we really all in this together?

    Introduction

    What I don’t find nice, and I really don’t need, is people clapping. I don’t need rainbows. I don’t care if people clap until their hands bleed with rainbows tattooed on their faces. I don’t even (whisper it) need Colonel Tom, lovely man as he clearly is…

    The coronavirus crisis has shone a light on lots of good and bad things in this country. It is of course to be welcomed that key workers, including those for the NHS and social care, are being increasingly valued. I hope the reality is dawning that immigrants and BAME staff are vital to the NHS and we couldn’t manage without them.

    But don’t feel you need to clap. Enough with the rainbows. When this ends, people need to show their value of key-working staff in practical ways; pay them enough to be able to live in our cities, and recognise, support and welcome immigrant staff who prop this country up. Listen to the views of NHS workers when they raise concerns, address the culture of blame and bureaucracy.
    Anonymous NHS Doctor, 2020[i]

    Mediated Isolation

    Cocooned in state-imposed lockdown, many of us succumbed to media binges while absentmindedly doing the housework, feeding the kids or, my own personal bête noire, chasing the kids down to do their homework. For some this might entail spending a sizable proportion of their waking hours perched in front of flickering TV screens while others opted for being serenaded by the droning tones of radio heads defining their versions of a ‘national reality’, from which we were physically excluded.

    Internet and social media platforms have also served to distract us from excess navel gazing by informing us of FB ‘friends’ consumption habits that day, conjectures as to when the ‘circenses’ of sport will return to lighten up our beleaguered days and the travails of celebrities struggling to survive their privileged lockdowns, while providing anodyne and impractical advice on how we too might achieve elevated states of consciousness.

    However, no matter which media is our poison of choice, it is hard to escape the constant, mind-numbing refrain that ‘we are all in this together’, facing the same existential threat irrespective of our status in society, our relative wealth, cultural and religious ethos and any other distinguishing features, real or imagined. Only by sticking together will we be able to defeat our contagious foe, or so the story goes.

    Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, the advertising industry has swiftly conceived and produced a slew of adverts to hawk their clients’ wares by tapping into the positive sentiments of this catchphrase. Praising frontline workers or highlighting our newfound unity – separated but together – they strive to manipulate the emotions and purchasing decisions of their target audiences.

    But are we really all in this together? Has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted us all in a similar manner? Or has it and the measures imposed to tackle it impacted upon different sectors of our societies?

    Mortality Rates

    The first and most obvious disparity of impact has been the varying mortality rates between different age groups. Amongst those diagnosed with Covid-19, people over 80 were seventy times more likely to succumb to the virus, than those under 40 and the death rate amongst males has been seen to be greater than amongst females. A Public Health England report revealed a higher mortality rate amongst members of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups than in White ethnic groups, those born outside the U.K. and Ireland as well as, unsurprisingly, ‘those in a range of caring occupations including social care and nursing auxiliaries and assistants; those who drive passengers in road vehicles for a living including taxi and minicab drivers and chauffeurs; those working as security guards and related occupations; and those in care homes.’[ii]

    However, it could be argued that these facts should not be used to detract from the fact that we are all in this together. After all, Covid-19 resulting in higher mortality rates amongst certain age categories is surely just a characteristic of this virus, similar to how the second wave of the 1918 flu virus disproportionately resulted in deaths amongst young men and women in their 20s and 30s, ‘while often sparing the very young and the very old.’[iii] Similarly, there are obvious reasons why people on the frontline and who have been dealing directly with the public have experienced greater rates of infection and higher mortality rates. Although the higher rates of death amongst BAME groups is evidently concerning, it too requires greater examination to be able to determine its exact cause.

    Socio-Economic Disparities

    While one might claim pathogens are ‘democratic by nature’, [iv] in the sense that viruses do not consciously target potential victims or particular social groups, certain social and economic factors clearly influence their ease of dissemination and transmission.

    In the United States, according to the epidemiologist Camara Phyllis Jones, the higher infection rates amongst African and Latin American communities can be at least partly attributed to their being at a greater risk of exposure and less protected. Other contributing factors include the existence of socio-economic and health disparities, themselves the outcome of historical segregation and endemic racism,[v] as well as the increased levels of contact with environmental pollution and lower rates of access to health care.[vi]

    In many parts of the United States, people of colour make up a higher proportion of some low-paid professions that have elevated risks of exposure to the virus—those who staff grocery stores, drive buses and work at food plants, for example. Also, COVID-19 is deadlier for people with chronic conditions, including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. These have a higher incidence in many minority ethnic and racial groups.[vii]

    In the U.K., considerations such as ‘crowded housing and working conditions’ have been advanced as reasons for the divergences in infection and death ratings between ethnic minorities and white people. For example, whereas only 2% of white people in the U.K. are living in crowded conditions, overcrowding is far more prevalent amongst minority ethnic groups with as many as 30% of Bangladeshi, 16% of Pakistani and 15% of black African households being overcrowded.[viii]

    Social Determinants of Health

    According to Dr. Enam Haque, a GP based in Manchester, while BAME groups, particularly from South Asia, are more prone to diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, which does increase their risk of contracting Covid-19, a more significant role is played by the social determinants of health.[ix]

    As Farrell, McAvoy and Wilde explain

    Health is not just the outcome of genetic or biological processes but is also influenced by the social and economic conditions in which we live. These influences have become known as the ‘social determinants of health’. Inequalities in social conditions give rise to unequal and unjust health outcomes for different social groups.[x]

    About a decade ago, my wife Anna Datta, who is a doctor, and I prepared a couple of Thinkpieces for the Think-Tank for Action on Social Change, on the Socio-Economic Realities of Mental Health in Ireland and the Socio-Economic Realities of Health in Ireland as well as preparing an oral presentation on the Socio-Economic Realities of Health in Ireland for the 19th European Congress of Psychiatry. In researching and drafting these pieces the critical role played by social determinants in determining the health of different sectors of the population was clear. We concluded that

    (i) Social determinants contribute to health inequalities between social groups. This is because the effects of social determinants of health are not distributed equally or fairly across society.

    (ii) Social determinants can influence health both directly and indirectly. For example, damp housing can directly contribute to respiratory disorders, while educational disadvantage can limit access to employment, raising the risk of poverty and its adverse impact on health.

    (iii) Social determinants of health are interconnected. For example, poverty is linked to poor housing, access to health services or diet, all of which are in turn linked to health.

    (iv) Social determinants operate at different levels. Structural issues, such as socioeconomic policies or income inequality, are often termed ‘upstream’ factors. While ‘downstream’ factors like smoking or stress operate at an individual level – and can be influenced by upstream factors.[xi]

    The social determinants which have placed minority ethnic groups at a health disadvantage already as well as other vulnerable groups – less economically secure white people, the homeless and so forth – have led to their members being at greater risk of falling victim to Covid-19. It is critical these factors are addressed, not just in a piecemeal fashion or through a short-term approach in response to this pandemic, but comprehensively with structures being put in place to reduce the health inequities experienced by BAME communities and other vulnerable groups, as well as ensuring equitable access to health services.

    The 1% and the Rest

    When celebrities die, we review their lives; when wage earners die, owners re-hire.[xii]

    People around the world have been obliged to adapt to living in relative isolation, frequently separated from their loved ones due to stringent lockdowns. They have found themselves in straitened conditions on reduced incomes, with many worried as to whether their pre-Covid-19 jobs will still be there when the economy reopens. The vulnerable in countries such as India, South Africa or the Philippines, are faced with the Catch-22 situation of abiding by savage lockdowns, facing potential starvation and severe malnutrition for their families, or venturing forth at the risk of violent beatings or worse at the hands of the police for breaking state-imposed lockdowns.

    As Joseph Natoli writes, the rich face no such dilemmas.

    Those who live on dividends and interest from investments face no Catch-22. Private planes take them where they think they will be safer. Sheltering in place on your yacht with a serving crew is a safe sort of isolation. It’s in fact not much different than life before the pandemic. A cell phone and zoom keep you actively tending your horde. A top 20% meritocratic class has already been working from home, not bound by office or punching a wage clock. Life’s not much different for them. Nannies and tutors, daily tested, can handle, as usual, the offspring. Someone — not you — will cook and clean. Life’s not much different. No Catch-22 here…[xiii]

    One of the most vocal advocates for the re-opening of the economy and ending the lockdown measures in place is the controversial billionaire Elon Musk. He even went so far as openly defying the local authorities in the US to reopen his flagship Tesla auto assembly plant in Fremont, California, which public health officials had ordered shut down some two months previously. Due to a complicated pay deal Musk had negotiated with Tesla, which could culminate in the ‘biggest executive pay windfall in global corporate history,’ opening this plant was critical to help him reach the required targets.[xiv]

    While, it might be argued that Musk was right in his arguments about opening the country to business to prevent economic devastation, whatever his personal interest, this is not the issue here. If an ordinary U.S. citizen had defied the public health authorities as Musk did, publicly defying the civic authorities to arrest him as he joined his workers in the factory,[xv] would they have got away with it? Having got his way, Musk can now sit back in comfortable isolation, while his workers run the risk of contracting any circulating viruses, as he waits for his bonus to come home to daddy.

    Rich Man, Poor Man

    During Covid-19, the ultra-rich have managed to increase their already obscene share of the world’s wealth, as poor people around the world have struggled to survive. A report by Americans for Tax Fairness reveals that between 18 March and 19 May, in the midst of state lockdowns and business closures, the wealth of Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) and Larry Ellison (Oracle) grew by $75.5 billion. The personal wealth of Elon Musk alone, grew by 48% or $11.8 billion.[xvi]

    At the same time, the severe impositions of movement control and lockdowns globally have disproportionally affected the more vulnerable members of our societies. While things may be booming for the wealthiest, many of the poorest and most defenceless communities are subject to violent and humiliating punishments to ensure they stick to quarantines, leaving them at the risk of starvation. Alberto Ruíz, who sits on a resident’s social organisation in the deprived Tacumbú neighbourhood of Asunción emphasises the lack of support that has been provided to lockdowned families deprived of any income and how people have been instructed ‘to stay at home, to protect your family. But in poor neighbourhoods, you have to go out to earn a living: if you don’t, you die of hunger.’[xvii]

    As Arundhati Roy writes, encapsulating the horrors of those most affected by the Indian lockdown, migrant workers and their families.

    Many driven out by their employers and landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry, thirsty people, young and old, men, women, children, sick people, blind people, disabled people, with nowhere else to go, with no public transport in sight, began a long march home to their villages. They walked for days, towards Badaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Lucknow, Gorakhpur — hundreds of kilometres away. Some died on the way. They knew they were going home potentially to slow starvation. Perhaps they even knew they could be carrying the virus with them, and would infect their families, their parents and grandparents back home, but they desperately needed a shred of familiarity, shelter and dignity, as well as food, if not love. As they walked, some were beaten brutally and humiliated by the police, who were charged with strictly enforcing the curfew. Young men were made to crouch and frog jump down the highway. Outside the town of Bareilly, one group was herded together and hosed down with chemical spray.[xviii]

    https://vimeo.com/426871719?fbclid=IwAR3yunk0KyYQOX9UmylvjEo3t3zVVIyFkxxMqKImeJVF5v8re0-yabQ-1kk

    Philip Alston, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, accuses many states of having enacted policies reeking of social Darwinism, by prioritising the wealthiest to the detriment of the poor.[xix] Looking at how entire countries have been shut down by governments, many of whom have failed to make even minimal efforts to protect the most vulnerable members of their societies, it is hard to disagree.

    Covid-19 and minority ethnic groups

    From early May, New York City reported over twice as many deaths amongst the African and Latin American communities per 100,000 residents compared to white people. The Bronx, with the highest concentration of African Americans, had the city’s highest rates of deaths and hospitalisation.[xx] Data from early June indicates that Black Americans have been throughout the U.S. been 2.4 times more likely to succumb to Covid-19 than White Americans.[xxi]

    This disparity of impact on black and Asian communities is also an issue of serious concern in the U.K. Harriet A. Washington writes how

    In April, the UK Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre estimated that 35% of people in intensive care with COVID-19 are black, Asian or members of other minority ethnic groups, nearly triple their proportion in the UK population. The first ten physicians in the United Kingdom known to have died from COVID-19 were also from black, Asian or minority ethnic groups.[xxii]

    Racial Inequality in the U.K.

    A Public Health England report, Covid-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes, highlighted the role that deprivation can play in exacerbating infection and mortality rates.

    The mortality rates from COVID-19 in the most deprived areas were more than double the least deprived areas, for both males and females… ONS analysis shows that between 1 March and 17 April 2020 the deprived areas in England had more than double the mortality rate from COVID-19 than the least deprived areas.[xxiii]

    Given the relatively impoverished status of BAME groups, as evidenced in their far higher concentration in impoverished locales such as the most deprived 10% neighbourhoods, their vulnerability to Covid-19 is further aggravated.[xxiv]

    Ethnic minority workers also tend to be employed in more insecure and more poorly regulated work with a Carnegie U.K. Trust, UCL and Operation Black Vote report noting that BAME millennials were some 47% more likely to be on ’notoriously unstable “zero-house” contracts.’ As a result, they have been disproportionately engaged as key workers in front-line positions, placing them at greater risk of catching the virus.[xxv]

    The situation for migrants to the U.K. employed in front-line positions, necessitating direct contact with the public, is if anything even more precarious. A particularly tragic case was that of Rajesh Jayaseelan who succumbed to the virus alone in Northwick Park hospital on 11 April. Rajesh, who had come to London about a decade earlier to provide for his family, had starved in his rented accommodation for several days. He had informed his wife he did not want anyone to know of his condition, as he feared being cast out on the street, as had happened at his previous lodging where the landlord had evicted him due to the risk of his contracting the virus as a Uber driver. By the time he made it to the hospital where he passed away, he was already critically ill. He left behind a wife and two young children, to whom he bade one final farewell in a last video call from his hospital bed.[xxvi]

    https://twitter.com/ashnagesh/status/1255047886368387073

    Exacerbating social and economic inequality

    The situation in South Africa clearly illustrates the social and economic divisions that existed in society prior to Covid-19 and how they have remained in place during the virus and punitive lockdown. Rather than creating a national unity where everybody feels they are in it together, the pandemic and, in particular, the actions taken to combat it have in face served to reinforce the social schisms. As Patrick Bond writes:

    The lockdown and social-distancing mandates simply won’t work in the overcrowded townships, which traditionally under apartheid were built merely as the urban holding cells of a reserve army of migrant labor… Many workers and most of the massive unemployed precariat were immediately without income as the full lockdown began on March 27, just as the state safety net was fraying… So as Covid-19 has struck, the country’s extreme inequality has been exacerbated, and the state’s long-standing delivery shortcomings stand exposed… For many people suffering what were already recessionary conditions, coronavirus seems the least of their concerns.[xxvii]

    Bond quotes a local activist who explains that while people understand the potential threat of coronavirus ‘it is here for a short period, while we have been living under these dangerous conditions since 2000.’[xxviii]

    Le coronavirus, c’est l’État (the coronavirus is the state) [xxix]

    As she recounts issues of police harassment and oppression in the tower block estate of La Caravelle located in the commune of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Malika points out a boy of 13, who looks younger, and relates how a couple of days previously he had frantically knocked on her door pleading for help as the police were around.[xxx]

    Another resident, Taha Amghar, details how a body of police followed him home, entered his flat and beat him with their batons. They had then detained him overnight, and refused him access to legal representation. Rather than receiving any apology for this completely unnecessary detention, Taha was later issued with a deportation notice on the grounds of his Moroccan nationality, prohibiting him from working, despite having lived in France for 16 years. To add insult to injury, Taha has a medical certificate from a French doctor explaining the necessity of his remaining in France as he has a chronic illness for which treatment does not exist in Morocco.[xxxi]

    It is for this reason that Malika states ‘Le coronavirus, c’est l’État.’ For the relatively impoverished residents of La Caravelle, Covid-19 is being exploited by the state and its’ servants, primarily through the brutality of police operations, to repress them. Whereas for Louis XIV, he was the nation (l’État, c’est moi), today the French state (ab)uses the coronavirus, by using it as a ‘veil’ to disguise its’ efforts to engage in targeted violence and discrimination, primarily against ethnic minorities.

    As Assistant Professor of Sociology, Jean Beaman writes,

    While everyone in France is subject to this decree, early evidence reveals it has been differentially applied. COVID-19 is not the equalizer or leveler some have suggested. Rather, this state of health emergency has disproportionately affected some populations compared to others, as some communities are more policed and surveilled than others. And these communities and populations are those that were already marginalized in France before COVID-19.[xxxii]

    Plight of refugees and migrants

    Similarly, it is hard to see how the almost 71 million refugees and forcibly displaced people worldwide[xxxiii] are being included as one of us, members of the ‘we’ fighting an implacable, infectious foe. As Cork-born Ettie Higgins, the UNICEF Deputy Representative in Jordan, warns previous experience has demonstrated “that a pandemic accentuates existing inequalities and makes life much more difficult for the most vulnerable.”[xxxiv]

    https://twitter.com/AngiePedley/status/1221856141547843585

    Corralled in alarmingly overcrowded camps, the risk levels for refugees is greatly elevated for virus contraction and dispersion, not to mention the barriers, including language, they experience in accessing health services. Devoid of support, residents from many different countries in the Moria camp on Lesbos, where there are over 20,000 people living in a camp designed for less than 3,000, have come together to spread awareness of the virus to their fellow camp residents. A group of four Afghan women, one of whom had been a tailor in Kabul and who was willing to head the operation, volunteered to sew face masks for the camp’s population.

    Writing in late May, Lorraine Leete from the Legal Centre Lesvos points out the continued movement restrictions on refugees in Moria were unjustified,

    While people continue to be detained inside refugee camps in horrible conditions where there’s limited measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, restaurants and bars will be opened this week across Greece. This discriminatory treatment is fulfilling the goal of local rightwing groups of keeping migrants out of public spaces away from public view, abandoned by the state.[xxxv]

    Added to their immediate concerns regarding Covid-19, refugees are also impacted by the cessation of free movement and international travel between countries, with some countries also placing a hold on resettlement intakes.[xxxvi]

    In the U.K., the sharing of patient information between healthcare services and the Home Office has resulted in highly negative health outcomes for migrants with an insecure migration status, as they have avoided going for treatment even for serious complaints such as tuberculosis, lest they be detained and/or deported.[xxxvii]

    Indigenous Peoples’ struggles

    Indigenous people’s face many challenges, similar to those experienced by refugees and other vulnerable groups. As the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues highlight:

    Indigenous peoples often have much in common with other neglected segments of societies, i.e. lack of political representation and participation, economic marginalization and poverty, lack of access to social services and discrimination. Despite their cultural differences, the diverse indigenous peoples share common problems also related to the protection of their rights.[xxxviii]

    Making up some 6% of the world’s population, 476 million people spread over 90 countries, indigenous peoples account for about 15 percent of the extreme poor and have a life expectancy some 20 years lower than that of non-indigenous people worldwide.[xxxix] Frequently deprived of good access to health care, higher rates of poor health and lack of access to adequate sanitation facilities and other preventive measures, the advent of Covid-19 was seen as a significant threat to these communities. However, the lockdowns implemented without adequate support measures, could create greater long-term problems.

    As lockdowns continue, Indigenous peoples who already face food insecurity, as a result of the loss of their traditional lands and territories, confront even graver challenges in access to food. With the loss of their traditional livelihoods, which are often land-based, many Indigenous peoples who work in traditional occupations and subsistence economies or in the informal sector will be adversely affected by the pandemic. The situation of indigenous women, who are often the main providers of food and nutrition to their families, is even graver.[xl]

    Even worse, some governments are using the cover of Covid-19 to implement policies and actions that indigenous people oppose. In Canada, Kate Gunn, a lawyer at First Peoples Law Corporation wrote in early April how the Crown had still not clarified how it would safeguard the title and rights of Indigenous People’s during Covid-19. The Crown had also failed to confirm whether it would continue to make decisions which might impact on First Nation rights, a particularly critical issue given the impossibility of the First Nations to participate meaningfully in consultations during this period.[xli]

    The Choctaw nation and the Irish

    Although the mortality rate during the 1740-41 Irish famine is estimated to be slightly higher,[xlii] the 1840s famine is generally remembered as the greatest tragedy to have befallen the island of Ireland. Fuelled by blight devastated potato crops and an, at best, callous British administration,[xliii] one million Irish died and over a million more emigrated between 1845 and 1852 out of a population of 8.5 million.[xliv]

    One of the few positive memories of this famine was the wonderful humanity demonstrated by the native American Choctaw Nation who, moved by the plight of the Irish, donated $170 in 1847.[xlv] This was a highly significant sum of money in those times, particularly when you consider that in 1831, the Choctaws had been forced to walk from their ancestral lands in the American southeast to the new Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Along this ‘trail of tears,’ many Choctaw lost their lives.[xlvi] And yet a mere 16 years later they were sufficiently moved by the suffering of a people living in a distant land to dip into their meagre resources to help alleviate the plight of the Irish.

    Choctaw ‘trail of tears’

    Now, over 170 years later, the Irish finally had the chance to repay this debt to some extent. In response to a fundraiser established to support the Navajo nation, badly impacted by the Covid-19 virus and the lack of suitable health facilities and equipment, many people of Irish origin contributed generously. Several of these contributors left notes drawing attention to the solidarity and humanity displayed by the native American community during the Irish famine.[xlvii]

    Solidarity in India

    The current pandemic has been witness to acts of heart-warming human solidarity. In India, the transgender community were seriously impacted by the sudden imposition of the Covid-19 lockdown on 24 March. Frequently dependent on daily income to survive, many struggled to survive, dependent on whatever relief was made available by the state and NGOs. Despite their precarious situation, transgender people have established support and assistance scheme for other vulnerable groups.[xlviii]

    In Porur, the transgender community helped some 40 members of eleven stranded migrant, Muslim families. Originally from Andhra Pradesh, these individuals did not have identity cards and were therefore ineligible to receive relief. Keerthana, a transgender sanitary supervisor helped feed sanitation workers in Puducherry. According to Srijith Sundaram, an LGBTQ activist, the transgender community was able with the help of patrons to distribute rations and other essential items to these workers.[xlix]

    Moved by the frightful conditions and suffering of migrant workers travelling on the Shramik Special trains commissioned to ferry them home, Rasheeda who lives in impoverished circumstances in New Arif Nagar slum in Bhopal, decided she had to do something to assuage their misery. Leaving her house at daybreak, Rasheeda collects materials and food to prepare packages of food. Wasif, her husband, who works in a nearby junkyard as a rag-picker, helps her collect the food, firewood and utensils to prepare these packages. The children in their colony pack the food. Upon the arrival of a train, dozens of the children rush forward with packets of food and water. Between 200 and 250 food packets and 50 litres of water are distributed daily to the grateful passengers.[l]

    Rasheeda and Wasif engage in this selfless work each day even though, according to Wasif:

    There are days when we get to barely eat as well, but we try hard to feed the passengers because we at least are at home. However, the lockdown has not only made them homeless but penniless too.[li]

    Six kitchens are operated by their neighbours in the Blue moon colony and New Arif Nagar slums, despite the intense poverty and deprivation experienced by their inhabitants. Each kitchen prepares 20 to 25 kgs of rice daily to distribute to the passengers of two to three Shramik trains. They continue in their altruistic work, despite themselves having only received assistance of 5 kgs of flour and rice from government authorities over two months previously.[lii]

    Final Remarks

    I would argue that if there is one thing that Covid-19 has demonstrated conclusively, it is that we are not all in it together. At least, not in terms of our experiences, our levels of resilience and the impact the virus and state-imposed lockdown measures have had upon us. For vulnerable groups in the Global North or South, minority ethnic groups, refugees and indigenous people, the homeless or financially insecure, the negative impacts of Covid-19 and, in particular, the lockdowns, have been far more severe, resulting in serious economic stress, increased immiseration and deprivation, hunger and even death. Furthermore, as the Covid-19 infections decrease, economies reopen and people get back to work, the inequalities that pre-dated Covid-19 will still be here.

    Moving forward, we need to work together to ensure the most vulnerable groups amongst us receive the support and assistance they need to address these inequities, ensure they are provided with equal access to education, health and other social goods and are able to participate fully and equitably in our society and economy.

    [i] Anonymous-NHS Doctor, I’m an NHS doctor – and I’ve had enough of people clapping for me, The Guardian, 21 May 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/nhs-doctor-enough-people-clapping

    [ii] Public Health England, Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19, Public Health England, June 2020, Page 4, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/889861/disparities_review.pdf

    [iii] Bryan Walsh, Solving the Mystery Flu That Killed 50 Million People, Time Magazine, 29 April 2014, https://time.com/79209/solving-the-mystery-flu-that-killed-50-million-people/

    [iv] Nidhi Subbaraman, How to address the coronavirus’s outsized toll on people of colour, Nature Magazine, 18 May 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01470-x

    [v] Ibid

    [vi] Harriet A. Washington, ibid

    [vii] Nidhi Subbaraman, ibid

    [viii] Harriet A. Washington, ibid

    [ix] Ashitha Nagesh, How coronavirus tore through Britain’s ethnic minorities, BBC, 2 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52894225

    [x] Clare Farrell, Helen McAvoy & Jane Wilde, Tackling Health Inequalities: An All-Ireland Approach to Social Determinants. 2008, Institute of Public Administration & Combat Poverty Agency: Dublin, Page 11

    [xi] Justin Frewen and Anna Datta, The Socio-Economic Realities of Health in Ireland, TASC, December 2010, https://issuu.com/tascpublications/docs/socio-economic_realities_of_health_in_ireland-fina

    [xii] Joseph Natoli, Who’s in a Catch 22?, Counterpunch, 13 May 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/13/whos-in-a-catch-22/

    [xiii] Ibid

    [xiv] Sam Pizzigati, Civil Disobedience, Billionaire-Style, Counterpunch, 19 May 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/19/civil-disobedience-billionaire-style/

    [xv] Ibid

    [xvi] Bryan Kirk, The 5 Wealthiest Americans Have Gotten 75 Billion Dollars Richer While a Pandemic Guts the Economy, Newsweek, 22 May 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/5-wealthiest-americans-have-gotten-75-billion-dollars-richer-while-pandemic-guts-economy-1506044

    [xvii] Rebecca Ratcliffe, Teargas, beatings and bleach: the most extreme Covid-19 lockdown controls around the world, The Guardian, 1 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/01/extreme-coronavirus-lockdown-controls-raise-fears-for-worlds-poorest

    [xviii] Arundhati Roy, ‘The pandemic is a portal’, The Financial Times, 3 April 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca

    [xix] UNHR News, Responses to COVID-19 are failing people in poverty worldwide” – UN human rights expert, UNHR, 22 April 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25815

    [xx] Nidhi Subbaraman, How to address the coronavirus’s outsized toll on people of colour, Nature Magazine, 18 May 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01470-x

    [xxi] Marya T. Mtshali, How medical bias against black people is shaping Covid-19 treatment and care, Vox, 2 June 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/6/2/21277987/coronavirus-in-black-people-covid-19-testing-treatment-medical-racism

    [xxii] Harriet A. Washington, How environmental racism is fuelling the coronavirus pandemic, Nature, 19 May 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01453-y

    [xxiii] Public Health England, Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19, Public Health England, June 2020, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/890258/disparities_review.pdf

    [xxiv] Ashitha Nagesh, How coronavirus tore through Britain’s ethnic minorities, BBC, 2 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52894225

    [xxv] Ibid

    [xxvi] Robert Booth, Uber driver dies from Covid-19 after hiding it over fear of eviction, The Guardian, 17 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/uber-driver-dies-from-covid-19-after-hiding-it-over-fear-of-eviction

    [xxvii] Patrick Bond, Covid-19 Attacks the Down-and-Out in Ultra-Unequal South Africa, Counterpunch, 3 April 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/03/covid-19-attacks-the-down-and-out-in-ultra-unequal-south-africa/

    [xxviii] Ibid

    [xxix] Lameute Info, Violences policières à Villeneuve-la-Garenne : « Le coronavirus, c’est l’Etat », Lameute, 20 April 2020, https://www.lameute.info/posts/violences-policieres-villeneuve-la-garenne-le-coronavirus-cest-letat?fbclid=IwAR3WlWKvip4Ebm89kTLg3RNYoKp9wOuFyLD-hRzalEWw0DdL1yWKVDyGAd4

    [xxx] Ibid

    [xxxi] Ibid

    [xxxii] Jean Beaman, Living on the Margins in France: Before and During COVID-19, EuropeNow Journal: Centre for European Studies, 22 May 2020, https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/05/22/living-on-the-margins-in-france-before-and-during-covid-19/

    [xxxiii] Adrian Edwards, Global forced displacement tops 70 million, UNHCR, 19 June 2019, https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2019/6/5d08b6614/global-forced-displacement-tops-70-million.html

    [xxxiv] Philip Bromwell, Irish aid worker’s Covid-19 fears for Syrian refugees. RTE, 15 April 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0414/1130482-irish-aid-workers-covid-19-fears-for-syrian-refugees/

    [xxxv] Katy Fallon, Greece ready to welcome tourists as refugees stay locked down in Lesbos, The Guardian, 27 May 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/27/greece-ready-to-welcome-tourists-as-refugees-stay-locked-down-in-lesbos-coronavirus

    [xxxvi] UN News, COVID-19: Agencies temporarily suspend refugee resettlement travel, UN, 17 March 2020, https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059602

    [xxxvii] May Bulman, Pregnant and ill migrants going without medical care as Government intensifies NHS immigration policy, The Independent (UK), 23 October 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pregnant-and-ill-migrants-going-without-medical-care-due-to-hardline-government-immigration-policy-a8011351.html

    [xxxviii] UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Who are indigenous peoples?, UN, accessed 10 June 2020, https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf

    [xxxix] World Bank, Indigenous Peoples, World Bank, 24 September 2019, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/indigenouspeoples

    [xl] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), COVID-19 and Indigenous peoples, UNDESA, accessed 10 June 2020, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/covid-19.html

    [xli] Kate Gunn is a lawyer at First Peoples Law Corporation, Indigenous Peoples and COVID-19: Protecting People, Protecting Rights, First People’s Law, 8 April 2020, https://www.firstpeopleslaw.com/index/articles/449.php

    [xlii] S. Engler, F. Mauelshagen, J. Werner and J. Luterbacher, The Irish famine of 1740–1741: famine vulnerability and “climate migration”, Climate of the Past, 28 May 2013, page 1174

    [xliii][xliii] Frank Nally, How workhouses contributed to the misfortune of the Famine, Irish Times, 13 August 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/how-workhouses-contributed-to-the-misfortune-of-the-famine-1.3985180

    [xliv] Laurence Geary, Brutality of Cork’s Famine years: ‘I saw hovels crowded with the sick and the dying in every doorway’, Irish Examiner, 8 May 2018, https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/brutality-of-corks-famine-years-i-saw-hovels-crowded-with-the-sick-and-the-dying-in-every-doorway-470367.html

    [xlv] Jimmy Deenihan, Time to Recall our Famine Heroes, Irish Examiner, 31 March 2014, https://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/time-to-recall-our-famine-heroes-263721.html

    [xlvi] Pranit Nanda, The Choctaw: Trail of Tears,  The Choctaw, accessed 08 June 2020, https://choctaw.weebly.com/trail-of-tears.html

    [xlvii] Naomi O’Leary, Coronavirus: Irish donate to hard-hit Native Americans to repay famine aid, The Irish Times, 5 May 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-irish-donate-to-hard-hit-native-americans-to-repay-famine-aid-1.4245807

    [xlviii] Neelambaran A, COVID-19: Fighting Social Exclusion and now a Lockdown, Transgender Community Extends Help to Stranded Migrants, Newsclick India, 18 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/COVID-19-Fighting-Social-Exclusion-Lockdown-Transgender-Community-Extends-Help-Stranded-Migrants

    [xlix] Ibid

    [l] Kashif Kakvi, COVID-19: Unemployed for Months, Bhopal’s Slum Dwellers Still Feed Workers on Shramik Trains, Newsclick India, 30 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/COVID-19-Unemployed-Months-Bhopal-Slum-Dwellers-Feed-Workers-Shramik-Trains

    [li] Ibid

    [lii] Ibid

  • Repression and Covid-19

    The long march of the locked-down migrants[i]
    (Aadesh Ravi – composer, lyric writer and singer)

    Lyrics

    How are the little ones holding up at home?
    I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them? 

    We toil daily to subsist
    Forced to migrate to make ends meet

    The nation may be great
    But our lives are miserable

    This wicked disease struck us
    and wrecked our lives 

    What life is this? What life is this?
    a wretched life, a pathetic life
    an abject life, a broken life 

    Is there a disease worse than poverty?
    Is there a solace greater than being with one’s family? 

    Just to be at home in these troubled times would have
    been enough

    At least we would have survived together, on some gravy
    or gruel

    The kids flit and hover in my eyes all the time
    My wife’s laments chase me ceaselessly

    What, what should I do? What am I to do?
    What to do? What can I do?

    No need of buses or trains, O’ saaru
    Just let me go, master! I will walk my way home

    No need of buses or trains, O’ saaru
    Just let me go, master! I will walk home

    How are the little ones holding up at home?
    I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them?

    How are the little ones holding up at home?
    I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them?

    Let me go, O’saaru! I will walk my way home!
    Let me go, master! I will just walk home!

    Imagined Communities

    Nations, while possessing points of similarity with others, such as a general ‘reverence’ of their external borders, are each a unique and distinct mélange of dominant and disputed histories, cultural groupings, social identities, economic modalities, political structures and legal strictures. Citizens share a set of collective memories and a sense of belongingness with their wider national community – though this can conflict with localised identities particularly in post-colonial states where different ethnic and religious groups were lumped together – despite only ever getting to know a small minority of its members.

    These ‘imagined communities’, according to Benedict Anderson, possess a number of characteristics. They imagine themselves as ‘limited’, as each nation sees itself as different from others; ‘sovereign’ as they are free to determine their own destiny; and ‘as a community’ in that no matter how unequal the internal social relations might be, ‘the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.’[ii]

    ‘Habitus’ and the State

    The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu uses the term ‘habitus’ to describe how individuals are socialised through the ‘historical and cultural production of individual practices – since contexts, laws, rules and ideologies all speak through individuals who are never entirely aware of what is happening.’ Individuals then reproduce these practices, mediated to varying extents by their own self-interest and interpretation.[iii] This individual concept of habitus can be applied at the level of groups, such as a nation. This ‘collective habitus’ refers to its

    shared perspective on the world, relatively common sets of values and shared dispositions to believe and behave in particular ways. The state partially orchestrates this collective habitus by creating the conditions under which certain things come to be viewed as natural and inevitable… and others unthinkable… But perhaps the most effective way that the state creates an orchestrates this collective habitus is by ensuring that is seen by the people it governs as being ‘the voice of the people’, which gives it legitimate authority to rule us, and even to exercise violence against us.[iv]

    As individual nations have their own distinctive ‘collective habitus’, the political and social contexts within which governments operate will vary. This will impact upon the respective levels of freedom they have to resort to force or repressive measures in advancing specific policies. What is deemed acceptable by the citizens of different polities will largely depend on the history of repression in their states, the restrictions accepted in the past, the tradition of resistance, public confidence in the authorities, the current levels of political freedom and whether the state and its citizens are faced by some form of existential threat.

    An interesting illustration of how the historical experiences and collective habitus of a nation can impact upon how repressive measures are accepted and rejected, can be seen in the reaction of some segments of society and even the political leadership in the U.S. to the lockdown. In several cities, large gatherings of citizens were able to successfully assemble in public to protest lockdowns in defiance of restriction on movement ordinances.

    Paul Becker/wikicommons

    Moreover, not only did the U.S. President Donald Trump state his support for their actions but he even went so far as to encourage them to ‘liberate Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia’, states which are, not surprisingly, ‘election swing states with Democratic governors.‘[v] In many other nations, such acts of civil disobedience, in contradiction of state ordinances enacted to protect citizens from an infectious disease, would have been heavily clamped down upon by the authorities.

    Power, Control and the Use of Force

    In his book on Power, John Scott expounds on modern governmental management of a territory and the political management of nations and their citizens.

    Modern rulers… see their task as one of government in… shaping, guiding, and directing of the conduct of others by using persuasive processes of signification and legitimation to work through their desires, aspirations, interests, and beliefs… Sovereignty over territory also involves the management of the population to regulating the life processes through which they live, work, and relate to each other. This is what Foucault termed ‘bio-politics’… discipline is a control that is exercised over people through systems of rules that are not simply imposed on them but are instilled in them.”[vi]

    Governments can increase their power and control either by direct imposition of repressive measures or through the prohibition of alternative voices and movements, which they wish to suppress. In most instances, a judicious melding of both methods will be applied. The precise mix will depend on the political and social environment together with the historical experiences of the state in question.

    However, it is important to remember, as Max Weber emphasises, that while:

    Force is certainly not the normal or only means of the state… but force is a means specific to the state… the state is a relation of men dominating men [and generally – one should add – of men dominating women], a relationship supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence…[vii]

    As David Held writes ‘the web of agencies and institutions’ of a state find their ultimate sanction in the claim to the monopoly of coercion, and a political order, is only, in the last instance, vulnerable to crises when this monopoly erodes.[viii]

    Covid-19 – Gateway to Repression?

    Confronted by an unprecedented and menacing threat, it is normal for people to feel disorientated and even experience levels of panic disproportionate to the threat itself. It is not surprising therefore that the past few months have seen the imposition of unprecedented restrictions in response to Covid-19 by governments around the world. Emergency powers have been used to shut down large sectors of the economy, enforce movement restrictions, screen and isolate potential carriers, and enforce quarantining.

    Covid-19’s rapid spread around the world has impacted upon people living in a wide variety of political, economic, social and cultural contexts. These diverse contexts have mediated the repressive policies available to governments – facilitating, refracting or impeding the measures they have attempted to impose – the insecurity and fear caused by the pandemic have undoubtedly facilitated the imposition of repressive measures.

    While these measures have generally been implemented in response to scientific guidelines on how to tackle Covid-19, they should be limited to what is required and not used as a means to surreptitiously increase governmental power. Furthermore, as Amnesty International researcher Massimo Moratti warns, while states of emergency are permitted under international human rights law, such restrictive measures should not become a “new normal” and should last no longer than the danger that has necessitated their implementation.[ix]

    ‘Shock Doctrine’

    In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how this process mimics the CIA method of ‘coercive interrogation’ which aims at breaking ‘resistant sources’ by creating violent ruptures between prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them. Klein argues that this is how shock doctrine works: ‘the original disaster, the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane – puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. Like the terrorised prisoner who gives us the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.’[x]

    The advent of Covid-19 has led to a situation where people are confronted by an infectious disease, for which there is no vaccine, and global lockdowns resulting in deep and widespread social and economic disruption. This has provided an opportune environment for governments to increase their power and control as well as advancing interests of their more powerful supporters. Repressive policies and measures can be introduced, as the ‘shock’ caused by the Covid-19 pandemic leaves the public less able to resist. In a world where lockdowns, isolation and quarantining have become the new accepted norm, coordinated, active resistance to repressive and inhibiting policies has become more complicated. As Patrick Cockburn points out:

    Autocratic governments everywhere are becoming more autocratic and repressive regimes more repressive. They believe that they can get away with it: frightened peoples are looking to their governments to save them in this time of peril, and do not want to discover that they are ruled by incompetent people determined to serve their own interests and stay in power.

    State Repression

    While most of the measures imposed to fight Covid-19 have some level of scientific justification, emergency and repressive powers entail an inherent risk of abuse. Moreover, it is clear many governments have used the COVID-19 pandemic to push through laws and other measures that impose disproportionate restrictions on public freedom and civic rights.

    Significant international controversy arose with the granting of wide ranging powers to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian PM, and his Fidesz party, which decreed jail terms of up to five years for the intentional dissemination of misinformation that might impede the government’s tackling of Covid-19. While the chilling effect of this legislation was widely criticised, it was the refusal to place any time limits on the powers being abrogated by Orban and his regime that led to the most concern.[xi]

    Viktor Orban

    Writing in late March, Osama Tanous describes how Covid-19 has been used as an excuse by Israel to further repress Palestinians:

    Repression has continued, with the Israeli occupation forces using the excuse of increased police presence to continue raids on some communities, such as the Issawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem, home demolitions in places like Kafr Qasim village and the destructi‘’on of crops in Bedouin communities in the Naqab desert.[xii]

    Despite initially downplaying the threat posed by Covid-19 and the publics’ ‘hysterical’ response to it, the Philippines President Duterte has subsequently implemented an ‘extreme, militarized approach.’ By early April, the Duterte regime had arrested almost as many people for alleged violations of the Covid-19 lockdown and curfews as had been tested for the virus.[xiii]

    In Colombia, already heavily besieged rural and indigenous communities have come under even greater threat as a result of the Covid-19 measures enacted to prevent transmission. In the week following imposition of quarantine measures in cities across Colombia in mid-March, three social leaders were murdered. Already one of the most dangerous countries in the world for social activists and community leaders, with 271 activists killed since the conclusion of the early 2017 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the government’s focus on the pandemic has led to activists saying they are now at even greater risk.[xiv]

    On March 16, a group of United Nations human rights experts warned that,

    emergency declarations based on the COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis to target particular groups, minorities, or individuals. It should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health … and should not be used simply to quash dissent.[xv]

    Furthermore, as the OSCE Right’s Chief, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir emphasised, a state of emergency must be proportionate to its aim, and only remain in place for as long as absolutely necessary.[xvi]

    Cloaking Repression

    Repression is not just a matter of custodial torture and extra-judicial murder. Mis-governance or mal-governance is repression too.[xvii] Joel Simon, writes about a new face of repression he terms ‘Repression 2.0.‘ This form of repression continues to incorporate imprisonment and state censorship but it also, at the same time, applies new information technologies such as smartphones and social media to give it a softer edge, masking the harsher aspects. According to Simon:

    Masked political control means a systematic effort to hide repressive actions by dressing them in the cloak of democratic norms. Governments might justify an internet crackdown by saying it is necessary to suppress hate speech and incitement to violence. They might cast the jailing of dozens of critical journalists as an essential element in the global fight against terror.[xviii]

    As Patrick Cockburn explains:

    Governments worldwide claim that journalists are impeding their heroic struggle against coronavirus, but their real motive is more often to conceal the inadequacy of those efforts. Political elites everywhere fear that the pandemic will expose their incompetence and corruption, weakening their grip on political power and economic resources.[xix]

    Writing in pre-Covid-19 times, Simon used the ‘fear of terrorism’ as an example how a government might justify repressive actions. Today, similar arguments are being used to validate punitive measures to fight the current pandemic and prevent the dissemination of disinformation. In the digital age, people can access and disseminate information more freely and in real time. However, the technology that enables this unprecedented intensity and extensity of communication has allowed states to devise and develop measures to corrupt information flows by manipulating and influencing the content that reaches people, thus facilitating a new form of censorship. While [This] tactic is commonly used in countries rated as having closed or repressed civic space… [it] has also been seen in all corners of the globe as a subtle tool to silence critics.[xx]

    The aim here is to control the narrative and if this proves impossible to at least prevent a coherent oppositional one. As White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon once said, the story is more important than reality.[xxi] Today, many governments are applying this dictum to their communications on Covid-19.

    Twitter-Gate

    The circulation of conspiracy theories can also be co-opted by governments as a valid rationale for the curbing of the free flow of information, on the grounds they are misleading and may be used, as in their usage by extreme groups, to stir up animosity and violence against targeted groups. However, once these repressive measures they can be used to increase government control over the general flow of information, thus having a chilling effect on communications and alternative narratives, as well as potentially preventing the development and implementation of genuine civil society initiatives.

    An interesting outcome of the struggle to control the flow of information has been that in the U.S., where social media platforms have been caught in the crosshairs of Trump and his administration. Well in advance of Covid-19, governments around the world had been criticising the dissemination of ‘fake news’ and misleading stories being posted and circulated via social media. Incidents such as the burning of phone masts due to false rumours that they were helping to spread Covid-19 and the dissemination of dangerous remedies to fight the virus, the call for social media platforms to monitor content posted has only increased.

    In response, social media companies have started to police posts to a greater extent, purportedly to prevent injurious or false content being uploaded. This increased monitoring of posts led Twitter to fact check a post by Trump over a ‘false assertion that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud.’ In a fit of presidential pique, Trump retaliated by signing an executive order on May 28 that would decrease the protection of social media companies from being sued for content posted on their services.[xxii]

    Failing the Vulnerable

    The development and implementation of measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19 need to take into account the particular needs of the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, as the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston writes, this has not been the case as many countries have blithely ignored the needs of the most vulnerable communities,

    The policies of many States reflect a social Darwinism philosophy that prioritises the economic interests of the wealthiest, while doing little for those who are hard at work providing essential services or unable to support themselves… Governments have shut down entire countries without making even minimal efforts to ensure people can get by. Many in poverty live day to day, with no savings or surplus food. And of course, homeless people cannot simply stay home.[xxiii]

    Tanay barisha (wikimedia)

    During an address to the nation at 8pm on March 24, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a strict lockdown of 21 days duration would come into force throughout the whole of India at midnight. Every state, district and village were subject to this lockdown.[xxiv] The initial lockdown was to be for three weeks, though it has been extended since, and the people of India were informed they would have to get used to staying at home. Modi warned:

    Do not step outside your house. For 21 days, forget what is stepping outside. There is a Lakshman Rekha[xxv] on your doorstep. Even one step outside your house will bring the coronavirus inside your house.[xxvi]

    Paulrudd (wikimedia)

    Acknowledging that these measures could provoke ‘hard times’ for the poor in India, Modi insisted that draconian lockdown measures were required to prevent the untrammelled diffusion of Covid-19, which ‘spreads like wildfire.’[xxvii] While Modi and the Indian government might argue they had ‘reasonable justification’ for ordering such a harsh lockdown, they could surely have implemented it in a manner which would have relieved the severity of its impact on migrant workers and the impoverished. As Professor of Gender and Development Nitya Rao outlines:

    Half of India’s 1.3 billion people are food insecure which means they lack access to sufficient safe and nutritious food. Around 60% of the poorest people from India’s scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, are also anaemic. This means that a total lockdown, while it may help stop the spread of coronavirus, is likely to have a significant impact on food and nutrition. Deprived of the ability to work, threatened by arrest if they ventured forth to secure their rations, the poor of India risked starvation.[xxviii]

    The Indian ‘Trail of Tears’

    As the lockdown came into force, a serious humanitarian crisis erupted with in excess of an estimated hundred million migrant workers stranded in cities and other locations around India with no work or ability to pay for accommodation.[xxix] Many of these migrants were forced to part with their meagre savings so they and their families could gain places in overcrowded trucks to try and get home. Many more were unable to afford the luxury of transport were forced to make their way home by foot. The traumatic scenes of hordes of migrants of all ages, from babies carried by fatigued parents and siblings to old men and women, struggling along the roads of India in a desperate attempt to return home became a common sight.[xxx]

    One of the many heart-breaking stories that have emerged from this modern ‘Trail of Tears’ is that of Jamlo Madkam, a 12-year-old girl. Her parents, Andoram (32) and Sukamati Madkam (30) had eight children. As Jamlo’s mother Skamati recounts, ‘I gave birth to eight children, and of them four died at the age of crawling. And now Jamlo is dead too.’ Jamlo left her home in mid-February for the first time to work at a chilli farm in Telegana with relatives and friends. When the lockdown was instituted, she was left with no choice but to try and make her way home. Tragically, Jamlo passed away on April 18 from exhaustion and lack of food and water. She was only 11 kms from her home in Aded in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh, having walked more than 100 kms over three days.[xxxi]

    Bringing the virus home

    Follow-up on the condition and living circumstances of labourers who managed to return to their villages is, at best, minimal. Professor Nitya Rao reports how a local project coordinator witnessed truckloads of migrant families returning from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala to their homes in Koraput district in the week leading up to March 26th. The economic situation of these returnees was extremely precarious as many had not received their payments and had little prospect of any income in the coming months. In addition, they might have brought Covid-19 with them back to their families and communities, with whom they live in cramped quarters.[xxxii]

    As Arundhati Roy writes:

    The lockdown to enforce physical distancing had resulted in the opposite — physical compression on an unthinkable scale. This is true even within India’s towns and cities. The main roads might be empty, but the poor are sealed into cramped quarters in slums and shanties.[xxxiii]

    The lack of consideration of the impact of these Covid-19 measures on the more vulnerable members of society is not just on the part of governments. Humra Quraishi writes of the ‘wretched mode of thinking’ on the part of ‘upper-middle class people’ who report that the lockdown is causing them no problems as they can access all they need, blithely ignorant to the suffering of the poor as they themselves ‘have never been exposed to hunger.’[xxxiv]

    Of course, India is not the only country that has seen the more vulnerable members of society suffering disproportionately due to repressive measure that that fails to consider or take account of their needs. In Colombia, while the more affluent have isolated themselves in relative comfort during the lockdown, the more vulnerable have experienced severe economic hardship and increased food insecurity. The urban informal sector of small-scale and street vendors comprising the greater part of the Colombian economic system, deprived of adequate support to help them through this period, now face having to choose between letting themselves and their families die of hunger or of Covid-19.[xxxv]

    Repression Post Covid-19?

    The struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic has provided scientific justification for the imposition of repressive methods including quarantining, isolation and lockdowns. Although their design and implementation have been disputed, there was general agreement that action was required to avoid overwhelming the public health services, often already stretched to their limits due to chronic under-funding. However, there is widespread concern governments might keep repressive and increased surveillance measures in place post Covid-19.

    According to the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari:

    My home country of Israel, for example, declared a state of emergency during its 1948 War of Independence, which justified a range of temporary measures from press censorship and land confiscation to special regulations for making pudding (I kid you not). The War of Independence has long been won, but Israel never declared the emergency over, and has failed to abolish many of the “temporary” measures of 1948 (the emergency pudding decree was mercifully abolished in 2011).”[xxxvi]

    Hariri goes on to warn that ‘data-hungry governments’ might try to keep biometric surveillance measures in place on the grounds there might be a second wave of Covid-19. Yuval fears that this could help overcome the resistance of those campaigning for the right to privacy as many might accept this argument given the understandable concern of people in general to place health concerns above those of privacy.[xxxvii]

    Google HQ, Dublin.

    Since May 5th, the U.K. government has been running a trial of a contact tracing app which has been made available on the Isle of Wight for its residents. The NSHX app chosen by the government however presents a number of ‘practical, legal and ethical questions and concerns that need to be answered.’ Primary amongst the concerns raised is the fact that the NSHX app, uses a centralized model. This means that the data collected by this app will not just be retained on your phone but will also be collected centrally on government servers. This is in contrast to the privacy-protective models chosen by most other European countries, including Germany, Italy and Ireland.[xxxviii]  Although, it should be noted that the Irish app is also facing issues with respect to privacy issues in addition to technical concerns.[xxxix]

    Far-Right

    Jumping on the Covid-19 fear bandwagon has become a central plank in the platform of the far-right as it capitalises on the elevated levels of social disorientation due to the pandemic. As Barbara Perry director of the Centre of Hate, Bias and Extremism at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology highlights, ‘[T]here’s nothing the far right likes more … than a crisis.’ Increased online right wing activity during Covid-19 comes under three main rubrics: ‘conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant and xenophobic attitudes and accelerationist rhetoric, which is concerned with trying to hasten the collapse of society and a race war that would lead to a “white ethno-state.‘[xl]

    A report produced by the London-based Institute of Strategic Dialogue documents how ‘far-right communities have started talking about COVID-19 as an accelerant for a second civil war, also known as boogaloo… From Feb. 1 to March 28, more than 200,000 posts on social media contained the word “boogaloo.” The most popular hashtag within those posts was “#coronachan.’[xli]

    Worryingly, Perry warns these narratives are not restricted to the far right anymore, if that was ever truly the case. She notes that ‘[T]here’s a bigger audience for folks for the far right now. So many of us are online… So we’re so vulnerable, I think, to this sort of messaging.‘ [xlii]

    In a recent article, Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell outlined how the Nazi leader Hermann Goering once observed that ‘the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.‘ Klikauer and Campbell then go on to highlight how Neo-Nazis in Germany have adopted a similar approach to that advocated by Goering, by weaving ‘their ideology into the fear of the coronavirus.‘[xliii]

    President Donald Trump talks to senior staff Steve Bannon during a swearing in ceremony for senior staff at the White House in Washington, DC January 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

    Staying Vigilant

    There is a need for the public to rest vigilant to the introduction of repressive and enhanced surveillance methods in this time of Covid-19, both to ensure theses measures are appropriate and fit for purpose, and are rescinded with the passing of the pandemic.

    We also need to pay attention to the impacts that repressive measures can have on the most vulnerable in our midst including, inter alia, people on low income with few resources, the homeless, asylum seekers forced to live in direct provision and women at home with abusing partners, and hold our governments to account in this respect. In Australia, experts centrally involved in Australia’s Covid-19 response and the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases have advocated on behalf of immigration detainees and recommended the relocation of those considered no major security or health risk, to safe accommodation in the community.[xliv]

    As the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Edward Santow, asserts:

    We must… speak up for those whose voices are hardest to hear… If combating Covid-19 is a war, we can be proud of why we got into the fight: to preserve life, especially for vulnerable people. Those are the best of our values. We must now ensure those same values guide how we fight.[xlv]

    [i] These are the lyrics from a song written by Aadesh Ravi, a Hyderabad composer, about the suffering caused by the lockdown migrations across India. You can see the story behind this song and also listen to it at the following link – Aadesh Ravi, The long march of the locked-down migrants, Rural India online, 16 May 2020, https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-long-march-of-the-locked-down-migrants/

    [ii] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso (new edition): London/NY, 2006, pages 6-7

    [iii] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher, Understanding Bourdieu, Sage: London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 2002, p. 15

    [iv] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher, Understanding Bourdieu, Sage: London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 2002, p. 93

    [v] Sanjana Karanth, Trump Defends Right-Wing Protesters Fighting Coronavirus Restrictions: ‘These Are Great People’ Huff Post, 19 April 2020, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-defends-right-wing-protesters-fighting-coronavirus-restrictions-great-people_n_5e9d0ceec5b635d25d6efeb2

    [vi] John Scott, Power, Polity: Cambridge, 2001, page 10

    [vii] David Held, Introduction States and Societies, 1983, The Open University, Oxford, page 35

    [viii] Ibid, page 36

    [ix] CBC News, Hungary’s Orban, Serbia’s Vucic seize greater authority amid coronavirus lockdowns, Canada Broadcasting Corporation, 31 March 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungary-serbia-coronavirus-authority-1.5515846

    [x] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin: London, 2008, pages 15-16

    [xi][xi] Shaun Walker and Jennifer Rankin, Hungary passes law that will let Orbán rule by decree, The Guardian, 30 March 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/hungary-jail-for-coronavirus-misinformation-viktor-orban)

    [xii] Osama Tanous, Coronavirus outbreak in the time of apartheid, Aljazeera, 24 March 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/coronavirus-outbreak-time-apartheid-200324151937879.html

    [xiii] William D. Hartung, Duterte uses Covid-19 response to broaden reign of fear and repression, CNN, 20 April 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/20/opinions/duterte-covid-19-philippines-repression-hartung/index.html

    [xiv] Joe Parkins Daniels, Colombian death squads exploiting coronavirus lockdown to kill activists, Guardian, 23 March 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/colombian-groups-exploiting-coronavirus-lockdown-to-kill-activists

    [xv] Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thailand: COVID-19 Clampdown on Free Speech, HRW, 25 March 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/25/thailand-covid-19-clampdown-free-speech

    [xvi] OSCE Press Release, Newly declared states of emergency must include a time limit and parliamentary oversight, OSCE human rights head says, OSCE, 30 March 2020, https://www.osce.org/odihr/449311

    [xvii] Ashok Agrwaal, State Repression: Behind the Mask of Democracy, Combat Law, 2002, page 4, https://www.academia.edu/26287742/STATE_REPRESSION_Behind_the_Mask_of_Democracy

    [xviii] Joel Simon, Introduction: The New Face of Censorship, Committee to Protect Journalists, 25 April 2017, https://cpj.org/2017/04/introduction-the-new-face-of-censorship.php

    [xix] Patrick Cockburn, ibid

    [xx] CIVICUS Monitor, People Power Under Attack 2019, December 2019, CIVICUS, Page 8, https://civicus.contentfiles.net/media/assets/file/GlobalReport2019.pdf

    [xxi] Thomas Klikauer – Nadine Campbell, Conspiracies and the Coronavirus in the USA and Germany, Counterpunch, 20 May 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/20/conspiracies-and-the-coronavirus-in-the-usa-and-germany/

    [xxii] David Ingram and Dylan Byers, Trump set the stage for tech’s free speech title fight. Zuckerberg and Dorsey are the main event., NBC, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/trump-set-stage-tech-s-free-speech-title-fight-zuckerberg-n1217666

    [xxiii] OHCHR News, Responses to COVID-19 are failing people in poverty worldwide” – UN human rights expert, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights News, 22 April 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25815

    [xxiv] India Today Web Desk, Coronavirus in India: PM Modi announces 21-day national lockdown, India Today, 24 March 2020, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/coronavirus-india-pm-narendra-modi-national-lockdown-21-days-announcement-five-points-1659282-2020-03-24

    [xxv] Originally a line drawn by Lakshmana around the residence he shares with his brother Rama and sister-in-law Sita to protect Sita, as recounted in the Ramayana. In modern India, ‘Lakshmana Rekha’ refers to a strict convention or regulation which must be followed.

    [xxvi] The Economic Times (India), India will be under complete lockdown for 21 days: Narendra Modi, Economic Times-India Times, 25 March 2020, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-will-be-under-complete-lockdown-starting-midnight-narendra-modi/articleshow/74796908.cms

    [xxvii] Ibid

    [xxviii] Nitya Rao, India’s coronavirus lockdown will hit women and migrant workers hardest, The Conversation, 26 March 2020, https://theconversation.com/indias-coronavirus-lockdown-will-hit-women-and-migrant-workers-hardest-134689

    [xxix] Chinmay Tumbe, In times of a lockdown, support migrant workers, Hindustan Times, 26 May 2020 (updated), https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/in-times-of-a-lockdown-support-migrant-workers/story-A3EglS9L3AHRCCuDA0z4TP.html

    [xxx] Newsclick Report, Why Home Ministry’s Travel Plan for Migrant Workers Will Create More Chaos, Newsclick, 12 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/Home-Ministry-Travel-Plan-Migrant-Workers-Cause-Chaos

    [xxxi] Purusottam Thakur and Kamlesh Painkra, Jamlo’s last journey along a locked-down road, Rural India Online, 14 May 2020, https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/jamlos-last-journey-along-a-locked-down-road/

    [xxxii] Nitya Rao, ibid, https://theconversation.com/indias-coronavirus-lockdown-will-hit-women-and-migrant-workers-hardest-134689

    [xxxiii] Arundhati Roy, ‘The pandemic is a portal’, Financial Times, 3 April 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca

    [xxxiv] Humra Quraishi, Covid-19: ‘All is Well’ Narrative Slips and Falls, Newsclick, 12 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/COVID-19-Pandemic-India-Workers-Farmers-Suffer-Middle-Class-Apathetic

    [xxxv] Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Colombia – Covid 19 Pandemic, Colombia Solidarity Campaign (UK), 13 April 2020, https://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/campaign-media/25-news/657-colombia-covid-19-pandemic

    [xxxvi] Yuval Noah Harari, the world after coronavirus, Financial Times, 20 March 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

    [xxxvii] Ibid

    [xxxviii] Amnesty International UK, 7 principles that should be guiding roll-out of any COVID-19 contacting-tracing app, Amnesty, 19 May 2020, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/coronavirus/7-principles-contact-tracing-app-rollout?utm_campaign=MEMA2523_UPT_HRUK_COVID19_tracingapp&utm_content=12714&utm_source=amnestyuk&utm_medium=email

    [xxxix] Adam Maguire, Privacy concerns and technical doubts dull hopes of HSE Covid-19 app’s value, RTE, 01 June 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0530/1143516-covid-app-hse/

    [xl] Andrea Bellamare, Far-right groups may try to take advantage of pandemic, watchdogs warn, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9 April 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/far-right-opportunistic-covid-pandemic-1.5526423

    [xli] John P. Mello Jr., Far-Right Spreads COVID-19 Disinformation Epidemic Online, Technews World, 5 May 2020, https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86648.html

    [xlii] Ibid

    [xliii] Thomas Klikauer – Nadine Campbell, The Covid-19 Conspiracies of German Neo-Nazis, Counterpunch, 26 May 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/26/the-covid-19-conspiracies-of-german-neo-nazis/

    [xliv] Edward Santow-Australia’s human rights commissioner, We must combat Covid-19 but creeping authoritarianism could do more harm than good, The Guardian, 7 April 2020,

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/08/we-must-combat-covid-19-but-creeping-authoritarianism-could-do-more-harm-than-good

    [xlv] Ibid

  • Fear and Loathing in the Time of Covid-19

    Fear plays a major role in influencing the decisions we make and the actions we engage in. Research has shown that there are sound evolutionary reasons for this. The selection pressures from these types of danger have resulted in domain-specificity in the reactivity of the fear system, meaning that the system has evolved special sensitivity toward such dangers. However, ‘not all human fears are instinctual and hardwired—we need to learn what to be afraid of.’ [i] While this capacity is critical in helping humans deal with the different environments in which they find themselves and which present different sources of ‘danger’, it can also be abused by those seeking to advance their own interests at our expense.

    Harnessing Fear in the name of ‘Sales’

    The power of fear has long been recognised as a potential source of profit by the business world. Preying on anxieties and ‘creating’ new ones when required to suit their needs, marketing departments have managed to exploit human fears to successfully boost client sales. As Kali Halloway writes: ‘Listerine’s 1920s ads turned bad breath from a fairly common minor flaw into halitosis, a condition that made you into a social pariah, sexless and alone,’ – leading to an increase in sales in just seven years from $115,000 to over $8 million. ‘In the 1930s, Lysol – a product we now know should be kept as far from genitalia as possible – was marketed as a douche (and more covertly, as feminine birth control), in ads that basically told women no one would ever love them with their awful natural-smelling vaginas.’[ii]

    Indeed, even the threat posed by pandemics have provided grist to the mill for opportunistic marketing teams, keen to leverage the fear generated in their diffusion. According to Barry Shafe, the former head of Cussons product development and man behind the launch of Carex in the UK during the SARS epidemic, ‘background noise of pandemic fear was all that was needed to drive consumers to antibacterial soap.’ There was no need to even emphasise the element of fear in their advertising for the project as ‘real fear sells better than invented fear.’[iii]

    While the manipulation of the public’s purchasing choices through exploiting the evolutionary programmed and adapted prism of the human ‘fear emotion’, is at the very least questionable, it is only the tip of the iceberg in this respect.

    Ad extracted from a scanned copy of the pulp magazine Weird Tales from 1950,

    Fear and Hatred in Times of Plague

    In times of plague and pestilence, fear is an omnipresent companion. This fear all too frequently translates into a desire to find someone to blame for the danger with which we are faced. The greater the threat to people’s safety and the less control they can exercise over it, the greater the risk that blame for their dilemma will be ascribed to an ‘outside’ group, generally those who are not members of one’s community or nation, no matter how transparently illogical the reasoning.

    As Dr. Jonathan Quick writes:

    We are all afraid of death. We respond to the fear of epidemic disease by wanting to blame someone else. Anytime a threat arises, we want to blame the “other,” those not like “us.” At the outbreak of the 1918 Spanish flu, Americans blamed “the Hun”. AIDS was blamed on gay men.[iv]

    During the Black Death, which struck Europe in the mid-14th century, there was widespread fear and panic as this unknown disease wreaked havoc throughout Europe. Although communities around Europe often turned upon those seen as outsiders, particularly other nationalities, the Jewish community became the primary focus of this fear. This resulted in horrific instances such as the massacres of Jewish people in Frankfurt and Brussels and the extermination of the Jewish populations in Narbonne and Carcassonne.[v]

    Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae (Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 1376/77).

    ‘Fake News’

    The predilection to blame outsiders, the ‘other’ for the spread of infectious diseases, is further aggravated by the propagation and dissemination of false rumours. The author Maryn McKenna, who researched this phenomenon during the Ebola crisis came up with a term for this, ‘Ebolanoia’. Tracking public response to Ebola in the U.S., McKenna related how individuals and businesses that had been incorrectly identified as having been exposed to Ebola suffered as a result.

    False rumors caused a small, long-standing, family-owned bridal shop in Ohio to close. Rumors forced healthy school personnel and students in North Carolina and Texas who had visited West Africa to stay out of school, even though they were thousands of miles from the nearest Ebola outbreak. Misinformation fomented harassment of African-born students as well as other acts of fear and discrimination.[vi]

    The anti-Chinese messages currently being circulated in the mainstream media and through social media are generally linked by their proponents to a desire to hold China as accountable for both the spread and deadly impact of Covid-19. While some of these inferences have been less direct, casting suspicion and opprobrium on China and the Chinese people by association, others have given free rein to their racist impulses, such as the French newspaper that proudly displayed the headline ‘Yellow Alert’.[vii]

    Dubious as these assertions are in the first place, they are made even worse by the conflation of ordinary Chinese people with the purported misdeeds of China, which has led to serious racist incidents and discrimination against Chinese people around the world. Furthermore, it behoves us to remember that the racist slandering of Chinese people is not occurring in an historical vacuum. It, in fact, stands on the shoulders on a substantial corpus of anti-Chinese racism that has been present for well over a hundred years.

    ‘Yellow Peril’

    The likelihood that a specific outside group – ethnic, religious, etc – will be stigmatised and discriminated against, as well as the severity of the reaction, will be influenced by the history of how these people have been regarded in the past.

    As a child growing up, I remember hearing the phrase ‘yellow peril’. I had no idea what this term meant or referred to apart from the fact that it in some way indicated a potential threat. However, like so many phrases that slipped into everyday usage, divorced from their original context, the phrase ‘yellow peril’ has an insidious and disturbing history. As Vince Cable, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, writes:

    In the early years of the 20th century there was a deep fear among western societies, expressed both in politics and popular writing, that they were in danger of being overwhelmed by the Chinese: the “Yellow Peril”. Children’s comics were full of the exploits of the evil Dr Fu Manchu, a Bond-type villain bent on world domination. Even serious writers such as Jack London perpetuated the myth. In 1911, the British Home Office circulated material which warned of a “vast and compulsive armageddon to decide who is to be a master of the world; the white or yellow men”.[viii]

    Anti-Chinese violence in Britain and the ‘Empire’

    19th and early 20th century society in Britain overtly displayed its anti-Chinese sentiments. Racist depictions of Chinese were widespread in the media and this had a knock-on effect, impacting how they were dealt with by the judicial system and in other areas of daily life.[ix] Anti-Chinese feeling even led to acts of violent aggression against the Chinese community. Discussing the current racist violence against the Chinese in Britain, Suresh Grover of The Monitoring Group explains, ‘[T]he experience of racism against the Chinese community is not a new feature in British society” with “reports of race riots targeting Chinese businesses and laundries as early as 1919.’[x]

    This racist attitude towards Chinese people was rife throughout the ‘Empire’. Schools were segregated in Victoria during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century[xi] and in British Columbia Chinese Canadians were subject to social, economic and political segregation.[xii] According to OmiSoore Dryden the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies in the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine:

    Anti-Chinese racism has a long history in Canada — the Chinese head tax, the Exclusion Act, just to name two. Chinese people were often referred to as the “Yellow Peril” — a plague, something that would bring destruction to white people and colonial Canada.[xiii]

    These racist incidents and stereotyping of Chinese was based on a sentiment of ‘white’ superiority over other races that justified a discriminatory treatment of these people. This feeling of racial superiority is perfectly captured in the following quotation from Edmund Barton, the first prime minister of Australia, when discussing the Immigration Restriction Bill in 1901:

    There is no racial equality. There is basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races … unequal and inferior. The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman. There is deep-set difference, and we see no prospect and no promise of its ever being effaced. Nothing in this world can put these two races upon an equality. Nothing we can do by cultivation, by refinement, or by anything else will make some races equal to others.

    Anti-Chinese Violence and Segregation in 19th and 20th century U.S.

    An 1886 advertisement for ‘Magic Washer’ detergent: ‘The Chinese Must Go’.

    It was racist stereotypes such as these that led to widespread discrimination and segregation of Chinese people, particularly in predominantly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries. In the U.S. for example there were many instances of white people violently assaulting Chinese communities. In 1885, 150 armed white miners forcibly expulsed Chinese immigrations out of Rock Springs (Wyoming), murdering 28 people and burning the homes and businesses of members of the Chinese community. This massacre went unpunished. This incident, however, was only one of many. As Brayden Goyette writes, in the 1870s and 1880s, there were 153 anti-Chinese riots that broke out in the American West.[xiv] According to the historian James Mohr:

    …in Honolulu, doctors, colonial administrators, and the general US colonial population lamented the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 because it prompted fears that the city would become associated with Asia, where plague was then present… Ultimately, the public health authorities burned contaminated buildings, but fires spread beyond their control and consumed most of Chinatown in flames. Similar anti-Chinese responses occurred in San Francisco during the plague epidemic of 1900–04, when Chinese-specific quarantines were enacted.[xv]

    The insecure environment within which the Chinese found themselves led to a process of self-segregation by the Chinese to safeguard their communities and families. As John Kuo Wei Tchen, chair of public history and humanities at Rutgers University and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America in New York explains, ‘[T]he Chinatowns we know today — in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles — are really the consequence of the exclusion laws, which created the conditions, between racism and the law itself, for segregated, isolated Chinatowns.’[xvi]

    The continuing plague of Anti-Chinese Racism

    According to Suresh Grover, the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis, saw a distinct increase in racist incidents against the Chinese community ‘due to the unsubstantiated smear that the disease had spread from a Chinese restaurant using illegally imported meat.’[xvii]

    A 2009 review on the racism experienced by Chinese people, conducted by the University of Hull and The Monitoring Group (TMG), concluded that the Chinese community was subjected to significant level of anti-Chinese racism in Britain:

    The UK Chinese people are subject to substantial levels of racist abuse, assault and hostility. The types of racist abuse suffered by the UK’s Chinese people range from racist name-calling to damage to property and businesses, arson, and physical attacks sometimes involving hospitalisation and murder.[xviii]

    This racism can be quite insidious and permeate virtually every area of daily life, even where one might least expect it. Writing about the racism experienced by Chinese people, the actress Elizabet Chan describes how on her first role, ‘the Bafta-winning director chuckled to everyone on set that I’d trained in kung fu,’ and how in her field ‘any character who speaks in some kind of dodgy east Asian accent is considered hilarious.’[xix]

    The racism that continues to permeate is inappropriately nourished by the racist tropes of our past. As Sophie Couchman, a curator at the Chinese Museum in Victoria state, states,

    It is disappointing that the same language is still used, certain words we used in the 19th century to talk about Chinese immigration – ‘influx’ and ‘swamped’ – and it’s all these sort of monsoonal words.

    Covid-19 and upsurge in anti-Chinese racism

    The current Covid-19 crisis has seen a dramatic rise in racist assaults on Chinese people globally as a result of their stigmatisation on traditional as well as newer social media. A major contributing factor in this rise has been the reckless use of derogatory references to China by elected politicians. The most egregious example of this is of course the U.S. president, Donald Trump, who on numerous occasions referred to ‘coronavirus’ as the ‘Chinese virus’.[xx]

    In the U.K., there have been numerous incidents of violence perpetrated against Chinese people as well as other East Asian people mis-identified by their assailants as being of Chinese origin. Reported incidents include,

    confirmed reports of incidents of serious assaults against Chinese students by large groups of white youth … abuse in supermarkets and Chinese owned Take-away businesses, racist graffiti on shop windows and physical violence on the streets or around international student hostels… a Japanese person … greeted as Chinese and then deliberately urinated upon … the attack on the young man from Singapore who was beaten up in February by youths who punched him in the face before shouting out ‘coronavirus’ .. on Oxford Street, one of the busiest streets in the world.[xxi]

    Ireland has not been immune to this reaction on the part of its citizens, as was evident in the racist attack on a Chinese restaurant in Galway.[xxii] The anti-Chinese reaction, provoked by Covid-19 has also been widespread in Asia, where restaurants in South Korea displayed ‘No Chinese allowed’ signs in the early stages of the pandemic, Twitter users in Japan initiated the hashtag #ChineseDontComeToJapan trend and over 125,000 people in Singapore, added their names to a petition urging their government to prevent Chinese nationals from entering the city-state.[xxiii]

    Promotion of anti-Chinese racism

    The perfect storm of victimising the ‘other’, arises the ‘desire’ to blame the other for one’s predicament is seized upon by ideologues to promote their objectives or, in the case of political, business and religious leaders to cover up their own inadequate or misdirected efforts to tackle the threat. The willingness of prominent politicians with large constituencies of ‘followers’, to promote a ‘Blame China’ narrative has contributed significantly to the upsurge in the targeting of the  UK’s Chinese and South East Asian communities.[xxiv]

    There are two principal reasons why political and other major economic and social figures in the Global North are seizing upon this opportunity to stigmatize China.

    At the broader level, the emergence of China, particularly in terms of its’ economic and technical expansion, has created unease and anxiety amongst many in both the US and Europe, as they fear their position of economic and political dominance is being threatened. As the journalist Patrick Cockburn observes while:

    Many politically palatable reasons… will be advanced in the coming months… the real charge against China is one of effectiveness. It has shown itself more competent than other powerful states in dealing with two world crises: the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic of 2019-20.[xxv]

    A secondary and, in the case of leaders such as Trump who have completely mishandled the Covid-19 crisis, more immediate goal is to indict, criminalise and convict China in the court of public opinion, thus distracting from their own ineptitude in a desperate effort to revitalise their political prospects. Now, rather than being seen as the principal architects of the disastrous response to Covid-19 which has resulted in many thousands of death, political leaders in Covid-19 ravaged countries can depict themselves as righteous defenders of their nation’s security and safety against the new ‘yellow peril’.

    Fudging Statistics

    One of the major excuses for the political onslaught against China has been the alleged fudging of statistics on the number of fatalities and case incidents in Wuhan and how this may have impacted upon the measures the U.S. and Europe implemented to tackle the virus.[xxvi] The thesis appears to be that if more cases and more deaths had been reported early on by the Chinese authorities, this would have conveyed the seriousness of the threat to the political leaders in the U.S. and Europe. The authorities in these countries would then have taken the threat of Covid-19 more seriously and ensured appropriate measures were in place to minimise its impact on their countries and citizens.

    Covid-19 was a new virus and therefore required a certain amount of time to be identified and its exact nature determined. It is more than possible that the number of fatalities and cases was greater in China than recorded and that its virulence was therefore underestimated initially. It is also likely that at the earlier stages many cases were not identified and that it was circulating earlier and more widely than initially thought. We have seen in the past week or so, reports emerging from several countries including, inter alia, France and the U.S, that cases were present well in advance of earlier estimations.[xxvii] Ireland probably also had cases prior to initially believed, as this coronavirus might actually have reached Irish shores as early as last year.[xxviii]

    It is clear that if there was a significant excedent of cases and fatalities above those initially communicated by China to the international community that this could be argued to have made the new virus appear less threatening that it actually was. However, the reports on the level of fatalities and cases received by the international community were the same for all. Yet, despite this, countries such as Viet Nam, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, Cuba, and several others were able to introduce measures to effectively minimise the spread and impact of this coronavirus, others failed miserably.

    A case in point is that of Viet Nam. In Viet Nam, as of May 7th, there were only 288 confirmed cases with no reported fatalities.[xxix] This low incidence of cases has been achieved despite the fact that Viet Nam has a population of over 90 million, shares a lengthy border with China, has a relatively weak health sector, compared to wealthier countries, and the inability to carry out widespread testing as was the case in South Korea. Critical to the success of Viet Nam in tackling Covid-19 has been the stringent and effective measures imposed by the authorities there, a united political will and the social discipline and unity of the Vietnamese people along with building on the lessons learned from dealing with previous epidemics.[xxx]

    This would appear to indicate that irrespective of the validity of the charges against China with respect to their transmission of the number of cases and fatalities,  the information provided by China was sufficient for appropriate prevention and containment measures to be implemented.

    International Fudging?

    Fellipe Lopes/Cassandra Voices

    Furthermore, there is reason to doubt much of the figures that have been reported internationally on both fatalities and incidence of cases.

    Ireland has encountered several difficulties in providing reliable and up-to-date statistics on Covid-19 in Ireland and adjustments have already had to be made to previously supplied totals. Ireland has also had issues with respect to delays in testing[xxxi] resulting in late updating of coronavirus figures, false negatives[xxxii] and the tragic case of an 89-year-old man who died of the virus before even receiving his results[xxxiii], which would appear to confirm the belief that we will see more amendments to the current totals further down the road. The accuracy of the numbers provided of people infected has also been criticised by members of the health service involved in treating patients directly.[xxxiv]

    There are serious grounds on which to question the figures that the United Kingdom has reported. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK estimated that the actual number of deaths in England and Wales up to April 17, and registered to April 25 were some 23,000, some 6,375 higher than the figures by NHS England and Public Health Wales collectively, which were only documenting hospital deaths.[xxxv] However, on the 28th of April, the day before the UK started to include non-hospital Covid-19 related deaths, the Health Ministry announced the total deaths for the UK were 21,092 in hospital settings, still less than the number provided by the ONS for 11 days earlier and which only covered England and Wales[xxxvi]. The Financial Times in a report, which generated significant attention, estimated that, in fact, the actual death total in the UK would be over twice the figure reported.[xxxvii]

    A further issue arises in trying to engage in international comparison of available statistics, in particular the fatality rate per confirmed cases. As it currently stands on May 7th, the number of confirmed cases in Ireland amounts to 22,385, with a reported mortality total of 1,403.[xxxviii] This is a mortality rate of just under 6.3 % relative to the number of confirmed cases. In the U.K., the total confirmed cases on the same day was 215,858, with 29,958 deaths recorded. This equates to a mortality rate of 13.9% of the identified cases. While allowance needs to be made for the fact that countries are at different stage of the Covid-19 curve, this can hardly fully explain the dramatic differences in these statistics.

    Cooperation and Respect

    As Patrick Cockburn writes, the approach of the Trump administration in promoting a form of cold war against China is highly irresponsible given the need at this time for a ‘global medical and economic response… to counter a virus that has spread from Tajikistan to the upper Amazon and can only be suppressed or contained by international action.’[xxxix]

    It is not only in tackling Covid-19 now that such cooperation is essential. If we are to ensure the global protection of humanity, of all people wherever they may live, we need to establish an international framework through which we can all contribute to the future protection of our species, in an atmosphere of mutual respect free from discrimination and racist slurs.

    As OmiSoore Dryden remarks,

    …racist stereotype causes harm, not only to Chinese people and to Asian people, but to all of us. Viruses are not caused by a specific people. Gay people and African people did not create HIV. Chinese people did not create SARS or COVID-19. These types of racist stereotypes are diversionary tactics that do nothing to stop the spread of viruses.[xl] 

    The Way Forward?

    Writing in 2004, Christopher Duncan, a zoologist and Susan Scott, a social historian, noted that since 1970, some 34 years, [A]t least 30 previously unknown infectious diseases for which there is no fully effective treatment have appeared… more than are known to have emerged in the preceding 3,000 years.”[xli]

    The zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the New York – based EcoHealth Alliance, has researched coronaviruses and inter-species transmission of viruses in China. In 2013, he suggested that given the ability of coronaviruses to rapidly move between species, that it would be advisable to made an investment of about $1.5bn. which he estimated would enable the discovery of ‘all the viruses in mammals.’ This would permit the development of the required vaccines and test kids to successful cope with and stop the first stage of new infection disease emergences.[xlii]

    If Daszak’s advice had been heeded when it was made back in 2013, it is quite possible that we might have been able to effectively stop Covid-19 at source or at least severely impede its progress, thus buying time for the implementation of the required measures to eradicate its threat. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing but while we can’t turn back the hands of time, we need to prepare for the future and other potential viruses. The past 20 years have seen the emergence of a growing number of infectious diseases– SARS, MERs, Zika… It is therefore imperative we come together as an international community and pool our cumulative resources to formulate policies and put in place measures to protect ourselves from future potential threats. The stigmatisation and abusive racialisation of nations or people has no place in this process and we must reject it absolutely.

    Final Thought

    As Prabir Purkayaashta writes, [T]he Covid-19 pandemic is only uncovering the deeper fissures that are already existing, and widening existing fault lines in the world.[xliii] We need to be vigilant to this, particularly the appalling legacy of anti-Chinese racism at this time, though we should also remember that the colonial empires of the European nations as well as the expropriation of U.S, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and other lands from indigenous peoples were based upon an all pervasive racist ideology that also targeted many other peoples.

    I would just like to conclude with what a quotation from Melanie Coates which it eloquently summarises our current situation as well as how the current pandemic of anti-Chinese racism should be tackled.

    In this torrent of fear and anxiety, we cannot afford to isolate people even more through stigma and xenophobia; we each have a responsibility to support each other and advocate for a better society. Those with the loudest voice—the government and media—must speak out to condemn these actions. They have a duty to educate the public, protect the vulnerable, and hold people accountable for prejudice and discrimination. By staying silent we let xenophobic narratives—specifically, anti-Asian sentiment—and racist attacks damage our society, the repercussions of which will likely persist beyond the pandemic.[xliv]

    [i] Mathias Clasen, How Evolution Designed Your Fear, Nautilus, 27 October 2017, http://nautil.us/issue/53/monsters/how-evolution-designed-your-fear

    [ii] Kali Holloway, Fear Sells, and We’re All Buying: How Marketers Channel Dark Forces to Rake in Billions, Alternet, 15 March 2015, https://www.alternet.org/2015/03/fear-sells-and-were-all-buying-how-marketers-channel-dark-forces-rake-billions/

    [iii] Jacques Peretti, SUVs, handwash and FOMO: how the advertising industry embraced fear, The Guardian, 6 July 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/06/how-advertising-industry-concept-fear

    [iv] Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop it, Scribe Publications, Brunswick (Victoria) Australia / London U.K., p. 18

    [v] Sean Martin, The Black Death, 2007, Pocket Essentials Harpenden (Herts), p. 75

    [vi] Ibid, p. 151

    [vii] Alan McLeod, As Coronavirus Spreads So Does Anti-Chinese Racism, MintPress News, 31 January 2020, https://www.mintpressnews.com/coronavirus-spreads-anti-chinese-racism/264546/ z

    [viii] Vince Cable, America is rekindling the dangerous myth of the ‘Yellow Peril’ to wage a new war with China, The Independent (UK), 5 May 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/china-coronavirus-trump-us-yellow-peril-cold-war-a9499221.html

    [ix] Sascha Auerbach, Race, Law, and “The Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain, Palgrave Macmillan (Basingstoke, Hampshire), 2012

    [x] Liz Fekete (interview with Suresh Grover and Dorothea Jones of TMG), Race hate crimes – collateral damage of Covid-19?, 20 April 2020, http://www.irr.org.uk/news/race-hate-crimes-collateral-damage-of-covid-19/

    [xi] Jesse Robertson, Chinese Students Challenge Segregation, Canada’s History, 31 March 2016, https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/peace-conflict/chinese-students-challenge-segregation

    [xii] British Columbia Consultation Process, Discrimination, British Columbia Consultation Process website, accessed 8 May 2020, https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/history/discrimination

    [xiii] El Jones, Racist tropes about COVID-19 echo the long history of anti-Asian stereotyping, Halifax Examiner, 21 March 2020, https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/racist-tropes-about-covid-19-echo-the-long-history-of-anti-asian-stereoyping/

    [xiv] Braden Goyette, How Racism Created America’s Chinatowns, HuffPost, 22 May 2019,  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-chinatowns-history_n_6090692?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20vc2VhcmNoP3E9YW50aS1jaGluZXNlK3JhY2lzbStoaXN0b3J5JnFzPW4mc3A9LTEmcHE9YW50aS1jaGluZXNlK3JhY2lzbStoaXMmc2M9MC0yMyZzaz0mY3ZpZD0zOTgyOUFGMUE4OTY0NERDOTI2QzlDM0M2QzRGNUNBMSZmaXJzdD03JkZPUk09UEVSRQ&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAELCOEV2ALOukZvuaYLPfFDs17vSB7GnxzElQFI86JDKtAg1c6SkgceU_7eL5sDYSxJ4pbBCIbVCm0a31WLOaL0Y86iT83FNLSJZRoY8RCXx_v_5stbVDikryd6FMC-zGjmmYCkSSzT83zKX1arVii_gxaFliXQrbz6500CREzPt

    [xv] Alexander I R White, Historical linkages: epidemic threat, economic risk, and xenophobia, The Lancet, 27 March 2020, p. 1251, https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930737-6

    [xvi] Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil, How 1800s racism birthed Chinatown, Japantown and other ethnic enclaves, NBC News, 13 May 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/how-1800s-racism-birthed-chinatown-japantown-other-ethnic-enclaves-n997296

    [xvii] Liz Fekete, ibid

    [xviii] COLE, Bankole, ADAMSON, Sue, CRAIG, Gary, HUSSAIN, Basharat, SMITH, Luana, LAW, Ian, LAU, Carmen, CHAN, Chak-Kwan and CHEUNG, Tom, Hidden from public view: racism against UK Chinese (Technical Report), Hull University and The Monitoring Group, 2009, http://shura.shu.ac.uk/10529/1/Cole_Hidden_From_Public_View_-_English.pdf

    [xix] Elizabeth Chan, Chinese Britons have put up with racism for too long, The Guardian, 11 January 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/11/british-chinese-racism

    [xx] Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun – Weiyan Zhu, Growing Xenophobia Against China in the Midst of CoronaShock, Counterpunch, 31 March 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/31/growing-xenophobia-against-china-in-the-midst-of-coronashock/

    [xxi] Ibid

    [xxii] Jack Beresford, Disturbing footage emerges online of alleged racist attack on Chinese restaurant in Galway, The Irish Post, 17 April 2020, https://www.irishpost.com/news/disturbing-footage-emerges-online-alleged-racist-attack-chinese-restaurant-galway-183680

    [xxiii] Marco della Cava and Kristin Lam, Coronavirus is spreading. And so is anti-Chinese sentiment and xenophobia, USA Today, 3 February 2020, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/31/coronavirus-chinese-xenophobia-racism-misinformation/2860391001/

    [xxiv] Liz Fekete, ibid

    [xxv] Patrick Cockburn, Trump is Igniting a Cold War With China to Try to Win Re-election, The Independent, 5 May 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/05/trump-is-igniting-a-cold-war-with-china-to-try-to-win-re-election/

    [xxvi] Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs, China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says, Bloomberg, 1 April 2020 (updated 2 April), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says

    [xxvii] Holly Chik and Simone McCarthy, Coronavirus timeline takes a twist after early case identified in France, South China Morning Post, 6 May 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3083081/britains-coronavirus-cases-came-mainly-europe-not-china

    [xxviii] Marie O’Halloran, Coronavirus may have been in Ireland last year, Taoiseach says, Irish Times, 7 May 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/coronavirus-may-have-been-in-ireland-last-year-taoiseach-says-1.4247423

    [xxix] John Hopkins University of Medicine, Coronavirus Resource Centre, John Hopkins, accessed 7 May 2020, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

    [xxx] Michael Sullivan, In Vietnam, There Have Been Fewer Than 300 COVID-19 Cases And No Deaths. Here’s Why, National Public Radio (U.S.), 16 April 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/16/835748673/in-vietnam-there-have-been-fewer-than-300-covid-19-cases-and-no-deaths-heres-why; Sean Fleming, Viet Nam shows how you can contain COVID-19 with limited resources, World Economic Forum, 30 March 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/vietnam-contain-covid-19-limited-resources/

    [xxxi] Mark O’Brien, Coronavirus Ireland: Testing for COVID-19 slammed as ‘disaster’ as screening slows to trickle at Croke Park, Dublin Live, 10 April 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/other/coronavirus-ireland-testing-for-covid-19-slammed-as-disaster-as-screening-slows-to-trickle-at-croke-park/ar-BB12rXXm

    [xxxii] Ronan Smyth, HSE says ‘fewer than 100’ wrongly told they had tested negative for Covid-19, Extra.ie, 14 April 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/uknews/hse-says-e2-80-98fewer-than-100-e2-80-99-wrongly-told-they-had-tested-negative-for-covid-19/ar-BB12CFcb

    [xxxiii] Adam Daly, 89-year-old man who died in nursing home had been waiting 15 days for Covid-19 test result, TheJournal.ie, 09 April 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/coronavirus/89-year-old-man-who-died-in-nursing-home-had-been-waiting-15-days-for-covid-19-test-result/ar-BB12oMVg

    [xxxiv] Cianan Brennan, ‘The numbers are being fudged’, says nurse who brands testing regime an ‘omnishambles’, 15 April 2020, https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/the-numbers-are-being-fudged-says-nurse-who-brands-testing-regime-an-omnishambles-994236.html

    [xxxv] Jasmin Gray, Coronavirus Linked To 40% More Deaths In England And Wales Than Previously Thought, HuffPost, 28 April 2020, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ons-coronavirus-deaths-april-17_uk_5ea7dd4fc5b6085825788762

    [xxxvi] RTE News, UK Covid-19 death toll rises as care home deaths included, RTE, 28 April 2020,

    [xxxvii] John Burn-Murdoch, Valentina Romei and Chris Giles, Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported, Financial Times, 26 April 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c

    [xxxviii] RTE, 29 more deaths, 137 new cases of Covid-19, RTE Coronavirus News, 7 May 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0507/1137105-covid-19-figures/

    [xxxix] Patrick Cockburn, ibid

    [xl] El Jones, ibid

    [xli] Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan, Return of the Black Death, 2005, Wiley Chichester (West Sussex), p. 279

    [xlii] W. T. Whitney, COVID 19: Think Science and the People, Counterpunch, 30 April 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/30/covid-19-think-science-and-the-people/

    [xliii] Prabir Purkayastha, US Trade War against China Takes a Coronaviral Turn, Newsclick India, 01 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/US-trade-war-china-takes-coronaviral-turn

    [xliv] Melanie Coates, ibid

  • Reflections on Covid-19

    Déjà Vu

    As Covid-19 sweeps through Ireland, I can’t help experiencing a feeling of déjà vu. In early 2015, I was based in Guinea as part of the international response to the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa. I was responsible for reporting on the progress of the epidemic as well as the measures being applied to halt its further progression. An important element of my work was in helping define the potential recovery needs of the country and articulating a vision as to how the international agency I was working for could contribute in helping Guinea transition from the ongoing short-term emergency humanitarian focus to a middle-long term recovery and development operational approach.

    Conakry in the Time of Ebola

    Prior to travelling to Guinea, I had read everything I could find both about Ebola and the situation on the ground. Similar to Covid-19, Ebola is a virus and is also believed to originate from bats. However, it is far more virulent, can result in serious haemorrhaging with severe internal and external bleeding and has a far higher death rate.[i] The first Ebola case in west Africa occurred in late December 2013 in Guinea. A 2 year-old boy in the village of Melandiou, close to the Guinean border with Liberia and Sierra Leone feel ill with a mysterious disease, later identified as Ebola and died a couple of days later.[ii] His grandmother, pregnant mother and three year old sister died shortly after.[iii] Ebola was on the march.

    In the latter half of 2014 and early 2015, the media was full of apocalyptic descriptions and assessments of the impacts of Ebola on Guinea, as well as its neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the danger of its spreading further afield. However, the situation on the ground in Conakry which greeted me upon my arrival, was not at all what I had expected. If I had not been aware of the virulence and mortality rate of those who contracted Ebola, I could easily have been convinced that its threat had been seriously over-hyped.

    While hand sanitisers were omnipresent and my temperature was taken each time upon arrival at the office, as well as when visiting other organisations, there appeared to be little restriction on the movement of people in Conakry. There was an abundance of economic activity as people moved freely through the streets and the colourful markets heavied with custom. Street food vendors displayed and sold their succulent delicacies to eager passers-by. Aspiring footballers practised their skills on the open roads, briefly making way for passing traffic, while others jogged through the streets. One bridge I passed, several times a day, had a perpetual presence of primarily young men performing their workouts and practising stretches from early in the morning until late evening. A sofa conveniently placed at the end of the street, where our office was located, had been drafted into service as a temporary meeting place for an ever-changing guard of young males.

    Conakry in the time of Ebola. (c) Justin Frewen

    The absence of constraints on physical proximity was particularly evident during the finals of the African football Cup, for which Guinea had qualified after a long absence. In the days leading up to the tournament, a tangible thrill of expectation hung in the air as pockets of people congressed in the streets and cafes to assess their country’s chances. The day of the tournament launch, a pair of enormous speakers were placed in the street behind our office. From 8 AM onwards, music blasted through the neighbourhood. From my vantage point on the second floor, I could see boys and girls dancing in their gardens and passers-by congregating to animatedly discuss the imminent tournament kick-off. A middle-aged woman walked down the street laden with two substantial shopping bags. As she neared the source of the pulsating beat, a broad smile flickered across her pleasant features as she swayed to the rhythm without missing a stride. Some 20 metres later, she resumed her erstwhile gait and homeward struggle with her sagging shopping bags.

    International Women’s Day, Conakry,, Guinea, Justin Frewen.

    Coronavirus Lockdowns

    In contrast, the current coronavirus pandemic has led to lockdowns of varying intensities around the world. As early as 24 March, the Guardian newspaper highlighted how some 20% of the world’s population was under lockdown imposed as a result of Covid-19.[iv] The past month, if anything, has seen a radical increase in the imposition of such measures and the consequent reduction of social and economic activities to prevent the onward transmission of this virus. This contrasts sharply with the general situation in Guinea during the Ebola crisis. Although strict quarantine was imposed on those who contracted Ebola and in spite of the lurid accounts of Ebola’s impact upon the people of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there was paradoxically far less overt evidence of its threat in daily, public life.

    The primary reason for this difference lies in the transmissibility of the respective viruses that lead to Ebola and Covid-19. As outlined by ‘Médecins sans frontières’ (MSF – Doctors Without Borders), who were instrumental in rallying international awareness and required resources to tackle Ebola, “(H)uman to human transmission occurs through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or through surfaces contaminated with these fluids.”[v] Covid-19, like other common human coronaviruses, transmits from an infected person a) in water droplets through the air, as a result of coughing or sneezing; b) close personal contact such as shaking hands; and c) touching one’s face (eyes, nose, mouth) after touching an object / surface before washing one’s hands.[vi]

    It is therefore clear the potential onward transmission of Covid-19 is far greater than for Ebola, as it does not require direct physical contact with the carrier of the virus. Fortunately, it appears that it cannot be transmitted through the air directly which would greatly increase its range and ease of transmission.[vii] This fact has led to a far greater restriction on social and economic life due to Covid-19’s enhanced transmissibility that was the case with Ebola.

    Virus Mobility

    Ebola’s infection spread was relatively localised. Despite the occurrence of a few cases outside the epicentre of west Africa (Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia), such as in Scotland and North America predominantly via the return of health workers, the virus was effectively contained. Approximately 11,000 people succumbed to the illness and while each of these fatalities was a tragedy for the victims and their loved ones, this figure obviously pales in significance to the rapidly increasing daily totals of Covid-19. As I write today, on 24 April, the recorded deaths are fast approaching 200,000. These figures, however, are undoubtedly a significant underestimation of the actual number of people who have succumbed directly to this coronavirus, not to mention those who may have succumbed to secondary infections due to enfeebled immune systems. In the UK, for example, the daily figures of deaths released to the public do not include those that have occurred in nursing homes or other residential settings.[viii]

    One of the major issues confronting health personnel combating Ebola in Guinea was the mobility of people in this region as there was widescale migration by people particularly in the rural areas to obtain income for their families. This situation was aggravated by the porous frontiers between neighbouring countries as people would often traverse national borders in search of work and food or even simply to visit their extended family. Borders in Africa have frequently been subject of fierce contestation and the manner in which they were imposed during colonialism has been one of its most enduring, negative legacies. They have both divided members of ethnic groups, as in the case of the nomadic Tuareg of North Africa, and also forced members of diverse cultural and religious groups into a single polity, such as the Sudan or Nigeria.

    In tackling Ebola, it became clear that the presence of these different national jurisdictions, divided by arbitrary and highly porous borders, such as those that existed between Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia greatly complicated the tracing of potential contacts of Ebola victims. Frequently, there would be no accurate records of who had crossed from one country to its neighbour. During the Ebola epidemic this resulted in severe delays in tracing potential contacts of Ebola victims, with the potential that these contacts could inadvertently become the source of waves of new infections as they moved from one place to the next.

    While Ebola was spread in west Africa predominantly through the movement of local people in rural areas trying to augment their meagre incomes, the worldwide dissemination of Covid-19 has been by the more relatively globally affluent. The massive growth in air travel has greatly increased the ease by which viruses can move from one part of the globe to another via their human hosts. When the Spanish Flu, so named because the flu was first widely reported on there, global movement was far slower and it therefore took the virus far longer to journey from one region to another. Today, we can get to virtually anywhere in the world in under 36 hours. This makes it far more difficult to control the onward progression of viruses such as Covid-19 and to effectively localise their impact, as was the case with Ebola.[ix]  It should be noted that this risk had been noted as an issue of concern prior to the current pandemic.[x]

    ‘The massive growth in air travel has greatly increased the ease by which viruses can move’

    Fear and ‘loathing’

    A frequent occurrence in serious epidemics and pandemics is the parallel transmission of fear which can radiate through impacted communities, even amongst those not yet exposed to the pathogen. A particularly tragic episode during the Ebola crisis occurred in September 2014 in the southern Guinea village of Wome when a team of eight health workers and journalists were murdered. The villagers were terrified that this deputation, which had been sent to help there and fearing they were there to spread the disease, attacked them violently with clubs and machetes.

    Although unique in terms of loss of life, the tragedy at Wome was not an isolated event. The Red Cross reported that its teams were attacked an average of 10 times per month over a year by frightened members of the local population.[xi] While there was a degree of understanding amongst member of the international community in Guinea as to the apprehension of local people confronted by outsiders, particularly those decked out in full hazmat suits, there was also disbelief that this could result in such aggression. Outside Guinea, people generally express incredulity at what transpired at Wome. How could people be so ill informed or be in such a state of fear that they would murder those sent to provide assistance. This would surely never happen in ‘developed countries’.

    However, if there is one thing we have learnt from Covid-19, it is that the people of Wome were in no way exceptional in falling victim to the plague of fake rumours, conspiracy theories or the negative treatment of health personnel.

    Over the Easter weekend in England, numerous phone masts were set on fire amid claims they were spreading the coronavirus. In the early hours of April 14 in Huddersfield, dozens of people had to be evacuated from their homes as a nearby phone mast was set ablaze.[xii] Similar fires were also reported earlier in April at masts in Birmingham, Liverpool and Melling in Merseyside. A video was shared on Facebook and YouTube, allegedly documenting a fire in Aigburth while claiming a link between Covid-19 and mobile technology.[xiii]

    One such attack also impacted directly upon the victims of coronavirus when, in Birmingham, a phone mast serving the NHS Nightingale Hospital was targeted by arsonists.[xiv] Mobile masts have also been set alight in Ireland with the latest incident occurring in Cork on the night of 22 April.[xv] Rumours linking Covid-19 and 5G technology have been spread by social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, leading to questions as to whether greater control should be exercised over these media to which their providers have responded by deleting what they categorise as false or harmful content related to the virus.[xvi] Intriguingly, there have been reports that social media has also been used in some places to name and shame people breaking social movement restrictions in their communities.[xvii]

    There has been deserved widespread praise for those on the frontline of the fight against Covid-19, including nightly clapping by the general public to display their support of health workers. Starting in Italy and Spain, this tribute has spread to many countries around the world. Despite these public accolades, health professionals have been abused in public on account of their engagement in tackling coronavirus. While these incidents have not resulted in fatalities, as in Guinea, they have been extremely disturbing. In early April, Howard Catton, CEO of the International Council of Nurses, revealed his organisation had received reports from around the world of abuse and harassment related to their work in fighting Covid-19. According to Catton, nurses were seen as potential carriers of the virus and thus a threat to the communities in which they lived.[xviii] In England, nurses have been abused in public and accused of being disease spreaders.[xix] Heath personnel have even been forced to quit their accommodation by landlords afraid they may contract the virus from them. In one such instance, Joseph Alsousou, a surgeon based in Oxford was asked to leave his rented accommodation as soon as possible.[xx]

    Health Care workers.

    From Ebola to Covid-19: Has the WHO Failed Again?

    The WHO came under severe criticism for its handling of the Ebola epidemic. The international president of Médicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Joanne Liu, appeared before the UN Security Council in September 2014 to inform the members directly as to how Ebola was impacting upon west Africa. She revealed that MSF was effectively engaged in building “crematoria instead of hospitals”. The same month Liu demanded that UN members deploy civilian and military resources to tackle this emergency.[xxi]

    Following the successful containment of the Ebola outbreak, the WHO apologised for its failure to respond in time and promised to undertake the necessary reforms to avoid a similar situation in the future. However, less than five years later, the WHO is once again under attack for its alleged slowness to respond to the outbreak of Covid-19 and its delay in communicating the gravity of this outbreak to the world at large. To punish the WHO the U.S. President Donald Trump has announced he will withhold the U.S. contribution of US$400 million to the WHO.[xxii] Although some commentators have pointed out that in fact the figure of $400 million is an overestimation given that the U.S. is already as much as $200 million behind in its pledged contributions,[xxiii] this has the potential to seriously disrupt WHO operations at this critical moment.

    In effect, while there are understandable concerns that the WHO could have reacted more promptly and effectively to the outbreak of Covid-19, this is not the time to engage in such an analysis. As its Director-General has stated the WHO’s performance in tackling this pandemic will be reviewed both by member states and independent bodies to identify failures in the organisation’s performance.[xxiv] The ongoing underfunding of the WHO together with the organizations endemic internal problems, which predated this crisis, will hopefully feature in this review.[xxv]

    WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

    Clear Communication

    As illustrated in contexts as diverse as New Zealand and Kerala, successfully tackling Covid-19 requires a communications strategy that provides clear guidelines and recommendations, supported by transparent explanations as to the approach adopted through easily accessible media platforms. In Kerala, the state government provided detailed media briefings on a daily basis outlining the necessary actions to tackle the virus, the importance of contact tracing, the need for quarantining and training for healthcare and hospital personal while also seeking the support and cooperation of the general public in surveillance and containment.[xxvi] These daily briefings proved highly popular and earned widespread public respect for the manner in which decisions and their rationale were explained. Updates on government actions to tackle the virus, relayed through the Chief Minister’s social media accounts, also proved highly popular. The effectiveness and accessibility of these communication measures resulted in a statewide awareness of Covid-19 and the necessity for close cooperation and mutual support between the health service and public to reduce transmissibility and avoid clinical case overload.[xxvii]

    In addition to providing Covid-19 related information through standard media channels, the NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has communicated directly with the public, making herself available to the media and holding daily public press conferences, led by New Zealand’s director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Together they have displayed “a reliable, measured and authoritative face for New Zealand’s Covid-19 response”. [xxviii] Of particular value has been the clarity of Jacinda Ardern’s communication on the virus.[xxix] Her leadership style has been assessed by one commentator as “one of empathy in a crisis that tempts people to fend for themselves. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing. And her approach isn’t just resonating with her people on an emotional level. It is also working remarkably well.”[xxx]

    Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister.

    Uncharted Territory?

    One of the primary excuses offered for the difficulty in responding to Covid-19, has been that it is unprecedented and there is no reliable roadmap to guide us. However, while the current situation whereby so many countries have implemented lockdowns of varying levels of severity, closing down large sectors of their economies, is unique, it would be false to argue that we had no warning of the possibility of such an event.

    The first two decades of this millennium has been witness to several new epidemics, that could potentially have had a similar, if not far worse, outcome than Covid-19. Two of these were also coronaviruses, namely Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). In 2002, SARS originated in Hong Kong, resulting in 8,098 reported cases and 774 deaths, a mortality rate of just under 10%.[xxxi] Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and spread to several countries. By the end of November 2019 some 34.4% of patients infected by MERS-Cov had died (858 of 2,494 laboratory confirmed cases).[xxxii]  In 2014, Ebola first struck west Africa. Although mainly contained to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there were a number of cases in other countries. In 2018, another outbreak of Ebola occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the 10th in 40 years. As of 19 April 2020, there had been 3,316 confirmed cases, resulting in 2,277 deaths or a mortality rate of almost 69%.[xxxiii]

    Many warnings have also been given by experts that a significant threat of a pandemic existed.[xxxiv] There has been at the very least an awareness that the threat of a pandemic which could result in significant fatalities and international disruption existed. Several countries had undertaken simulations that pointed out where major risks lay in terms of their readiness to counter such a threat. The US alone has held several of these exercises since the turn of the century, which had pointed out severe deficiencies in its preparedness.[xxxv]

    Kerala – a model to tackle Covid-19?

    The southern Indian state of Kerala which has been widely praised for its response to Covid-19. Its success would appear to be based upon two major elements. The first was the speed with which the state reacted to its outbreak in Wuhan. The health minister, K. K. Shailaja, alarmed by news of the virus in China and aware many students from Kerala were studying in Wuhan, organised a high-level meeting to discuss the situation on January 25th. The following day a control room was established to coordinate the department’s work. Eighteen committees were established and held daily meetings to evaluate actions undertaken and host daily conferences where Shailaja briefed on the actions her department was undertaking. The slogan “Break the Chain” has been given to the approach adopted in Kerala where open quote contact tracing” is implemented. This involves tracing all who have potentially been in contact with the infected person, similar to that approach which was critical in tackling Ebola.

    By March 19, Kerala had 25 people who had tested positive and 31,173 people under surveillance, of which 273 were isolated in hospitals with the rest quarantining at home. These high numbers were mainly due to the high influx of travellers, including people from Kerala returning home. On March 18 and 19 alone, 7,861 and 6,103 people respectively were put under surveillance. The resources required, both in terms of management and coordination as well as the active input of all sectors of society, leads to the second reason why Kerala has proved so successful to date in its struggle against Covid-19.

    The second critical element in Kerala’s approach is the existence of a strongly supported and well-funded public health sector, which forms a strong health shield against epidemics and other threats, even in a state which would be relatively poor compared with Europe and the U.S. This has been greatly supported by the active participation of a strong grassroots section of the state’s public which has combined with the health service to fight Covid-19. [xxxvi]

    When one contrasts the resolute measures, large scale mobilisation and effective containment of Covid-19 by a state such as Kerala or a nation like Vietnam – a country of over 96 million people, which despite sharing a border with China had only 268 cases and no fatalities as of 24 April – one cannot but be impressed at their performance. By the same token, one has to question how these relatively resource poor polities have been able to handle this crisis so much better, at least up to now, than the affluent nations in Europe and the U.S..

    The Indian state of Kerala has been widely praised for its response.

    What Lies Ahead?

    While it is difficult, at this stage, to estimate with any certainty the actual mortality rate of this coronavirus, it is certainly far less lethal than Ebola. Although Covid-19 discriminates greatly against the elderly in our society, its mortality rate is probably inferior to 1% and is likely to be less than this. However, whether we will ever be able to effectively assess the actual number of Covid-19 cases and related deaths is itself a moot point given the wildly varying rates of testing for the virus in different countries, the differing methods for compiling statistics related to deaths and the fact that almost certainly many deaths that occur as a result of this virus will never be acknowledged.

    Moreover, there is still much we do not know about this coronavirus. For example, do those who contract and survive Covid-19 gain immunity and, if so, would this be short or long-term? In South Korea, people who appeared to have recovered have later tested positive again for the virus, though preliminary Indications are that rather than being reinfected, the virus has been reactivated.[xxxvii] Similarly in China, patients who had apparently recovered from the virus are still registering as positive without displaying any symptoms. One 50-year-old man was still testing positive some two months after he first acquired Covid-19.[xxxviii] Given the complexities of and uncertainties related to Covid-19, the current phase consisting of lockdowns and other physical isolation measures may yet prove the easier part of our struggle to return to normality.

    If the virus can remain dormant in our system with the possibility of being reactivated and/or being transmitted onwards, the struggle to eradicate Covid-19 becomes infinitely more complex. Either coronavirus victims who continue to test positive, despite not displaying any symptoms, might require extended periods of isolation until they are no longer considered potential vectors of onward transmission or there is an approved vaccine in place. The earliest estimate for such a vaccine, despite acceleration of the testing process worldwide, is mid-2021. However, we need to remember there are still no vaccines for the four coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS, that currently circulate amongst humans.[xxxix]

    Certainly, the spread of Covid-19 has been far more extensive than Ebola. However, its transmission rate is only one of the issues facing us today. Just as certain underlying health conditions – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure – can severely aggravate the impact of coronavirus, this coronavirus could have widespread knock-on effects even more deleterious than its health impact. Covid-19 could become an underlying condition, which will lead to serious economic and social disruption as a result of measures applied to counter its spread. We have even been warned that we could face a worse depression that that which provoked by the Wall Street crash of 1929.[xl]

    A further significant area of concern is that of food supply. Although supermarket shelves in the global North, despite earlier panic buying, have been kept sufficiently stocked for our immediate needs, this may not last. Should this pandemic continue for an extended period of time, food supply chains will almost certainly be weakened, if not effectively broken. Food chains are complex structures, composed of intricate, interlinked and interrelated elements – agricultural producers and inputs, large brokerage agencies, shipping and land transport companies and distribution nodes, which are all subject to potential disruption. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), reported shipping industry slowdowns due to foreclosures and logistic blockages could soon start to disrupt this chain.[xli] The consequences for the Global South could be catastrophic with potentially hundreds of millions threatened by food insecurity.[xlii]

    In short, when and how will the global economy recover? As an article on the McKinsey site bluntly puts it, “(T)he pandemic’s economic challenges are unprecedented.”[xliii]

    [i] World Health Organization (WHO), Ebola virus disease, WHO, accessed 24 April 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-virus-disease

    [ii] WHO, Ground zero in Guinea: the Ebola outbreak smoulders – undetected – for more than 3 months, WHO, accessed 24 April 2020, https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/ebola-6-months/guinea/en/

    [iii] Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop it, Scribe Publications, Brunswick (Victoria) Australia / London U.K., p. 27

    [iv] Davidson, Helen, Around 20% of global population under coronavirus lockdown, Guardian, 24 March 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/nearly-20-of-global-population-under-coronavirus-lockdown

    [v] MSF, Ebola and Marburg: Quick Facts, MSF, accessed 23 April 2020, https://www.msf.org/ebola c

    [vi] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Common Human Coronaviruses, CDC, accessed 23 April 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html

    [vii] World Health Organization (WHO), Q & A on coronaviruses (Covid-19), WHO, accessed 23 April 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses

    [viii] Chris Giles, UK coronavirus deaths more than double official figure, according to FT study, Financial Times, 22 April 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab; Niamh McIntyre & Pamela Duncan, Care homes and coronavirus: why we don’t know the true UK death toll: Government figures only tell part of the story as they only cover hospital deaths, 14 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/care-homes-coronavirus-why-we-dont-know-true-uk-death-toll

    [ix] Geoffrey Holland, COVID-19, and Pandemics on a Crowded Planet – A MAHB Dialogue with Infectious Disease Expert, Arthur Reingold, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB), 12 March 2020, https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/covid-19-and-pandemics-on-a-crowded-planet-a-mahb-dialogue-with-infectious-disease-expert-arthur-reingold/

    [x] Aidan Findlater & Isaac I. Bogoch, Human Mobility and the Global Spread of Infectious Diseases: A Focus on Air Travel, Trends in Parasitology (Vol 34, Issue 9), September 2018, https://www.cell.com/trends/parasitology/fulltext/S1471-4922(18)30142-9, pp 772-783

    [xi] Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, ibid, p. 150

    [xii] BBC Coronavirus Pandemic News, Huddersfield phone mast fire ‘put residents at risk’, BBC, 14 April 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-52279341

    [xiii] BBC Coronavirus Pandemic News, Mast fire probe amid 5G coronavirus claims, BBC, 4 April 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358

    [xiv] Mark Sweney and Jim Waterson, Arsonists attack phone mast serving NHS Nightingale hospital, Guardian, 14 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/14/arsonists-attack-phone-mast-serving-nhs-nightingale-hospital

    [xv] Adrian Weckler, Mobile mast near Cork Apple headquarters set ablaze in suspected 5G arson attack, 23 April, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/mobile-mast-near-cork-apple-headquarters-set-ablaze-in-suspected-5g-arson-attack-39151454.html

    [xvi] BBC Technology News, YouTube bans ‘medically unsubstantiated’ content, BBC, 22 April 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586

    [xvii] Alice Yan, Chinese web vigilantes name and shame people for breaking coronavirus quarantine, South China Morning Post, 20 March 2020, https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/chinese-web-vigilantes-name-and-shame-people-for-breaking-coronavirus-quarantine/ar-BB11tD2i

    [xviii] Stephanie Nebehay, Nurses must be protected from abuse during coronavirus pandemic: WHO, nursing groups, Reuters, 6 April 2020, https://in.news.yahoo.com/nurses-must-protected-abuse-during-220640671.html

    [xix] Rebecca Gilroy, Nurses of coronavirus frontline facing ‘abhorrent’ abuse from public, Nursing Times, 20 March 2020,  https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/coronavirus/nurses-fighting-coronavirus-facing-abhorrent-abuse-from-public-20-03-2020/

    [xx] BBC Oxford, Coronavirus: Doctor ‘kicked out’ by Headington landlady, BBC website, 25 March 2020,https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-52032909

    [xxi] Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, ibid, p. 170

    [xxii] David Smith, Trump halts World Health Organization funding over coronavirus ‘failure’, The Guardian, 15 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-trump-halts-funding-to-world-health-organization

    [xxiii] Binoy Kampark, The WHO, Trump And The Coronavirus Wars, Oriental Review, 18 April 2020, https://orientalreview.org/2020/04/18/the-who-trump-and-the-coronavirus-wars/

    [xxiv] WHO, Rolling updates on coronavirus disease (Covid-19), WHO, accessed 24 April 2020,  https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen

    [xxv] Linton Besser, World Health Organization division tackling coronavirus underfunded and facing internal corruption allegations, audits reveal, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 16 February 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-17/coronavirus-who-underfunded-internal-corruption-allegations/11970382

    [xxvi] R. Krishnakumar, Kerala model, The Hindu (Frontline series), 10 April 2020, https://frontline.thehin, du.com/cover-story/article31130309.ece

    [xxvii] R. Krishnakumar, ibid

    [xxviii] Bryce Edwards, Ardern has shone in the coronavirus crisis but a recession could still doom her re-election chances, The Guardian, 18 March 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/ardern-has-shone-in-the-coronavirus-crisis-but-a-recession-could-still-doom-her-re-election-chances

    [xxix] Sam Clench, Clarity is the quality that makes Jacinda Ardern so effective in a crisis, new.com.au, 27 March 2020, https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/coronavirus-clarity-is-the-quality-that-makes-jacinda-ardern-so-effective-in-a-crisis/news-story/efbb0fcc2f80f12e83719c4f2428f5b5

    [xxx] Uri Friedman, New Zealand’s Prime Minister may be the most effective leader on the planet, The Atlantic, 19 April 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-leadership-coronavirus/610237/

    [xxxi] NHS, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, NHS, accessed 24 April 2020, https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/SARS/

    [xxxii] WHO, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), https://www.who.int/emergencies/mers-cov/en/

    [xxxiii] MSF, Ebola Crisis Update, MSF, 23 April 2020, https://www.msf.org/drc-ebola-outbreak-crisis-update

    [xxxiv] Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, ibid

    [xxxv] Nicola Twilley, The Terrifying Lessons of a Pandemic Simulation, The New Yorker, 1 June 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-terrifying-lessons-of-a-pandemic-simulation

    [xxxvi] Times of India Editorial, Kerala Shows The Way: Decades of investment in public health is helping the state control Covid-19 The Times of India, 16 April 2020, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/kerala-shows-the-way-decades-of-investment-in-public-health-is-helping-the-state-control-covid-19/; M.K. Bhadrakumar, Kerala’s Covid Story is Hard to Replicate, NewsClick.in, 20 April 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/Kerala-Covid-Story-is-Hard-to-Replicate

    [xxxvii] Yaron Steinbuch, More covered patients in South Korea are testing positive again, New York Post, https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/recovered-coronavirus-patients-in-south-korea-testing-positive-again/, 10 April 2020

    [xxxviii] Brenda Goh, Recovered, almost: China’s early patients unable to shed coronavirus, Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/22/asia-pacific/china-early-patients-coronavirus/#.XqA9aW5FxPY, 22 April 2020

    [xxxix] James Gallagher, Coronavirus vaccine: When will we have one?, BBC, 23 April 2020,  https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51665497

    [xl] Geoff Zochodne & Victor Ferreira, How bad could the coronavirus crisis get for the economy? Some point to the great depression, Financial Post, 20 March 2020, https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/coronavirus-crisis-new-great-depression

    [xli] Maximo Torero Cullen, Covid-19 and the risk to food supply chains: How to respond?, FAO, 29 March 2020, www.fao.org/3/ca8388en/CA8388EN.pdf

    [xlii] Fiona Harvey, Coronavirus crisis could double number of people suffering acute hunger – UN, The Guardian, 21 April2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-could-be-next-big-impact-of-coronavirus-pandemic

    [xliii] Matt Craven, Mihir Mysore Shubham Singhal and Matt Wilson, Covid-19, Briefing note, April 13, 2020: our latest perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic, McKinsey, 13 April 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business