ACTION

Neo-liberal lies--AGAIN! One of these threats, after all, has already declared a global pandemic and magnified the harm caused by their lackluster pathogen via lockdowns and the coerced vaccination of billions; the other remains confined to imaginary science fiction scenarios and (strangely) the pandemicists’ own fever-dream tabletop exercises. I guess it is not deranged right-wing conspiracising when our betters contemplate bioterrorism scenarios for fundraising purposes, but should you take their own fantasies at all seriously, well, that is a step too far.

The world economic forum flirts with their critics by cultivating a self-aggrandising Bond-villain rhetoric with just enough plausible deniability for the fact-checkers. Accordingly, they held a monumentally dumb panel discussion yesterday on “Preparing for Disease X.” Naturally, none of our preparers had any significant epidemiological qualifications. The discussion was chaired by a pinched humourless woman named nancy brown, who is CEO of that eminent pandemic preparedness center known as the American Heart Association. Over the course 50 minutes she spoke with WHO Director General tedros adhanom ghebreyesus (who is at least an immunologist), Brazilian Health Minister and social scientist nísia trinidade, AstraZeneca chairman michel demaré, and healthcare executives roy jakobs and preetha reddy. These are the people eagerly plotting all the public-private partnerships, developmental pathways, strategic collaborations, equity initiatives, data sharing projects and viral surveillance programs that will be necessary to stage the next virological circus.