Nothing is more indicative of the desperation being felt by the corporate centre — capital, the state, tame media — than the stories being run about the possibility of a COVID-19 vaccine “this year”.
There would appear to be no real chance of a vaccine this year but scientists, when pressed, will acknowledge the formal case — that there is a very (or vanishingly) small possibility of one.
The switch back to vaccine stories has coincided exactly with the fading of all hope that hydroxychloroquine would turn out to be a miracle drug which we could just pop the moment we feel a bit roni-ry and be back at work that afternoon.
The most recent and largest control trial of the drug has shown that it increased the death rate for coronavirus patients through cardiac deregulation, and the drug’s boosters have gone vewwy, vewwy quiet about the magic pill. That was not before the US government released it for coronavirus use, overriding the FDA and creating supply shortages for the malaria sufferers who actually depend upon it.
The switch from magic pills to insta-vaccines was revived after the ideological right tried, and largely failed, to get support for a quick re-opening, a back-to-work toughing it out, based on a spurious notion of herd immunity that took no account of the real possibility that have the virus confers no immunity to its rapidly multiplying separate strains.
Hydroxychloroquine always had the appearance of what the yanks calls a “hail mary” throw about it, a belief that hanging on to any belief is better than none.
Thus, in this crisis, capitalism is doing what it does best, what it relies on: magical thinking.
Because if it stopped doing that it would start to fall apart. Until a fortnight or so ago, there remained the magical belief that this first onset of COVID-19 would be a single event. Not the virus itself, just the first outbreak, and we could all get back to full-tilt power in a few weeks.
Gradually in the last fortnight or so it’s dawned on people that nothing we do — totally re-open, maintain total lockdown, or somewhere in between the two — makes any difference to the persistence of the virus, it simply changes the course of the thing.
So the corporate centre is caught in a bind: they need things to get restarted to stop the whole extended system of global consumerism collapsing, but they also know — with a quick side glance at reality — that if we were to re-open too fast and be hit with a fresh wave of infection that wipes out many of our hard-won gains, public support for a more comprehensive transformation of everyday life would be strengthened.
Not only would the economy start to be decapitalised — because there would simply be an evacuated degree of demand and accumulation — but the contingent nature of capitalism as a system of social organisation would begin to be visible to a much wider group of people.
Capitalism always was magical thinking. It relies for its valuation on a projected confidence that the future will be like the past in its general form.
It uses the sort of boot-strapping confidence we apply when going for a job interview — knowing that a feeling of certainty that we will get that job will lead us to better performance. (No wonder Paul Bassat, of Seek and Australia-Israeli start-up incubator Square Peg, is so eager for a state-run tracking app to be adopted. What a perfect confluence: a jobs site and a developer of start-ups from Israel, whose tech sector is a world-leader in new ways to pen in people like cattle.)
We disguise that boot-strapping with a mental sleight-of-hand, a willed cognitive dissonance. And thus has market capitalism proceeded for three centuries. In that process, while it is accepted that no one company or venture is guaranteed success, it is accepted that the future guarantees it in general. That becomes what the future is.
Capitalism changes the very nature of being and time; the future becomes a projection of a quantitative change — there’ll be more — but a qualitative stasis: the framework will be as it was.
That applies even to the Marxist conception of a transition from capitalism to socialism, at least in its initial stages.
But COVID-19, its specific settings of infectiousness and mortality, and what appears to be its disturbing powers of mutation and re-infection, has changed the relationship between present and future to a degree that outstrips even the most radical imaginings within modernity.
There seems to be almost nowhere in the vast haul of virus/catastrophe science-fiction which imagines something like lock down and social distancing: disease dystopia is usually of the 28 Days Later zombie-virus character.
In such dystopias capitalism obviously collapses, because all society does.
Here, in our present, society has manifestly not collapsed, but the particular pace, rhythm and process on which capitalism depends has been drained away. Because people are still buying stuff on Amazon, that shift has been minimised and disguised.
If, in Australia and elsewhere, the virus has been well-contained, and driven towards “elimination” (epidemiological elimination is rarely full elimination, smallpox aside; everyday, in the days of air travel, someone was arriving here with polio, for example), then there will be no great disruption — even though we will still have, and must prepare for, renewed outbreaks, as we use trial-and-error around reviving everyday life.
But the UK and the US may have made themselves hostages to ill-fortune, accumulating such a backlog of cases dues to early failures of tackling the spread.
These failures are a direct product of the philosophy that underlies Anglo-American capitalism and the right: a philosophical individualism that cannot see collective social life as anything other than an aggregation of individuals.
Having no actual thing called “society” to apply measures to, their hopeless response let the virus ran rampant. This may well have committed them to a long series of renewed outbreaks, not without a 28 Days Later-ish character (without zombies, alas).
This next stage will either happen or it won’t. Full-tilt capitalism will either save itself by the skin of its teeth, or a hole will open up in it so wide — a disjuncture between present and the projective future required for investment and accumulation — that a historical crisis of a type no one had predicted will occur.
At that point, it is not that key sections of the economy will have to be socialised, key sections of the will have already been socialised by events — i.e. returned to and made visible as their true nature of collective social production and reproduction — and governments will have no choice but to reorganise around that indisputable fact.
There’s no vaccine against the reality of the human condition, nor any magic, and given a crisis of sufficient endurance, that is what we will come face to face with.
Our local Donald Trump wannabe Clive Palmer has two full page advertisements in the local rag ‘the Worst Australian’ praising himself for purchasing over 30 million doses of the miracle drug hydroxychloroquine sufficient for one million courses.
The advertisements don’t mention the latest studies, just the earlier flawed ones.
He is a big bloke, but that seems like a lot just for one man. Just a thought for the supplier, do you know if Clive has paid the invoice for all that Hydroxychloroquine yet?
Or whether he’s taken it himself yet ? For that matter, has the Trumper taken any yet, or has he just quietly his shares in its manufacturer ?
I’ve been wondering whether these implications were apparent to many professional wordsmiths so well done. I gave up years ago hoping media organisations would require minimal mathematical ability and proper use of measurement units.
I have my doubts about the impending glorious revolution however almost all revolutions are precipitated by an immediate crisis so who knows. Maybe there’ll a bronze bust of you outside the state library one day.
Like Graeski I’m really noticing the cleaner air, lack of aeroplane noise and local people acknowledging each other more. I am missing other pleasures though. I’m also not broke or stuck in an emotional or physically cramped hothouse so I’m mostly feeling more grateful than usual for what I do have.
so please we don’t read the worst Australian anymore.
I think the biggest threat to the capitalist order is long-term change in consumer behaviour. They say it takes six weeks to break a habit or establish a new pattern. We’ve been in lockdown now for around four weeks. We’ve almost certainly at least another two weeks to go. The capitalists have reason to be worried.
For myself: I find I’m adjusting. I’m still missing social contact with my family and friends, but there are some compensations. I swear the air is cleaner and nicer to breath (I live in Melbourne’s western suburbs) and the traffic on the freeway is much less, at least on the weekends. It’s nice not to have planes flying overhead every three minutes, too.
I’m chatting more with my neighbours (over the fence) and the pace of life is slower. And my monthly budget is ‘in the black’ for the first time in a while because I’ve virtually stopped spending on discretionary items.
What if we all decide we rather eat at home than eat out? Buy online instead of go to the mall? Work from rather than drive?
Tax cuts for the big corporates are all very well, but they won’t do them much good if the bottom drops out of their revenue at the same time.
Yes ..it seems habits can die easily sometimes ..A top NRL player said by the 2nd week he didn’t miss or notice the lack of fans/punters at the game ..it was just business as usual putting the product/brand out on the paddock…I wonder if the fans/fanatics, realize that they may not be so fantastic, in the scheme/game of things ?
Within GRundle’s context, it’s worth noting what happened overnight.
The US stock market has recently ‘come off its lows’, as ‘they say’, in large part due to any Big Pharma outfit seen as a chance to make lots of hay off the virus, either vaccine, or treatment.
At the head of that pack has been Gilead Sciences, who were touted as having a number of prospects for virus hay making.
At the head of their prospects was a antiviral drug called remdesivir.
Gilead had played to the (market) audience, off the back of some inconclusive pre-trial work. The Chinese volunteered to give the drug a clinical try.
It seems the trial came up shy on beneficial effects, and was terminated early, but quietly. Gilead’s share price was rolling along, until the WHO ‘accidentally’ leaked the results (‘accidentally’ possibly being true). The leak hit the boards, while the Ynak market was trading.
KERRRRASHHHHH!! went the Gilead share price, with it other Big Pharma outfits, and the whole market.
‘Magical thinking’ under real pressure, everywhere.
Bloody good piece today Guy. You’re one of the few writers around, who can stare into the abyss and tell the truth. There’s not yet any light at the end of the tunnel, and there might not ever be.
Interesting times ahead.
Thinking the same paddy. Tired of reading journalists who don’t understand numbers, which is most of them, and annoyed that so many can’t make those connections to work out how things must go. Talk about international travel has been laughable. Except for perhaps NZ, and any other state that got its numbers genuinely under control, international travel is out of the question for this year and ver likely next. Qantas will be queueing up for handouts, and again I will say nationalise them.
Series of waves, and/or verified mutations like the flu will see all bets off and lucky to hold society together.
I hope we get a vaccine eventually. It will be the first vaccine we have ever made for a coronavirus.
Very strange this obsession of yours…the vax. Indeed.
Once upon a time I would have expected the left to be mobilising the newly unemployed, the now never-to-be-employed young school leavers and recent graduates, the small business owners who have been ruined by government decree, even the self funded boomers who have just had their lifestyles wiped out – and using the crisis situation to their advantage. But what is the left doing,? Guy? Anyone?
So far they’ve been the most enthusiastic of the lockdowners, the most strident of the social media scolders and (in the published piece I’ve seen) merely contented themselves with gushing approving op-eds for the policies of Daniel Andrews, Dr Norman Swan, Jacinda Ardhern even ScoMo himself (yes you, GR)
The catastrophic effects of Covid are going to pour down the fault lines and economic fractures of our unequal society hitting those at the bottom the hardest. Isn’t that self-evident?
So will the left now move on from its idiotic identity politics obsessions and remember that it was once concerned with class? I can see no evidence of that so far… Sadly, my side of politics (pre-Covid, I am reassessing…) is still seemingly, totally MIA.
There has never really been a “left” in Australia, in the sense that GR is suggesting. The means of production has always been owned by the landed gentry and industrial oligarchy. The furthest we’ve ever swung has been to recognize a right of employed workers to a standard of living that involved home ownership (and later, car ownership). Some government-run services, some of the time. Perhaps part of the problem is that the current crop of theoreticians of the left have been arguing against both home ownership and car ownership as worthwhile goals (for different reasons). How do you define a comfortable standard of living in a modern context without those two? Abstract health and happiness? Guy had a shot at positing a model of expanded government services the other day, but I’m not sure how convincing it was, after thirty years of “get the government out of my life” ideology. “Efficiency” is a difficult goal to turn away from, especially now that we have so many computers and databases to measure progress and optimize process with.
Sorry, “never” is much too strong a word there. I refer to the period since Arthur Philip’s settlement in NSW.
‘Left, right, left, right’ – dead boring hoary ol’ chestnuts.
Neoliberal financialised economic ‘thinking’ killed the popular distinction, ‘tween left and right, and the euthanising began in the ’80’s, was further worked over in the ’90’s (serial crim Bubba prominent, here), and was finally smothered in the naughties, with Blair being the most prominent user of the killer pillows.
‘Left?’ Pfft. Meaningless, wholly co-opted by rubbish outfits like the NYT’s and Grauniad.
As for ‘local content’, even cursory reasoned examination of ‘the former Fairfax’, more lately, could conclude little other than extreme compliance with, and stenography in the services of, vile and dangerous Sinophobia.
For instance, the Zappone toerag, today, was met with masses of pignorant ‘yellow peril’ responses, and ‘Yay, yay, Amerika’ (not all Trumpistas, but that’s secondary to the essential curation of bog standard racial garbage).
Dangerous? You freakin’ bet.
Does any reasonably sentient being really doubt the threat of Trump, if his re-election chances sink with the Yank economy, deciding to launch a ‘military initiative’ to try and claw back ground, or justify shutting down the election because of ‘extraordinary circumstances’, and threats to ‘national security’ – and that constitution would let him do it.
Scene setter? The threats to Iran, this week; ‘If Iranian gunboats continue to harass our navy in the Straits of Hormuz, I’ve told our navy to shoot ’em down’ (leaving aside the idiocy of shooting gunboats “down” – ‘Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane……it’s……an Iranian gunboat?!?!’)
As for any brake on Trump’s idiocy – Pence and Pompeo?!?! The ‘Rapture Twins?!?!’
Kiddin’, right?
Apart from the delightful though of shooting down flying gunboats, all I could think of when Pomposity personified made that statement was – Gulf of Tonkin.
Is memory really so short in the Benighted States or are they really that dumb?
Don’t forget that after Gulf War #1 the egregious Poppy Bush, erstwhile head of the CIA, proudly (sic!) proclaimed, “We’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome!”.
Who knew that it was just a syndrome – I’d always thought that most sentients regarded it as a major war crime.
All too true, cuch’.
So, I’ve got another one for ya, and this is a doozie. It was seeded by the finest ‘foreign correspondent’ I’ve read (formerly ‘mainstream’, cast aside for ‘non compliance’, like so many of his competent cohort).
This is a ‘comment’ I tried at the former Fairfax, yesterday, in response to a complete misrepresentation of the international response to Schlo’s call for an ‘investigation’ into the WHO.
I’ll do this in 2 bits, to see if I can beat the moderators sneding it off to ‘moderation’;
Part 1;
This is an ABC (US) news report from earlier this month – abcnewsdotgodotcom/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?
“Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November: Sources”
“As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting….”
George Stephanopoulos interviewed the Defence Secretary, Espers’ a few days before that ABC report. Read Espers denying any knowledge of the intel report.
Espers has a number of problems with that denial, and one of those problems is Israel.
timesofisraeldot.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/?fbclid=IwAR1q1rm42Lr9BpcMYLBOZvCNgu8I12v5NbnlJmG9mDDhJDBMeUO_Fw0jTuI
“US alerted Israel, NATO to disease outbreak in China in November”
That times of Israel report was around a week after the above ABC report…..
Part 2;
“…So, how did the US know of a disease outbreak In Wuhan (not Beijing, not Shanghai, not Guangdong – Wuhan), over a month before the first case came to light in Wuhan?
And, if they’d tell Israel and NATO what they’d picked up or suspected, why not tell China? (And, they didn’t).
Why not tell the WHO, even if they were just suspicions, in the name of, you know, ‘transparency’, that ‘principle’ all the soldiers of Western empire keep barking at the Chinamen?
These and numerous other questions are easily constructed if people just take a look around, and have some ability to connect dots.
Actually, here’s one of those related questions;
If the US told Israel and NATO, did they tell Morrison and Co in Canberra? After all, aren’t we besties with Trump’s US of A?”
This isn’t a construct of the ‘alt-media’. This is merely a fair dinkum ‘investigative journalist’ connecting dots provided by ‘big media’, and asking; ‘Why isn’t anyone asking questions about this s***?’
The champ journo in question is Brazilian.