issue 25// vol 46 opinions // no. 15

The price of the future

>» There's no evolution without a little obsolescence

Matthew Fraser
Opinions Editor

 

i the year 2075, youre sitting with
your grandkids reminiscing about the
days when TikTok was cool and Billie
Eilish was young. They ask you about the
great COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, you
grow sombre as memories of weeks spent
indoors flash through your mind and you
begin to vividly recount the underground
exchange of toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
You omit the part where 25 percent of old
people have died because they either didn’t
have health care or were deemed too old
for saving. The kids accuse you of lying, you
laugh, they laugh, and you tell them how
most grandparents met on this app called
Tinder. Life goes on because youre past the
stage in capitalism where grandma dies.

In economics you learn about a little
thing called autarky. Basically, autarky
is when a country is self-sufficient and
doesn't need to trade with the outside
world—it can hoard all of its products and
resources for its own benefit. Though we
have precious few examples of this in the
modern world (Nazi Germany and North
Korea being the main two) more often than
not this gradually kills the economy and
ensures deep shortages of many essential
items or crippling market inefficiencies.
Donald Trump took issue that the $3M
manufacturing company was prioritizing
rich foreign orders when many US states
are in need. I assume this is an attempt to
make up for downplaying the virus and
waiting to employ the Defense Production
Act. Alternatively, it's because Donald
Trump has forced a bidding war between
states for various hospital equipment
from the suppliers who were willing to
sell to the USA. As if depleting reserves

due to inaction wasn't enough, in order to
show the world who’s really the boss, the
President felt the need to air out which
governors he thought “knew nothing”

or acted too “nasty” to deserve help; on
stage at a press conference he saw fit to tell
everyone that he advised Mike Pence not
to call a number of governors back in the
midst of a global pandemic. Not because he
was too busy, not because he was closing a
deal of the utmost importance but because
they weren't appreciative of the hard work
and efforts of the task force. This is the part
where Grandpa died because capitalism
needed hospitals in foreign countries

to run out of PPE and governors to kiss
presidential ass to get it.

Ina previous article | mentioned that
Trump with a number of Republicans and
right-wing media personnel have wanted
to get some of the public back to work
to reinvigorate the economy, despite the
risk of some computer models suggesting
100,000s of lives will be lost. Before we
consider the audacity required for this
action to even be considered, I would like
to lay out the fact that Republican governor
of Georgia Brian Kemp, admitted on April
1 to just finding out that asymptotic people
exist and that they can spread COVID-19.

If that guy is in charge of your state’s safety,
you may as well quit breathing. This is

the incredible thing about the audacity
required to make the majority of America
aware that someone will die for the
economy while simultaneously convincing
them that it won't be them. It seems

to require not just cunning evil but an
incredible amount of willful ignorance; one
must truly believe that they themselves and
their family are guaranteed to be spared
while whomever does die is serving their
wellbeing. If it wasn't for the absurdity,

Not even 1n the face of

pandemic can one find unity

» Any day is a good day for racism

Matthew Fraser
Opinions Editor

 

here is no hour when the siren call of

hatred will go unheard, nor a reprise
from the wicked at heart; neither strife, nor
flood nor pandemic can halt the onwards
march of racism. The global COVID-19
pandemic has born an opportunity that
no self-respecting racist can pass by; from
the streets of England to the boardrooms
of France, at a podium on the White house
lawn or ina parking lot here in Vancouver
there is always enough hatred to go around,
even if the toilet paper runs out.

On April 1, 2020, Jean-Paul Mira,
head of intensive care at Cochin hospital
in Paris, made a blatantly racist hierarchy
of the importance of human life: “If I can
be provocative, shouldn't we be doing this
study in Africa, where there are no masks,
no treatments, no resuscitation? A bit like
it is done elsewhere for some studies on
Aids. In prostitutes, we try things because

we know that they are highly exposed
and that they do not protect themselves.”
He apologized shortly after. But yes, in
that statement Mira did indeed compare
EVERY African to prostitutes and imply
that they were the best people to test drugs
on before Western distribution. It is clear
that the head of Cochin’s intensive care
ward truly sees all humans as equally valid
to existence. Certainly, one would imagine
that countries like Spain and Italy whose
death toll from COVID-19 is now north of
12,000 would be more likely to take on an
experimental drug than a continent of over
1.2 billion with 10,000 cases and 500 deaths
(as of this writing). ...but no, Jean-Paul
Mira would rather be “provocative” and use
Africans as if they were lab rats. Not human
beings with lives and needs of their own,
but something akin to an AIDS-ridden
prostitute to be experimented on and cast
aside.

The president of the “free world”
has insisted day-in and day-out to call

I would marvel
at the delicacy
that backs this
bold-faced lie.
Many parents
struggle with
the prospect of
speaking to their
children about
death, yet legions
of American
adults have been
convinced that
other people's
deaths for monies
sake is to be
cherished. This
is the part of
capitalism where
Grandma died
for Boeing and
Amazon to get
bailouts while
small businesses
foreclosed.
Finally, we
look around at our
own backyard;
long-term care homes across Canada have
had to call the families of their patients and
begin to explain that if the elderly catch
COVID-19 instead of taking them to the
hospital, they'll make them as comfortable
as possible in the place their already at. A
CBC story attained a letter from the Glebe
Centre in Ottawa informing caregivers and
the families of residents that the centre has
no plans to transfer their loved ones should
they come down with COVID-19. “Doctors
have learned there is no benefit for seniors
with COVID-19 to go to the hospital, and
they would not survive intensive care.” The
news report goes on to illustrate that one

a global

the virus from Wuhan by a much
simpler name that cleaves closer
to his “America first” principles:
the China virus. The president
has been so ardent in his stance
that various extreme right-wing
outlets have gone so far as to

dub COVID-19 as “Kung-flu’,
taking the lead of CBS reporter
Weijia Jiang’s poorly veiled smear
invention. One would hate to
think it was done begrudgingly but Trump
has recently agreed to stop calling it the
“China virus’; perhaps it was only last week
the months and months of reports about
rising animosity towards Asians around
the globe finally filtered to his desk. Maybe
he just realized that Asian Americans vote
and if you want to win an election in nine
months you should avoid smearing them
as virus spreaders. Still, with the minority
lowlifes of society spitting at Asians on

the streets of the Netherlands, cursing
them in Vancouver, and assaulting them in

 

Illustration by Athena Little

hospital only has six ventilators to its name
(granted the fatality rate is 90 percent in
many cases for those on ventilators) while a
care centre elsewhere in the country saw 23
of its 65 residents and one resident’s spouse
die from the virus. Of course, these deaths
may be better attributed to the savagery
that the virus wrecks upon the elderly

or the global level of unpreparedness

that welcomed this virus, but I can’t help
but wonder if the decisions made are

not influenced by the cost of saving the
young versus the old. This is the stage in
capitalism where Grandpa died because it
was cheaper to save 38-year-old Fred.

  

Photo by Billy Bui Woe

England, that is one small step too late.
Ina moment of clarity Kanye West
once said “Racism is still alive; they just be
concealing it.” More accurately it seems
that racism is still alive and no one is
confronting it. Well, at least not in the
government offices where laws are made
and press conferences thought out. Or
in hospitals and pharmaceutical labs
where trials are planned and test groups
identified. It seems to be that for all the lip
service about a changing and better world
too many people are too willing to drag old
evils along forever.