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Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently
so since the SARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by a coronavirus,
for which vaccines were developed but did not proceed beyond the
pre-clinical level. That was the time to begin to put in place rapid-
-response systems in preparation for an outbreak and to set aside
spare capacity that would be needed. Initiatives could also have
been undertaken to develop defenses and modes of treatment for a
likely recurrence with a related virus.
But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be so-
meone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred
by the pathology of the contemporary socioeconomic order. Market
signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catas-
trophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred
by reigning doctrine: “Government is the problem,” Reagan told
us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be
handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devo-
ted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might
be concerned with the common good. The years that followed in-
jected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist
order and the twisted form of markets it constructs.
The depth of the pathology is revealed clearly by one of the most
dramatic — and murderous — failures: the lack of ventilators that
is one the major bottlenecks in confronting the pandemic. The
Department of Health and Human Services foresaw the problem,
and contracted with a small firm to produce inexpensive, easy-
-to-use ventilators. But then capitalist logic intervened. The firm
was bought by a major corporation, Covidien, which sidelined the
project, and, “In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered
to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the [fede-
ral] biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the
contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives
complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.”
Doubtless true.

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