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epidemologists. Even what is presented as data is obviously filtered
by horizons of pre-understanding: how to decide if an old weak
person really died of the virus? Plus although the fact that many
more people are still dying from other diseases than from coro-
navirus should not be misused to alleviate the crisis, it is true that
the strict focus of our healthcare system on coronavirus led to the
postponement of the treatment of diseases considered not-urgent
(testing people for cancer, for liver diseases, etc.), so that our strict
measures may cause more damage in the long term that the direct
impact of the virus. (Not to mention the dire economic consequen-
ces of the lockdown: at the beginning of April, local food riots of
the newly impoverished already exploded in southern Italy, police
had to control food stores in Palermo.) Is the only choice really the
one between the Chinese-style total control and the more lax “herd
immunity” approach? Hard decisions are to be made here which
cannot be grounded just in scientific knowledge – it is easy to warn
that state power is using the epidemics as an excuse to impose a
state of permanent emergency, but what alternate decision do those
who proliferate these warnings propose?
Our reaction to epidemics is not just a panic orchestrated by
those in power (why would the big capital risk a mega-crisis?), it is
a genuine and well-grounded alarm. But the almost exclusive focus
on the coronavirus in our media is not based on neutral facts, it
is clearly based on an ideological choice. Maybe, one can afford
here a modest conspiracy theory: what if the representatives of the
existing global capitalist order are somehow aware of what critical
Marxist analysts point out for some time - that the system as we
know it is in deep crisis, that it cannot go on in its existing liberal-
-permissive form, and they are ruthlessly exploiting the epidemics
to impose a new form. The most probable outcome of the epidemics
is that a new barbarian capitalism will prevail: many old and weak
will be sacrificed and let to die, workers will have to accept much
lower standard of living, digital control of our lives will remain a

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