Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Published on Saturday, May 2, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Lethargy Virus
The Swine Flu (or H1N1 virus) is in the air. The public health authorities are acting “in excess of caution” to curb its spread from Mexico into this country. Already, however, this virus and the publicity around it is providing another occasion to question our nation’s priorities.
Let’s put it this way—the gravest terrorists in the world today are viruses and bacterium and their astonishing ability to mutate, hitchhike and devastate human beings. Yet despite small outbreaks—such as the SARS virus from China—we collectively seem to be waiting until the “big pandemic” before we come to our senses and redefine national security and national defense.
It is not that we are unaware of the massive toll that tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS and many other infectious diseases exact year after year. Just those three diseases take over 5 million lives a year. It is not that we fail to realize how international trade, tourism and other travels—together with environmental disruptions—accelerate the spread and range of these silent forms of violence.
Our lethargy stems from the fact that the causes of such casualties are seen as impersonal, unlike 9/11 terrorists or state inflicted terrorism which is viewed as anthropomorphic. That is, they are attributed to proper names of specific people, gangs, armies and nations.
In 2004, when I was on the Bill Maher show, Bill asked me why I was running for president outside the two major parties. I replied that one reason was to call public attention to such issues as our nation’s approach to infectious diseases. Maher gave me that look of his and blurted “aw come on!”
For years before that campaign, the inattention given to these invisible marauders was irrational. First came complacency. In the nineteen fifties, professors at Harvard University advised students not to specialize in infectious diseases because the new rush of antibiotics had placed them under control. Myopic indeed. Our country now has a serious shortage of MDs, public health experts and other scientists to confront, prevent and treat these diseases here and abroad.
About 130 countries have signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which, in Article 12, provides that everyone should enjoy the “highest attainable standard” of well-being, to be attained by the “prevention, treatment, and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational, and other diseases.” The U.S. signed this treaty in 1979, but it has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate.
The appearance of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the U.S. during the early nineteen nineties helped prompt the Tuberculosis Initiative, organized in 1997, by my Princeton Class of 1955, to press public and elected officials in Washington to increase funds and activities regarding this scourge. The Soros and Gates Foundations have put resources into a global assault on TB, working with the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO’s total budget last year was $4.2 billion—a pittance given its urgent responsibilities. The United States government’s contribution—twenty two percent—has been in chronic arrears. By comparison, our government has granted trillions of dollars since September to the financial perpetrators of the epidemic of Wall Street speculation, fraud and costly criminal greed.
While for state and local health departments, budget cuts have reduced hundred of millions of dollars and thousands of workers on what the New York Times calls “the front line in the country’s defense against a possible swine flu pandemic.”
Meanwhile, before the recent swine flu news, Senators, including Republicans Susan Collins and Arlen Spector (before his conversion to the Democratic Party) cut $780 million from Barack Obama’s stimulus package for pandemic flu preparation.
To be sure, in recent years, both the Bush Administration and Democrats, such as Senator Patrick Leahy, have moved the needle toward spending more on vaccine research, medical technology and contingency planning. This is a response, in part, to post 9/11 fears and the continuing reluctance of the drug industry CEOs to apply their profits to discovering vaccines, which by their infrequent usage, they deem not profitable enough.
Maybe the giant steps forward will come after some members of Congress themselves come down with these ailments during their travels. As one House legislative aide said, “that’ll get their attention,” adding wryly “but only if it’s broadly bi-partisan.”
Almost seventy years ago, Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee challenging Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 elections, wrote a prescient book titled One World. When it comes to contagious micro-organisms, there are no boundaries without internationally sustained human efforts.
Let’s put it this way—the gravest terrorists in the world today are viruses and bacterium and their astonishing ability to mutate, hitchhike and devastate human beings. Yet despite small outbreaks—such as the SARS virus from China—we collectively seem to be waiting until the “big pandemic” before we come to our senses and redefine national security and national defense.
It is not that we are unaware of the massive toll that tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS and many other infectious diseases exact year after year. Just those three diseases take over 5 million lives a year. It is not that we fail to realize how international trade, tourism and other travels—together with environmental disruptions—accelerate the spread and range of these silent forms of violence.
Our lethargy stems from the fact that the causes of such casualties are seen as impersonal, unlike 9/11 terrorists or state inflicted terrorism which is viewed as anthropomorphic. That is, they are attributed to proper names of specific people, gangs, armies and nations.
In 2004, when I was on the Bill Maher show, Bill asked me why I was running for president outside the two major parties. I replied that one reason was to call public attention to such issues as our nation’s approach to infectious diseases. Maher gave me that look of his and blurted “aw come on!”
For years before that campaign, the inattention given to these invisible marauders was irrational. First came complacency. In the nineteen fifties, professors at Harvard University advised students not to specialize in infectious diseases because the new rush of antibiotics had placed them under control. Myopic indeed. Our country now has a serious shortage of MDs, public health experts and other scientists to confront, prevent and treat these diseases here and abroad.
About 130 countries have signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which, in Article 12, provides that everyone should enjoy the “highest attainable standard” of well-being, to be attained by the “prevention, treatment, and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational, and other diseases.” The U.S. signed this treaty in 1979, but it has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate.
The appearance of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the U.S. during the early nineteen nineties helped prompt the Tuberculosis Initiative, organized in 1997, by my Princeton Class of 1955, to press public and elected officials in Washington to increase funds and activities regarding this scourge. The Soros and Gates Foundations have put resources into a global assault on TB, working with the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO’s total budget last year was $4.2 billion—a pittance given its urgent responsibilities. The United States government’s contribution—twenty two percent—has been in chronic arrears. By comparison, our government has granted trillions of dollars since September to the financial perpetrators of the epidemic of Wall Street speculation, fraud and costly criminal greed.
While for state and local health departments, budget cuts have reduced hundred of millions of dollars and thousands of workers on what the New York Times calls “the front line in the country’s defense against a possible swine flu pandemic.”
Meanwhile, before the recent swine flu news, Senators, including Republicans Susan Collins and Arlen Spector (before his conversion to the Democratic Party) cut $780 million from Barack Obama’s stimulus package for pandemic flu preparation.
To be sure, in recent years, both the Bush Administration and Democrats, such as Senator Patrick Leahy, have moved the needle toward spending more on vaccine research, medical technology and contingency planning. This is a response, in part, to post 9/11 fears and the continuing reluctance of the drug industry CEOs to apply their profits to discovering vaccines, which by their infrequent usage, they deem not profitable enough.
Maybe the giant steps forward will come after some members of Congress themselves come down with these ailments during their travels. As one House legislative aide said, “that’ll get their attention,” adding wryly “but only if it’s broadly bi-partisan.”
Almost seventy years ago, Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee challenging Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 elections, wrote a prescient book titled One World. When it comes to contagious micro-organisms, there are no boundaries without internationally sustained human efforts.
- Posted in
Comments are closed
27 Comments so far
Show AllACCORDING TO THE SOCIALIST-PHILOSOPHER IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, IF THE WORLD DOESN'T BECOME SOCIALIST, WE MIGHT SEE A MAD MAX FEUDALISM SCENARIO LIKE MEL GIBSON'S MAD MAX MOVIE !!
I have not studied Wallerstein, so I’m curious about his “socialism or barbarism” view — what does he mean by a worse system?
I understand worst-case scenarios, like an inter-imperialist war going nuclear or biological leading to a kind of 'Mad Max' feudalism, but worst-cases are rare and not much to base your theory on. In the last 100 years we’ve seen some major crises and world wars that lead to new rounds of accumulation. How are things significantly different today?
As I see it, there are two new factors in play here: resource and environmental exhaustion, which can only be overcome by large-scale planning, and the widespread IT infrastructure, which makes possible economic planning beyond the dreams of the 1930s. Both of those tend toward socialist solutions.
I don’t really understand how a large-scale break down of accumulation leads to something which is exploitative and hierarchical and not capitalist and not socialist, unless he’s talking about the “Mad Max” scenario. Even that would seem to lead back to capitalism.
Wallerstein is not saying that socialism is inevitable which was the position of mechanical marxist predictions in the past about the demise of capitalism. The Second and Third International prophecies about the end of capitalism tied together the thesis of the "inevitable end of capitalism" with the thesis of the "inevitable emergence of socialism."
The latter was deterministically thought as a result of the former. In Wallerstein we have the thesis of the "inevitable end of capitalism" without the "inevitable emergence of socialism."
As a matter of fact, Wallerstein is very insistent on the problem that the new historical system that emerge might be worst than capitalism and that all will depend on our agency and political struggles in the next decades. The thesis of the inevitable end of capitalism as a historical system that have lasted 500 years, is very well argued by Wallerstein not in THE NATION essay but in his books
Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism like other historical systems in the past: they rise and demise, they have a beginning and they have an end. The Roman Empire was a particular form of world-system that Wallerstein calls World-Empire and that lasted one-thousand years.
I have proudly voted for Nader every time he ran.
I understand the H1N1 virus has brown skin, isn't Christian and hates us for our freedoms!
KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!
You're either with us or the virus!
I have proudly attached an American flag to my car along with a picture of the virus with a line thru it!
Bring America Back !!!!....All of which proves that some virus are lesser
evils than other virus ! But wait, regular flu kills some 36,000 USA
residents each season, and swine flu is not expected to do that even in
pandemic terms !!! So would we vote for the swine or the regular ???
****The Tamiflu Vaccine, which apparently is helpful on the current Swine strain, was developed as the response to the predicted Bird Flu pandemic.
Hey, if it works, let's go with it !
The CDC is now working on a Swine-specific Vaccine, so I'm not sure I
agree with Mr Nader's claims of lethargy. None of us are mindreaders,
including the medical community, and it seems we always have a shortage of
doctors and nurses.
****Aftermath 9/11. were we not told by our Govt the Anthrax Virus was a
follow-up attack by Terrorists, infiltrating the Congressional mail systems
just as the cave-dwelling boogieman did at the Twin Towers ??? To this day,
the Capitol Hill Mails are delayed endlessly due to the scanning processes for anthrax. It's us against the Evil Bacterium, Right ??? Nader thinks so !
****After years, the FBI felt the need to come up with a Patsy to blame for
all the Anthrax Scares--indeed they found a likely guy--a reaearcher close to the NSA where there were known similar strains. But, after protesting his
innocence that Patsy won a convincing lawsuit against the FBI !
So then, the FBI needed a new Anthrax Patsy==which they say they found in
another researcher of the bacterium==then as fate would have it, that Patsy turns up dead from apparent and very questionable Suicide==case closed, dead
Patsies tell no tales, nor do they bring lawsuits !!
****Mainstream Media had us very Dizzy about Anthrax, and how could those
rotten terrorists infiltrate our Postal System ? Would Nader prefer to blame medical personnel shortages for not protecting us ??
**Or, will Mr Nader rant on about Lethargy until the FBI finds the Need to come up with a Swine Flu Patsy ??????????????
MEXICAN CARTELS, ANYONE ???
How 'bout we push Congress and the Pres. for single payer healthcare. We all have a right to decent medical care not controlled by the insurance companies. With millions unable to afford a doctor's visit how are they to obtain help if they contract this Swine Flu, eh?!
Henry,
"The Real Global Crisis is marked by poverty, economic collapse, ethnic strife, death and destruction, the derogation of civil rights and the demise of State social programs. The EU announcement of the swine flu pandemic inevitably serves to weaken the social protest movement which has spread across Europe."
I think you'll appreciate this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13433
CAFOS, deadzones, corporate monoculture, this is the beginning of the collapse of the "mono" mindset. A turning of attention begins, cessation of support of failing practices, don't do it anymore, cease and desist, do nothing doing. Ancient Chinese notion of wu wei. Everyone knows it... few do it. This is why grassroots matter, from the bottom.
Funny, Ralph doesn't refer to industrial meat production as being a source for the pandemic, a suggestion made repeatedly in articles published here for the last week.
Instead, he recognizes deficiencies in public health programs both at home and the world as a whole.
Yet, he doesn't address the problem of Diarrhea caused by inadequate human waste disposal, responsible for more annual deaths than TB, AIDS and malaria combined. At least not with great specificity,it is "other infectious diseases". But this fundamental problem leaves millions much more vulnerable to flu infections than they otherwise might be. Indeed, even if the current flu virus develops into a full scale pandemic, it is doubtful that mortality rates in the U.S. will exceed the "normal" annual toll, whereas millions are likely to die in the developing world for precisely the reason they they do not have adequate sanitation and the World Bank and IMF have totally neglected this problem for decades insisting instead on such measures as "liberalizing financial markets" to ease access for investors in rich countries, draconian loan repayment programs and developing sources for cheap imports based on the exploitation of labor.
There are other signs that, over the years, Ralph himself has become rather lethargic.
Jeevee
Too many words, friends. How about trying the art of condensation?
There is no Trust. There is only theft.
Mr. Nader, you have shown yourself to be brilliant, well spoken, prophetic and just.
To bad that the people are really shepple, and voted for the lesser of two evils and not you.
You talk straight to people, but they don't understand or don't listen.
My feelings exactly. I was even more in tears when he was given far fewer votes than in 2000 despite the fact that both parties showed their destructive selling out. Nader deserved at least 5 million votes to say the least. That the electorate wouldn't even give him 1 million angers me to no end. I would have supported Obama if he had been his pre 2005 self but the worse he got, the more I was disillusioned with him. Maybe Matt Gonzolas will take his place in 2012?
There are plenty of people you can write in for the various political races in 2010, 2012. The write-in candidates need not be backed by any organized party. The crucial message sent is two-fold: 1.) we don't need no party backing, 2.) we only care about a candidate's principles, to support the people's interests, and to suppress elite interests.
We can't send the message by voting least worst elite candidate. The 100 million USans who voted for elites in 2008 own the wars, own the bankster bailouts, and own the rampant speculation, price inflation, economic instability, the deterioration of the rule of law, the melting permafrost, and all the rest of the destruction.
That's true too. I've always voted on the issues and not on the party which may explain why I rarely voted for a Republican or Democrat even on the local level elections. On the other progressive site, alternet.org, it was quite amusing how one Obamabot went out of her way to say that Obama was "viable" while Nader wasn't. Sometimes I wonder on some of these supposedly "liberal" and/or "progressive" sites if these same people realize that they're really no different from the rightwingers on sites such as townhall.com. I believe that the final vote count for the elites in 2008 was closer to 130 million.
P.S.: I'll admit I had a tough time choosing between Nader and Mckinney when I voted. I actually loved them both and wished they had run a joint ticket. While I don't judge a candidate by party affiliation, I think that somewhere there has to be some organization and a party to unite on but I think it's getting there despite all the obstacles. In some states the Libertarians and Greens are making some headway while in others, it's still a long ways. On a positive note, in states where they're making headways, I hear that the Democrats and Republicans there are more receptive to their constituents compared to states where 3rd parties are completely irrelevant. That sure says a lot in and of itself. If even a few dozens seats in Congress went Independent in 2010, it's still possible that Obama may change his tune but that would remain to be seen.
The question remains whether the folks who voted for Obama and now regretting it will give the non-monied Independent candidates a chance or fall for the same old two-party tricks come 2010, 2012, and beyond.
I believe it may have been ralph himself who said, "voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil"
I saw it on a bumber sticker last fall. But it might have been Howard Zinn. :)
It's great that people want to vote third party, but I hope everyone keeps writing/calling the Democrats in power because pushing them to be better is important as well.
I am 100% aware of the reality of the current Democrats, but historically, when the Democrats are in power they can be pushed to the Left. For example, the Democrats under FDR were pressured by popular movements to create jobs programs. Just saying that we ought to have multiple strategies.
It no longer matters whether the Senate ratifies treaties or not. We have treaties on human rights. We have treaties against torture. We have laws that say criminals ought to be prosecuted. But politicians nowadays will only adher to provisions that are politically popular at any point in time. No one in government believes in the Constitution. Not the President. Not Congress. And I suppose not we The People either, or most of those now in office would by now be long gone or under such pressure that they would at least give some indication that they might adhere to the law even if they didn't intend to follow through. If this is hope we can believe in, belief in these folks is hopeless.
http://www.gpln.com
.
USan MDs, please go back to your prestigious $350k/year jobs prescribing $2 mil techno-drugs to the gilded rich. Poor little destitute Cuba will handle all infectious disease outbreaks among the world's 6 bil peasants.
I like Nader... However I believe he did the green party a disservice by running as an independent in 2008... This splitting the progressive third party vote... Nader is able to effectively get out his message of consumer protection and corporate corruption without the quadrennial election theatrics... Had Nader stood behind Mckinney after she got the nomination and stumped for her... the green party would have acquired the 5% necessary for matching funds and have a place on the ballot in future elections...
It was Nader's choice to go it alone, which is why many of his supporters from 1996, 2000, & 2004 abandoned him in 2008 publicly and at the ballot box... Maher and Moore begged him not to run, which was TV sillyness... They should have been asking him what his true core motivations for running as an independent were... Did it play into the long term strategy of actually building a viable progressive third party to challenge the existing corporate power structure...? No...? Was it really an effective platform to educate Americans about the need for pandemic prevention measures...? No...? Or was it a vain gesture by Nader that kept many liberals from realizing that the Green party is much larger and more diverse than one man's personality...? where even Nader admits he is not in it to win it, but just wants to rock the boat...?
Trying to shoot the moon is great and all... Makes good theatre... But it usually leaves you without
I like Nader's focus on bringing worthy fresh candidates to the main stage, instead of blindly stumping for the green party.
Having the same candidate run repeatedly is the style in many foreign countries. People really get to know the candidate of decades of the candidate experiencing and reacting to the politics over a good chunk of recent history. It provides a much better informed and trusting relationship with the politician.
The green party could become corrupt. Blinding supporting the party is how we got into the 2 party mess we are in today.
I also like McKinney and Gonzales and I'm glad we're getting to know them as well, since Nader can't keep running indefinitely.
Nader helped McKinney by not running against her and letting her win the green party debates. (I was there)
Nader might have just wanted to be asked to run on the Green ticket. I think he is beyond having to compete for the ticket.
I don't think adding up the 3rd party votes would cross the 5% threshold so it doesn't make sense to demand all eggs in one basket.
To blame such a fine defender of the public for running independent or for joining or not joining this or that party is ridiculous.
Ralph Nader is the only sincere politician I've ever known. He is good at distilling complex problems down to their source ingredients and then loyal to the nation by campaigning only on the merits of those issues beneficial to American citizens.
He won't take dirty money. He won't bend or bow to the power elite. He won't enrich himself beyond what he needs for charity and for an ability to carry on his crusade.
And his crusade is steadfastly for the little guy. The foolish little guy sitting in front of the TV set watching American Idol, not even knowing that a man labors day and night for his welfare.
You can't ask for better loyalty than that.
TJ
"To thine Own self be true" - Shakespere
HenryMccarty makes his point. Other diseases in Third World countries--in the same amount of time that the h1n1 has been identified--have already killed thousands.
As usual, I, too, tend to suspect this "news-intensive" flu as a weapon of mass DISTRACTION. Why? To misdirect attention from the economic crisis caused by the Fed, Wall Street and their plants in Obama's inner circle?
To actually call attention to a retrovirus that might "reshuffle" into a lethal incurable strain?
With limited info I cannot tell.
In the meantime my bullshit detector antennae are on standby...
Does anyone really care what this man thinks? The same Ralph Nader who shocked even Fox News by wondering whether "Barack Obama will be an Uncle Sam for the nation or an Uncle Tom for the corporations." Good one, Ralph, very subtle!
I think the man is losing it -- whatever he had!
Could it be because he feels himself becoming less and less relevant? Because Al Gore -- Nobel Prize winner -- has more credibility on environmental matters than Nader could ever dream of? Because Bill Clinton continues to command respect around the world? Because the vast majority of Americans aren't buying that tiresome "lesser of two evils" cliche? Because Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton) generated more excitement in the primaries alone than Nader did in several "presidential" campaigns? Or because he has to live with himself for helping to bring us George W Bush?
That's right, flashback to 2000 -- Florida, New Hampshire, and very nearly New Mexico, states where Uncle Ralph knew he could tip the balance! And where did that campaign money come from? (Of course he got lots of face time on Fox!)
One previous writer stated that the "people" (I guess that includes me) "either don't understand or don't want to listen." I'd go for the second possibility. And that writer should explain what "shepple" means; it's not in the Oxford American Dictionary.
See you around, Ralph -- I thank you for seat belts and George W Bush!