Adam Riggio: The deadly failure of reopening business in a pandemic
Photo Credit: (Narcity / Google Images)
Written by: Adam Riggio
The general reaction to this weekend’s scene of thick crowds of people gathering at Trinity-Bellwoods Park on the first hot weekend of Toronto’s first COVID summer was not exactly sympathetic. They were rapidly denounced by Toronto’s hypocritical mayor, the Ontario government angrily paused any further reopening, and other leaders around Canada are depicting Torontonians as lessons in what not to do in a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands.
Some defended the park-goers as suffering from isolation fatigue. Having been under lockdown for eleven weeks, social disconnection has caused literally millions of people to experience depression and other mental health instability. After months of seething with anxiety through the boredom of social isolation, the least hint that you are able to go out, connect, or simply hug a friend again feels like ecstasy.
Our fragile states of mind are understandable. Ontario public health authorities cited family visits over Mother’s Day weekend as the source of the province’s new spike in COVID cases. Take a moment to process what this means: Desperate to see our families again, many of us met as we normally would, and these meetings caused loving family members to infect each other with a violently aggressive virus.
Corporate Priorities Over Public Health
Fundamentally, the messaging of governments around Canada will confuse people because, in an important way, the plan of our federal and provincial governments is dangerous, deadly nonsense. As Canadians approach their third month in lockdowns, provincial governments have begun announcing plans to reopen businesses and allow public gatherings.
The news that public parks were reopening for small gatherings of people did nothing to prevent those small gatherings from happening in very large numbers. The same thing will occur as stores open.
Major chains like Winners, Homesense, and Value Village are reopening shortly, and while their locations must obey social distancing guidelines, being in such stores is markedly unsafe. COVID spreads happily through indoor air conditioning systems, and it will be practically impossible to scour every donated item at the second-hand retail giant to prevent viral transmission.
Yet many remain oblivious to the dangers of reopening retail stores and public places when there is still no treatment for COVID. Quite a few folks are actually excited to risk their lives hunting for pants and cookware. The causes why are more complex than the desperation of the depressed and stir-crazy yearning for their adult playgrounds.
A Reopened Business Is Not a Safe Business
We progressives often fail to consider one popular (at least in Canada) thought process: that if the government says it’s okay to do something, that makes it okay. Most people actually trust their government to look after citizens’ best interests as best they can. So there is often public confusion of reopening businesses with it being safe to operate those businesses.
Government and businesses are reopening largely only for economic reasons. Leaders are not prepared to run deep deficits supporting the population with programs like CERB. So instead of putting our economies on hold until we have truly defeated COVID’s contagion, our leaders think of CERB only as a temporary stopgap measure.
CERB was only ever supposed to be an employment insurance supplement for a few months so that businesses can adjust to a COVID-infested world, then set people back to work. There are a huge number of problems with this strategy, as you can likely imagine.
First of all, businesses will not be able to run at the productive capacity that they did before COVID existed. For example, business reopening in Italy show how productivity in many sectors will fall as long as keeping workers and customers alive remains a priority. Businesses in Italy’s outbreak epicentre, Milan, have reopened with redesigned interiors that have much lower capacities, and greater distance between people. Many business owners in the city still doubt that they can climb out of the red with such restrictions.
I have already discussed another problem, which is that people going shopping or partying as businesses and public spaces reopen will overcompensate in reaction to the last three months of deepening loneliness and depression. This will increase the danger that already exists from opening economic activity without an effective COVID treatment available, because people will act recklessly.
Just So You Know, There Is No Cure
The final reason why reopening the economy, even with strict guidelines and slow movement, is so dangerous: COVID has no cure. I want to reiterate this, so that my readers know just how dangerous our situation is.
COVID has no cure!
Yes, pharmaceutical labs in corporate and government settings around the world are working hard and working together to develop vaccines and other treatments for COVID. But that drug development process is corrupt in many places, and its major actors are motivated not by public good, but by profit.
One of the promising new COVID treatments is a drug called Remdesivir. It was actually developed a decade ago at an American drug company with the rather unfortunate name of Gilead Sciences. The molecule was effective in fighting several viruses, but its development was mothballed when Gilead management decided that it would not be profitable enough to develop, trial, and market.
COVID has changed everything, however, with Gilead executives now seeing dollar, euro, rupee, yuan, lira, ruble, and peso signs whenever they look at Remdesivir lab reports. Gilead is currently in conflict with their partners in the US government over who has the right to the patent.
Gilead wants all patent profits for itself because it created the molecule in the first place. Meanwhile, the American state is asking for a share of profits because the government invested billions of dollars in developing the drug from the molecule. Ultimately, Gilead looks to reap a financial windfall from Remdesivir since demand will be massive and necessary, so they will be able to charge insurance companies, governments, hospitals, and patients whatever the company considers reasonable.
Of course, despite all the excitement, there is also some intriguing evidence that Remdesivir is not actually effective against COVID at all, another empty driver of hype alongside hydroxycloroquine and liquid bleach.
We Are Victims of Lies and Optimism
I am not writing this to give anyone a sense of optimism. Optimism in the face of the COVID pandemic is largely impossible, despite the desperately happy faces that people throw on, hoping that hope alone will change the world. I will leave you with truths.
Millions will die. Most governments and leaders are content to let them die, since mass global death will discourage opposition to their destructive and corrupt activities. Most people actually trust their governments to look after them in times of trouble, and that is a mistake that will cost their lives and prosperity.
At this pace, the COVID contagion will not be over in a few months, as our leaders desperately wanted us to believe. As we ourselves desperately want to believe. It will likely be many years before a reliable COVID vaccine is developed, and it will be distributed not for the public good but for the profit of a few hundred shareholders. If there ever is a genuine COVID vaccine, it will never reach the billions of poor people most at risk.
It is more likely that the economic toll will collapse our governments’ and corporations’ abilities to develop such a drug at all. There.
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