The causes of the pandemic

Don't blame the bat
 
Silvia Ribeiro, a researcher born in Uruguay who has lived in Mexico for more than three decades, is the director for Latin America of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC), with consultative status before the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Food sovereignty and the impact of biotechnological developments on health and the environment are some of the topics on which she investigates and that led her to question, from the start of the pandemic, the absence, not only of the description of the causes but also of the proposals to modify them. In this interview he refers to this nodal point, to the capitalist production system and to what we can envision, from the obligatory isolation, as the future.

By Claudia Korol: --Although we have been talking about this virus for months, it is worth asking: What is Covid -19?


 
- It is a strain -the one that gives rise to the current declaration of a pandemic- of the coronavirus family, which causes generally mild respiratory diseases, but which can be serious for a percentage of those affected, due to their vulnerability. It is part of a wide family of viruses, which like all mutates very quickly. It is the same type of virus that gave rise to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Asia, and to acute respiratory syndrome in the Middle East (MERS).

--Where does it come from?

Although there is a broad, scientific consensus, which is of animal origin, and its origin is attributed to bats, it is not clear where it comes from, because the virus mutation is very fast, and there are many places where it is could have originated. With today's global intercom, it could have been moved from one location to another very quickly. What is known is that it begins to be a significant infection in a city in China. However, this is not the origin, but the place where it first manifests itself.

Rob Wallace, a biologist who has studied a century of pandemics for 25 years, and who is also a geographer, thus following the path of pandemics and viruses, says that all infectious viruses in recent decades are closely related to industrial animal husbandry. We -from the ETC group and from GRAIN-, we had already seen the emergence of avian influenza in Asia, and of swine flu (which they later named H1N1 to make it a more aseptic name), also of SARS, which is related to avian influenza, which are viruses that arise in a situation where there is a kind of factory of replication and mutation of viruses that is the industrial breeding of animals. It is because there are many animals that are together, crowded. This is repeated in both chickens and pigs, which cannot move, and therefore tend to create many diseases. There are different strains of viruses, of bacteria, that move between many individuals in a small space. Animals are subjected to regular applications of pesticides, to eliminate another series of things that are inside the farm. There are also poisons in food - in general it is transgenic corn that is given to them. Everything is closely related to the business of selling transgenic fodder. They give them a quantity of antibiotics and antivirals, to prevent diseases, which is creating increasingly stronger resistance. The World Health Organization (WHO) called the animal husbandry industries, especially chicken, pigs, but also fish farming and turkeys, to stop applying so many antibiotics, because between 70 and 80% Of the antibiotics in the world, they are used in industrial animal husbandry. Since they are animals that have a depressed immune system, they are exposed to disease all the time, and they also give them antivirals. They give them antibiotics not so much to prevent disease, but to make them fatter faster. These overcrowded industrial breeding centers, from feedlot to pig, chicken and turkey farming, create a pathological situation of reproduction of resistant viruses and bacteria. But also, they are in contact with human beings who take them to the cities.

"But does it come from bats or not?"

 - There are people who wonder: “if it is said that it was found in a market and that it comes from bats, how does it get to the animals that are being raised? What happens is that the bats, the civets, and others that are supposed to have given rise to various viruses - even one of the theories is that the AIDS virus comes from a mutation of a virus that was present in apes - they expand them due to the destruction of the natural habitats of these species, which move to other places. Wild animals may have a reservoir of viruses, which within their own species are controlled, exist but are not making the animals sick, but they suddenly move to a medium where they become a virus-making machine, because they encounter many other strains and viruses. They reach these places displaced from their natural habitats. This has to do above all with deforestation, which paradoxically is also due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier. FAO recognizes that 70% of deforestation has to do with the expansion of the agricultural frontier. Even the FAO says that in countries like Brazil, where we have just seen everything that has happened with the fires, due to deforestation for livestock, the cause of deforestation is the expansion of the agricultural industry by more than 80%.

There are several factors that come together. Animals that come out of their natural habitats, be they bats or other types of animals, can even be many types of mosquitoes that are created and made resistant by the use of pesticides. The entire system of toxic and chemical industrial agriculture also creates other viruses that cause disease. There are a number of disease vectors reaching overcrowding systems in cities, especially in marginal areas, of people who have been displaced and do not have adequate housing and hygiene conditions. A vicious circle of circulation between viruses is created.

Q: What do you think about the ways in which the pandemic is facing the world?

- Nothing that is happening right now is preventing the next pandemic. What is being discussed is how to deal with this particular pandemic, until hopefully at some point the virus itself finds a ceiling, because there is acquired resistance in a significant amount of the population. So this particular virus can go away, like SARS and MERS went away. It will no longer affect, but others will appear, or the same Covid 19 will be transformed into the Covid 20 or Covid 21, by another mutation, because all conditions remain the same. It is a perverse mechanism. The agro-industrial food system would have to be put into discussion, from the form of cultivation to the form of processing. All this vicious circle that is not being considered, causes that another pandemic is being prepared.

- Is it possible to locate those responsible for this pandemic?

- It is the typical mechanism of the capitalist system, which creates enormous problems that range from climate change to the contamination of waters, of the seas, the enormous health crisis that exists in countries due to poor nutrition, but also due to the toxins to which it is exposed, causing a health crisis in humans. Of course the capitalist system is not going to review it, because for that it would have to affect the interests of the transnational companies that are the ones that accumulate, those that concentrate both from the industrial breeding of animals, such as monocultures, like even forestry companies and deforestation done commercially. In each of the steps of the chain of the industrial agri-food system, we are going to find a few companies. We are talking about three, four, five, which dominate most of this area, as happens with the transgenics that are Bayer, Monsanto, Singenta, Basf, and Corteva. The same goes for those that produce fodder for animals. For example Cargill, Bunge, ADM. They all have interests in industrial animal husbandry because they are their main customer. Many times they are co-owners of these virus factories.

In addition to questioning the causes, ... they would have to be changed. And changing them questions the very foundations of the capitalist system. It is necessary to question production systems, especially the agri-food system immediately. But it is also related to many things. For example: who is most affected by the pandemic right now? To the most vulnerable people: those who do not have a home, those who do not have water. They are the same displaced by that system, and because they cannot access health systems.

- How is the response from the health systems?

- In these decades of neoliberalism, the need for primary health care systems has not been met, which is fundamental; But there are also no health systems to care now for all the people who are getting sick in many countries. The countries where there have been fewer deaths in relation to the population are countries that had health systems relatively capable of attending to their population. Those who have dismantled them have been worse off in the face of the pandemic. The system is unfair not only from production. It is unfair from consumption, because not everyone can consume the same. It is unfair in the impacts it causes on the most affected people, who are the most vulnerable. In some it will be due to age, but in many others it is due to diseases caused by the industrial agri-food system itself, such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, all cancers of the digestive system. All this is related to the same system that produces viruses. In the midst of that, come the "rescue" systems of the governments, and in all the countries of the world, as much as they say that they will first attend to the poor, although there may be that intention - in others there is not even such as in the United States - in reality what they are trying to save is the companies, because they say they are the engines of the economy. Then the same scheme is repeated. It goes back to saving the companies that created the problem.

Q: And what is the place of the pharmaceutical industries in the face of the pandemic?

Even in the face of the pandemic, the causes are not discussed, but new businesses are being sought, for example, with the vaccine. The entire vaccine business that is going on right now, to see who comes first, who patents it. Pharmaceutical companies are looking for the business. It is also a business for all computer companies, with virtual communications. Just before the pandemic, the famous GAFAM companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), were already the most valued companies at the market value level of their shares. And it is the companies that are making enormous profits, because there has been a substitution of direct communication, even more, to virtual communication. The rescue projects of the economy are going to support this type of companies, the pharmaceutical companies that are going to monopolize vaccines, the industrial agriculture companies that produce these viruses. It is like a permanent repetition of this type of unjust, class-oriented capitalist system, which affects those who were already badly affected much more.

It must also be said that 72% of the world's causes of death are due to non-communicable diseases: diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, hypertension. They are respiratory diseases but not by infectious contagion but by contamination in cities, with transportation. Everything that is being done now regarding the coronavirus is because it gives the illusion in the capitalist system, that it can be attacked. That if there is a pandemic it is a technological problem, and the answer is to create regulated situations in each country, which is a technological resolution.

- But is there any other possibility to face this crisis than that of social isolation?

- I want to clarify that I agree that measures of physical distancing, not social, should be taken, but that should be accompanied by measures that can support those who are unable to do so because of their vulnerability. The fact of selecting a particular disease as in this case is an infectious disease, to unleash the whole battery of what would be a global attack on the pandemic situation, on the one hand it does not question the causes, but on the other hand it installs a series of repressive measures including, very authoritative, from above, of saying to the people: "Do this, do the other, because we know what you have to do and what not." All this is related to not seeing the root of the problem, the causes, and at the same time, saying that the only ones who can handle the situation in which we live today globally, is from above, from governments, companies, which are the ones that they would provide the solution and therefore we should accept all the conditions they impose on us. Given this, I believe that it is essential to rescue and strengthen collective and bottom-up responses.

-- For example?

On the one hand, we need to understand that there is a food system that reaches 70% of the world population. There are very serious ETC and GRAIN research papers showing that 70% of the world population is supported by small-scale production of peasants, small farmers, also urban gardens, and other forms of food exchange and gathering that are small, decentralized, local. This is what feeds most of humanity. And it is not only healthier food, but it is the one that reaches most of the people. These alternatives should be strengthened and supported. It is like a paradigm to think solutions from below, decentralized, collective, of solidarity, to see how to take care of ourselves, in the face of a threat that can infect us, but also take care of each other, and continue working in the creation of cultures that are completely questioning and contrary to capitalist system, because it is what is making all humanity, nature, ecosystems and the planet sick.