Dr Asoka Bandarage, a scholar and practitioner, has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke (where she received tenure), Georgetown, American and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad. Her research interests include social philosophy and consciousness; environmental sustainability, human well-being and health, global political-economy, ethnicity, gender, population, social movements and South Asia.
A mother and doctor tend to a young girl with COVID-19 at an intensive care ward in the western region of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Evgeniy Maloletka
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka , Dec 1 2020 (IPS) – According to the at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths.
And according to the , as job losses escalate due to lockdowns, nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing livelihoods, access to food and the ability to survive. The states that ‘With some 2.6 billion people around the world in some kind of lockdown, we are conducting arguably the largest psychological experiment ever.’
As governments and corporations tighten and technological surveillance, curtailing privacy and democratic protest, much of humanity is succumbing to anxiety, depression and a sense of powerlessness. Countries with some of the harshest lockdowns, such as India, have seen .
Pandemic Narrative and Dissent
Dominant global political and economic institutions and the media present their pandemic narrative as based on scientific authority. However, there is increasing dissension on the origin and prevention of the virus within the biomedical profession. Many physicians and scientists are or the product of a leak from a lab experimenting with coronaviruses and bioweapons.
There is concern over the accuracy of and false positives, as well as the classification of deaths simply as COVID-19 deaths when an overwhelming number of deaths are related to , such as diabetes and heart disease. Even according to November 25, 2020 CDC statistics, COVID-19 was the sole cause of death mentioned in only 6% of the deaths.
The disproportionately higher rates of Covid deaths among , for example, are due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease than among more privileged U.S. communities.
The Covid pandemic has not been the ‘’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.
Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the . The top five U.S. billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this period.
Among the pandemic profiteers are CEOs of companies like Zoom and Skype providing video conferencing, and Amazon providing online shopping to citizens under lockdown. Yet the success of these companies has not translated into better wages and safety conditions for their employees.
However, the political and ideological power of the billionaire class and their influence over domestic and global policymaking are increasing. Relevant in this regard is billionaire ’ central role in the development and marketing of vaccines and interest in use of vaccines as a method of .
The pharmaceutical industry, i.e. , (including vaccine manufacturers) are known for inflating prices, avoiding taxes and manipulating the political process to maximize profit. Unfortunately, this corrupt industry is a key player in the race to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
The incoming in the US has received extensive funding from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they have not agreed to cut the cost of a possible coronavirus vaccine developed with federal research dollars.
Rather, the Biden administration, also heavily funded by the big , finance and defense sectors, is poised to facilitate ‘;’ the initiative to remake the post-pandemic world order by the World Economic Forum.
The ‘Great Reset’
The World Economic Forum (WEF), which identifies itself as ‘the international organization for public-private partnership,’ (i.e., like the , a geopolitical corporate power agency) sees the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery.’
Speaking at a conference organized by the WEF in June 2020, former US Secretary of State, :
“Forces and pressures that were pushing us into crisis over the social contract are now exacerbated……The world is coming apart, dangerously, in terms of global institutions and leadership.”
The ‘Great Reset’ envisioned by the WEF seeks to address these challenges by radical global restructuring. It seeks to reinvent ‘the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons…to build a new social contract…,’ with sustainable development and resilience as its ultimate objectives.
At its next annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos, Switzerland in January 2021, the WEF is expected to adopt the Great Reset and also incorporate youth leaders from around the world into the initiative through a virtual summit.
The stated goals of sustainability and resilience are laudable, but many are questioning the true objectives of both the WEF and the Great Reset. The pandemic simulation called , for example, was conducted in October 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 outbreak by the in conjunction with the and the Bill and Melinda .
The simulation predicted up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus. Many are wondering why these powerful organizations, having apparently already run the exact scenario as a test, failed to prevent or at least prepare the world for the imminent viral outbreak.
The global political economy has been moving in the direction of increasing technological and market integration through social media, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In the wake of COVID-19, the trends towards digitalization and commoditization of economic and social relations have increased.
The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to accelerate and as well as expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals. In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.
The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will . And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones ´ But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless, appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.
Resistance
The mainstream media establishment tends to cast all critiques of the dominant Covid narrative and solutions as ‘.’ Yet, more and more people are questioning the narrative on the origin and management of the pandemic and, instead, see the need to shift to a truly democratic, just and ecological civilization.
Many of the around the world have had a limited focus on social restrictions and personal freedom, desires usually in tune with the individualism of globalized consumer culture. While these have gained some attention in the mainstream media by their acceptability, the more focused and progressive demands for social and economic rights by civil society groups have received scant attention.
These include demands by , such as Oxfam International, to make COVID-19 medicines and for all. There is also a demand for a , to be led by independent scientists, to gather evidence on the origin and evolution of COVID-19. In addition, there is a call for an , to bring perpetrators of the pandemic to justice, whether they be from the US or China.
The overall objective of these demands is in greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses. The demand for enforcement of the calls on the ‘nations of the world, China, Russia, the US, to come together to enforce better verification systems for preventing the production of in the future, before the world is put through multiple pandemics to come’. These are concerns to be included in an alternative ethical, wise and compassionate ‘Great Reset.’
The Covid pandemic is a turning point, an opportunity to change. The reset we need now is not the creation of a ‘post-human, post-nature’ world defined by unregulated corporate-led growth of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We need to balance digitalization and commoditization with an ecological reset, a way of living that respects the environment, promotes agroecology, bioregionalism and .
We need to raise our consciousness and understanding of humanity as a species in nature, our connectedness to each other and the rest of planetary life.
