AS with all pandemics, the effects of coronavirus are inflamed by the existence of a much bigger global contagion: capitalism. In time, coronavirus will recede and a vaccine will be found. Already documentary teams are being assembled inside the BBC to provide the inside story of this global pandemic. The state broadcaster’s usefulness during this health crisis has been of the chocolate teapot variety, seemingly content to acquiesce dutifully in the Government’s daily spun responses. But hey, as long as we get a decent Panorama out of it.

All over the world, heads of government will incentivise their speechwriters to produce nuggets of hope and wisdom that will seem to meet people’s expectations of change. These soliloquies, designed to bring forth tears from glass eyes, will feature idioms like “better future” and “shared humanity” and “profound truths”. Much of it will be horse manure.

In those other places where real influence resides, the lexicology will be slightly different. It will include “leveraging downturns” and “outsourcing recovery” and “monetising relief”. The recovery won’t be measured in mitigating human suffering and economic hardship but in exploiting it.

Those who stand to gain from this spent billions securing access to Tory policy-makers and having dinner with the Prime Minister at fundraising events. What happens in the months ahead will determine whether this has been money well spent. Spoiler alert: they have never previously had cause to regret it.

The contagion of capitalism possesses the same characteristics as viruses. It is part of a group that can lie dormant in humans for entire lifetimes without turning into something altogether nastier. But they can burst forth without warning when a given set of conditions presents itself. The others are the freemarket virus, the monetaristvirus and the profitmotive virus.

The toxicity quotient of these viruses can vary from region to region. Often they can remain undetected or at least function in a controlled environment in communities not lacking in most of life’s necessities such as food, shelter, clothing and gainful employment. As soon as there is a perceptible deficit in any of these then capitalism can become virulent.

What makes the capitalism contagion even more dangerous than organic viruses like coronavirus is its ability to disguise itself in the host body. Often it dupes a country’s natural defence system into thinking that capitalism is necessary for the smooth functioning of democracy. This belongs to the wealth-creation lie – that industrialists and corporations out of the goodness of their hearts keep societies healthy by creating jobs.

It disguises the fact that if they could find a way of making their goods without having to pay people they surely would. Thus, they do the next best thing: spend lots of money lobbying governments to make tax cuts, keep wages down and harry trade unions.

Another formidable weapon in the arsenal of the capitalvirus is its ability to remain a few steps ahead of all the known vaccines. Indeed, governments have had the vaccines at their disposal since capitalvirus first began to infect democracies. Research has shown that public ownership of all means of production kills capitalvirus at source. Citizens are paid a fair wage, there is universal healthcare and unearned privilege can’t buy you advantages.

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The trick here is to create a need in these areas using artificial means. The easiest way of doing this is simply by staging a war somewhere, preferably as far away from your own shores as possible. The US has become particularly adept at this.

First, you create a false bogeyman somewhere unstable like the Middle East. Then you invade his country by pretending that he presents a threat to your security. Great care must be taken to ensure that the patsy nation of choice doesn’t pose any military threat to you. The next task is to “rebuild” this country in the name of democracy. Then you issue official “imple tabernus vestri” (fill your boots) licences like the ones issued to Halliburton after the Iraq war.

Other, cheaper options are available. In Britain, the Tories have perfected a particularly robust means of ensuring that known anti-capitalism vaccines are kept in check. The most effective method to date is by infiltrating the Labour Party. Thus they are given early warnings of anything troubling like socialism. Admittedly, they had a close shave with the Corbyn vaccine but it’s all back to normal again with the appointment of an actual knight of the realm as Labour leader. Result! There won’t be any calls to tackle the spread of capitalvirus any time soon.

Capitalvirus has played a blinder during the coronavirus pandemic. In those areas where it has created a need, coronavirus has thrived. This will pay rich dividends in the aftermath as governments scramble to pay significantly more than the going rate to obtain protective equipment and, eventually, vaccines.

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THE capitalvirus has been seen at its most virulent in the care sector. Somehow, it has managed to convince governments that the best way to care for the elderly and the infirm is to leave them to the mercy of the cowboys and pirates who run care homes and retirement institutions.

After years of being told that you must obtain a mortgage to obtain financial “security” (another lie) you are then forced to hand it over to the care home privateers as soon as you exhibit the first signs of oncoming codgerdom. It means that coronavirus can run unchecked in these homes, thus wiping entire swathes of crusties off the nation’s wage bill.

Capitalvirus has also gnawed away at the NHS undetected for a generation. This has been permitted to happen through judicious government deployment of austerityvirus. You reduce NHS funding thus creating the conditions for capitalvirus to flourish through stealth privatisation. And then when a global pandemic manifests itself, the shares in firms like those specialising in anti-coronavirus cleaning solutions go through the roof. In the months to come the government’s favourite outsourcing companies will also creep in. The hedge fund predators are already off and running.

When a full analysis is made of those who died of Covid-19 during this pandemic, it will be shown that not only the elderly and the infirm were disproportionately affected but also the most disadvantaged. There are some deep within the bowels of government who will consider this to be a wee Brucie bonus. It is, after all, a distillation of their entire social policy for the past decade.

In time, a vaccine will become available to tame this coronavirus. But until we deploy the vaccine for capitalvirus our most disadvantaged people will continue to die prematurely of all those other contagions that we seem comfortable with: homelessness, food shortages, health inequality and poverty.

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