Reflections on Corona

Injustice is like a row of dominoes; if the chain breaks in one place, it hits us all in waves. The world has been in turmoil for months, as if all this malice began with a single virus; country after country is being swept away by it, and the death toll stands in the hundreds of thousands. In truth, what needed to be done was clear from the very first days: to stay at home. Yet, we failed to do this—not for ourselves, not for our loved ones, and not even for the sake of strangers.

Some will remember that the austerity policies spreading across the globe in 2008 triggered massive protests; people took to the streets in significant numbers to demand that banks not be bailed out, that social rights not be stripped away, and that they be allowed to live under better conditions. When the call was made to halt work and daily routines for just a few days, the vast majority turned a deaf ear once more—yet those days were the harbingers of the present, and we had done nothing then either.

The reality is that if we could have halted our working lives for just a single day, we would have dealt a devastating blow to big capital; if we had taken action for our warming planet, we could have prevented the extinction of numerous species; if we had demanded justice, equality, and fundamental rights not just for ourselves but for others, the world could have been a far more bearable place. We didn't do it. We forgot.

The earth did not begin its rotation with us, and it will carry on turning long after we are gone; if we hadn't forgotten our mortality, we wouldn't carry on consuming so ruthlessly as if our existence were infinite. If we hadn't been so selfish, if we had been content with just what we needed, if we had shared our excess with others, everything could have been entirely different today. We didn't do it. With a single virus, the lives of many among us came to a halt—yet in truth, our lives had ground to a standstill long ago, even as we lived under the illusion of running within diseased societies.

Let us turn to our main subject, the coronavirus. Hundreds of videos and articles were circulated, offering advice on how to escape the virus and what measures to take. Countless people, officials, and experts briefed the public daily; some information was apt, while some did nothing but muddy the waters. Because typing and posting from smartphones is effortless, a pollution of data sickened our stomachs. Everyone set themselves up as a doctor to us! Once again, we didn't pause.

The virus originated in China and spread across the globe. This is the narrative presented to us, and we shall see in time how accurate it proves to be. Europe and America stand among the hardest-hit regions. Powerful imperialist nations utterly failed when faced with this virus as well. While thousands succumbed to the coronavirus every single day, healthcare workers carried on with their mandatory service, putting their own lives on the line. Governments lagged in securing the necessary protective measures for doctors and the entire healthcare staff. This was not limited to Turkey; because necessary precautions were neglected across Europe, a vast number of healthcare workers lost their lives. Meanwhile, it is worth reminding those who might have forgotten: Britain is no longer a member of the European Union, having departed on 31 January 2020. That detail seems to have been lost in the noise too.

What I truly want to address in this piece is how Britain faced this virus with complete disregard for its public, placing labourers, doctors, teachers, and many frontline workers in direct peril. Since the implementation of the 2008 austerity measures, labourers have been working seven days a week, yet they still cannot make ends meet. Forced to carry on under worsening conditions day by day, the working class and the impoverished cannot find the time to question this reality, let alone join a trade union to seek their rights. Before the end of the month arrives, they are left without a single penny in their pockets.

Regrettably, healthcare workers in Britain also bore the brunt of the virus. Numerous doctors and nurses lost their lives to the coronavirus. The journalist Sonia Sodha, who drew attention to this matter from a different perspective, faced a barrage of racist abuse on her social media accounts. Sodha highlighted that the deceased doctors and healthcare staff belonged entirely to the BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) community. There was but a single reason for her addressing this issue: racism! Racism is the name of that grand affliction which we pretend does not exist, yet which settles upon us increasingly like a plague. The reality is that the healthcare professionals to whom we entrust our lives, who work on the front lines day and night risking everything, face severe racism. Indeed, they state that describing the discrimination they endure from managers within the NHS as mere "racism" would be an understatement. Yet, four out of every ten healthcare workers within the NHS are comprised of BAME and immigrant doctors and nurses. Sodha continues her report: "From the first Caribbean nurses who arrived after the Second World War, the NHS was built on the backs of both immigrant and British labourers; by the late 1960s, half of all doctors below the rank of consultant were not British."

Although this arduous period brought by the virus is often judged as if it struck all people equally, the greatest loss belonged once again to the labourers. They announced they would pay eighty per cent of the wages of low-paid workers. Labourers couldn't survive on their full salaries as it was, so a resource of eighty per cent will certainly offer great relief! Provided, of course, that workers haven't been dismissed in the meantime, and they can find a worker left to pay. Furthermore, the first remedies were introduced for bosses and businesses. Instead of taking from the wealthy to distribute to the public, the state demonstrated at the very first opportunity precisely which class it stood beside. We were not surprised! Most employers chose to dismiss their staff as an immediate solution. The government insisted that essential workers must carry on going to work without providing any safety measures, and among these individuals were bus drivers. Although bus companies attempted to take precautions for their workers' safety by introducing rigorous cleaning regimes, staff emphasised that due to the lack of proper personal protective equipment, the danger persisted. They say everyone will contract this virus; clearly, waiting for the government to act to determine whether we live or die would be a grave error. And over time, we witnessed everyone beginning to contract the virus; what they said proved true.

And the women. According to a study, women working for low wages in fields such as social care, nursing, and pharmacy face a significantly higher risk of contracting the virus. According to Autonomy, an economic think tank, out of three point two million workers employed in the highest-risk roles, roughly two point five million are women. The government recalled thousands of retired nurses back to duty to cope with Covid-19. Moreover, healthcare workers were urged to apply for roles to fill the vacancies left by care home staff who had contracted the illness and gone into self-isolation. Care homes and caregiving roles are precisely the sectors where women are predominantly employed.

Because the government's strategy regarding the virus lacked clarity from the very start, it faced heavy criticism from numerous medical experts and professors. Within this context, two prominent arguments stood out: that the public would develop herd immunity, and that deaths could reach five hundred thousand. The reality remains that Britain possessed a Covid-19 mortality rate a hundred times higher than Japan, indicating that deaths would steadily climb—and so they did; in the face of such a complete lack of precautions, this bitter outcome was inevitable.

They claim this global pandemic caught the entire world unprepared. Yet the world has been in turmoil since the banking crisis of 2008. Even if this global pandemic subsides or a solution is found through a vaccine, financial hardships will not resolve. Indeed, the crisis runs far deeper; governments will carry on bailing out failing banks, and the price will be paid by ordinary people whose social benefits are stripped away completely. Unemployment and insecure jobs will multiply. These crises will bring chaos in their wake; neither the streets nor our homes will remain secure. For years, we have been shouting, "We are sinking together," yet how many people actually hear our voice remains unknown.

We have been anxious for a very long time. Because our world is warming, the climate is shifting, and our planet faces the peril of total destruction. Because the human population is vast, and since resources are not divided equally, they fall short! Because the class struggle remains at the very forefront of our greatest worries, just as it has been in every era. Every age has witnessed its own form of conflict; who knows, perhaps our war was this virus, within this thoroughly entangled era we live in.