Are we heading for a global plague?

[Adam D]

ZNet | Global Economics

A Deadly Plague of Slums

by Mike Davis; TomDispatch; February 03, 2004

Mass death soon may be coming to a neighborhood near you, and the Department of Homeland Security will be helpless to prevent it. The terrorist in this case will be a mutant offspring of influenza A subtype H5N1: the explosively spreading avian virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) worries will be the progenitor of a deadly global plague.



The most lethal massacre in human history was the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that culled more than 2 percent of humanity (40-50 million people) in a single winter. Although never proven, many researchers believe that the pandemic was caused by a bird virus that exchanged genes with a human strain and thus acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. Humans have little immune protection against such species' jumps.



The biological reservoir of influenza is the mixed agriculture of southern China where wild and domestic fowl, pigs (another influenza vector) and humans are brought into intense ecological contact in farms and markets.



Breakneck urbanization, a soaring demand for poultry and pork, and what Science magazine recently characterized as "denser concentrations of larger poultry farms without appropriate biological safeguards" create optimum conditions for the rapid evolution of viruses and their promiscuous passage from one species to another.



Influenza, indeed, is like a viral fashion industry: every winter changing styles (glycoprotein coats) to create new strains, but then, perhaps every 30 years, undergoing a revolution (species jump) that unleashes a virulent pandemic.



The last pandemic killed half a million people in 1968, but scientists interviewed by Nature and Science expressed fears that H5N1 might be on the verge of evolving into something more like the 1918-19 monster. Although so far we have confirmation only that it has been transmitted by direct contact with birds and especially their droppings, the current strain is far more lethal than last year's SARs epidemic that caused so much international havoc. As a result, a top researcher told Nature, "Everyone's preparing for the worst-case scenario." At this moment, WHO investigators are checking on the terrifying possibility that the first human-to-human transmission has already occurred in Vietnam.



Moreover H5N1 is spreading at a much higher velocity than previous avian flus. There have been outbreaks annually since 1997 -- a phenomenon that puzzled WHO researchers until they discovered that migratory birds are dying in large numbers across Asia. (It is chastening to recall that West Nile virus, also a bird disease, was able to "fly" across the Atlantic.)



H5N1's progress has also been abetted by poor monitoring and government secrecy in half a dozen countries, but especially in Thailand, Indonesia, and China. The Chinese staunchly deny covering up an avian epidemic as they did SARs, but the eminent virologist Kenneth Shortridge, interviewed by Science, said all evidence points to "natural reservoirs in southern China" where the disease might have emerged as early as last October.



This winter's moderate flu epidemic, which overwhelmed emergency rooms and quickly used up supplies of vaccine, vividly demonstrated how ill-prepared even the richest countries are to deal with an imminent pandemic. Current vaccine production lines, which depend upon a limited supply of fertile hen eggs, couldn't meet even a fraction of potential demand.



But a true pandemic would probably overwhelm the world long before a vaccine could be developed and produced in large quantities. The potential accelerators of a new plague are the huge slums of Asia and Africa. Concentrated poverty, indeed, is one of the most important variables in any model of how a pandemic might grow.



The bustees of Kolkata, the chawls of Mumbai, the kampungs of Jakarta, or the katchi abadis of Karachi are, from an epidemiological standpoint, landscapes saturated in gasoline, only awaiting an errant spark like H5N1. (Twenty million or more of the deaths in 1918-19 were in poor, congested and recently famished parts of British India.)



Last fall the United Nations Human Settlements Program published a historic report, The Challenge of Slums, warning that slums across the world were growing in their own hothouse, viral fashion. One billion people, mainly uprooted rural migrants, are currently warehoused in shantytowns and squatters' camps, and the number will double in the next generation.



The authors of the report broke with traditional UN circumspection to squarely blame the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its neocolonial ‘conditionalities' for spawning slums by decimating public-sector spending and local manufacturing throughout the developing world.



During the debt crisis of the 1980s, the IMF, backed by the Reagan and Bush administrations, forced most of the third world to downsize public employment, devalue currencies and open their domestic markets to imports. The results everywhere were an explosion of urban poverty and sharp fall-offs in public services.



A principal target of IMF austerity programs has been urban public health. In Zaire and Ghana, for instance, "structural adjustment" meant the laying off of tens of thousands of public health workers and doctors. Similarly in Kenya and Zimbabwe, implementation of IMF demands led to huge fall-offs in healthcare coverage and spending.



In South Asia, likewise, investment in public health has lagged far behind the growth of slums. The five largest cities of the region alone have a total slum population of more than 20 million, and standards of sanitation are symbolized by ratios of one toilet seat per 2000 residents in the poorest parts of Bombay and Dhaka.



Thanks to global neo-liberalism, then, disease surveillance and epidemic response are weakest precisely where they are most important: in the mega-slums of Asia and Africa. That's where the brushfire of H5N1 could turn into a deadly biological firestorm.



In that event, it would consume more than just the poor. Once a new pandemic had acquired the momentum of mass mortality in Asia it would inexorably spread to North America and Europe. It would easily climb the walls of gated communities and other fortresses of privilege.



Here, of course, is the rub. In the past, the rich countries, with few exceptions, have shown callous indifference to the monstrous human toll of AIDs in Africa or of the two million poor children annually claimed by malaria. H5N1 may be our unexpected reward.



Copyright C2004 Mike Davis



Mike Davis is author, most recently, of the kids' adventure, Land of the Lost Mammoths (Perceval Press, 2003) and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See (New Press, 2003). He is currently working on a book about the recent political earthquake in California, Heavy Metal Freeway (to be published by Metropolitan Books).



[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture and The Last Days of Publishing.]

[Hey Bubu]

Natures population control at its best

[bfp]

So, in other words it's the neo-cons that screwed everything up, and it's the neo-liberal cult that can 'save the world'.

This is a propoganda piece to try to scare people into funding the 'poverty program', which btw hasn't produced even the scantest amount of positive results since their creation.

I will show you another recent piece of utopian trash:

----------------------------------


Greed and double standards in the West have compounded the problems of the world’s poorest countries, EU aid commissioner Poul Nielson has told EUpolitix.com.

According to the Danish development chief, Western greed has forced a brain drain of Africa’s brightest talents and stalled attempts to reach UN millennium goals to reduce global poverty by 2015.

“Greed. Greed is the problem. Basically achieving the millennium development goals and doing all these things, basically is a moral issue,” he said.

The refusal of powerful nations, such as Japan and the US, to ‘un-tie’ their overseas development aid from the obligation to buy their own domestic, and often pricier, goods and services is also an example of “double standards.”

We need “to un-tie aid so that everything can be bought where it is cheapest,” the commissioner argued.

Turning to Europe, Nielson noted more political will to reach the UN’s target for the world’s richer nations to donate 0.7 per cent of their GDP to overseas development aid by 2006.

“Ireland will get there. Belgium will get there. Luxembourg is there already, as are the old elite donors - Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway..also the big countries like the UK, France and Germany are moving up.”

But the commissioner singled out Italy as the aid laggard least likely to reach the targets.

“The big drama is Italy which started on a 0.15 level only and for them to get up to 0.33 by 2006 is the biggest and most dynamic single case for improvement.”

According to the commissioner, overseas aid should be better focussed on the biggest challenges facing the world’s poorest countries.

While the tragedy of AIDS has been well-documented, he said a balance had to be struck with even more devastating epidemics ravaging the African continent.

“We all have a tendency to project our own situation, our own life into how we see things in the world out there.”

“More people in Africa die from malaria than from HIV AIDS. There are so many facts that are more or less wilfully being suppressed.”

And Nielson warned that, while overseas aid had never been so well organised, more effort had to be poured into basic health and education on the African continent to prevent future, possibly global, disasters.

“You know my biggest scare most recently has been if SARS hit Africa. The world was very lucky that it didn’t because what contained the spread of SARS…was classical health sector handling of it.”

“In Africa they simply would not have been able to carry out that classical containment of a disease which would have spread out of control.”

[johnny861]

We are probably due for another global plague... it's been awhile .....

[Adam D]

Originally posted by bfp
So, in other words it's the neo-cons that screwed everything up, and it's the neo-liberal cult that can 'save the world'.

This is a propoganda piece to try to scare people into funding the 'poverty program', which btw hasn't produced even the scantest amount of positive results since their creation.

I guess it depends on who you think the "neo-liberal cult" is. Every neo-liberal policy is being carried out by our government and NGO's it supports, so you might want to rethink about what you think neo-liberalism is. Then again, you probably don't know what it is.

It's not saying anything about a "poverty program" other than recognizing that where health care is weak and there is urban congestion, it's more likely that disease will spread rapidly. They knew that during the plagues in medival Europe.

[Adam D]

I'll give you another hint. Since he's condemning neoliberalism, he's unlikely to be a supporter of those policies.

[Hey Bubu]

Hunter, check your PM's

[bfp]

I guess it depends on who you think the "neo-liberal cult" is. Every neo-liberal policy is being carried out by our government and NGO's it supports, so you might want to rethink about what you think neo-liberalism is. Then again, you probably don't know what it is.

When I say neo-liberals, I mean the socialists that are currently running the UN that are publishing these reports. Accusing the Reagan & Bush administrations for dumbing down the funding in these organizations. I wonder if they were to have been funded by these administrations, that these slums were to have been decimated? I doubt it. No one in that article is slamming 'neo-liberalism'. They are saying that the programs run by these UN groups weren't well-equipped during these 2 administrations creating this horrible outcome. They were weak when all of this was to have taken place. Which is ridiculous.

It's not saying anything about a "poverty program" other than recognizing that where health care is weak and there is urban congestion, it's more likely that disease will spread rapidly. They knew that during the plagues in medival Europe.

This report is not to bring up these countries failing systems within their own borders, whether it be economical, governmental, etc. It's to say that the 'richer' countries are not donating enough. In the long term, dependency from other countries is not the road to prosperity. If that were to be the case, im sure it would have made an impact by now.

Here, of course, is the rub. In the past, the rich countries, with few exceptions, have shown callous indifference to the monstrous human toll of AIDs in Africa or of the two million poor children annually claimed by malaria. H5N1 may be our unexpected reward.

[Adam D]

Originally posted by bfp
When I say neo-liberals, I mean the socialists that are currently running the UN that are publishing these reports. Accusing the Reagan & Bush administrations for dumbing down the funding in these organizations. I wonder if they were to have been funded by these administrations, that these slums were to have been decimated? I doubt it.

You can say whatever you want, but you're speaking in your own language then. That's not what neo-liberalism is at all.

No one in that article is slamming 'neo-liberalism'. They are saying that the programs run by these UN groups weren't well-equipped during these 2 administrations creating this horrible outcome. They were weak when all of this was to have taken place. Which is ridiculous.

Thanks to global neo-liberalism, then, disease surveillance and epidemic response are weakest precisely where they are most important: in the mega-slums of Asia and Africa.

He's saying that neo-liberalism is why the response systems are a failure.

This report is not to bring up these countries failing systems within their own borders, whether it be economical, governmental, etc. It's to say that the 'richer' countries are not donating enough. In the long term, dependency from other countries is not the road to prosperity. If that were to be the case, im sure it would have made an impact by now.

He's discussing the way in which the richer countries turn a blind eye to epidemics around the world until they hit our borders, which is bad because it sets the entire world back from finding a cure and saving lives.

[bfp]

So, what is his plan? To fund more money into the UN hands right? That's the point. It's shown that in the end, nothing really happens. Money gets laundered, stolen & mis-managed. If though, the gov'ts of these countries had a better economic framework, then the country itself could thrive in the future. Heres to donations made to Africa. In this report it says that the West has donated plenty of money, but the corrupt gov'ts in Africa have stolen the money and mis-managed the funds to where it never gets to where it's supposed to go.


http://www.liberalvalues.org.nz/arch...or_africa.html

[Adam D]

Originally posted by bfp
So, what is his plan? To fund more money into the UN hands right? That's the point. It's shown that in the end, nothing really happens. Money gets laundered, stolen & mis-managed. If though, the gov'ts of these countries had a better economic framework, then the country itself could thrive in the future. Heres to donations made to Africa. In this report it says that the West has donated plenty of money, but the corrupt gov'ts in Africa have stolen the money and mis-managed the funds to where it never gets to where it's supposed to go.


http://www.liberalvalues.org.nz/arch...or_africa.html

I couldn't tell you what his plan is. I'm not hardwired into his brain.

I wouldn't contest for a second that most foreign aid, especially IMF money lands in the wrong hands and is used very improperly. I don't suspect he would suggest increasing aid to organizations like the IMF, WTO and World Bank. They're the loudest advocates of neoliberalism.

I don't think he would suggest that we send money to countries either, rather that we should use the medical system we have, public and private, to study these potentially epidemic diseases and try to cure them before they get out of control.

The problem with your argument about these countries restructuring themselves for economic improvement is answered in both the article I posted and the report you posted the link to. As far as the Davis article, it explains what happens when these countries seek aid to rebuild their economies. The money coming from these organizations like the IMF force neoliberal policies to be implemented as a condition of receiving aid. For countries legitimately trying to improve themselves, it means taking money today for a lasting condition of an amputated public system and throwing the doors open to international investment, which destroys the domestic economy and forces them into a dependent economy. For those countries who are led by corrupt regimes, taking IMF "assistance" means lining their own pockets and using IMF requirements as a pretext to further repress their populations.

[bfp]

Originally posted by Adam D
I couldn't tell you what his plan is. I'm not hardwired into his brain.

The problem is- is that Mike Davis has no clue what he is talking about.

It was stated in the link I provided, that the countries will have to solve their own problems from the inside-out.

End the aid and the loans and implement private development.


"All this funding made statist solutions to problems all the more appealing since they could be financed with further grants. Bauer has noted that one result of that process was that the best and brightest in African countries were drawn to the state, like moths to the flame, instead of into private development."

[Adam D]

Originally posted by bfp
The problem is- is that Mike Davis has no clue what he is talking about.

Since he doesn't detail what his response would be, how the hell would you know?

It was stated in the link I provided, that the countries will have to solve their own problems from the inside-out.

End the aid and the loans and implement private development.


"All this funding made statist solutions to problems all the more appealing since they could be financed with further grants. Bauer has noted that one result of that process was that the best and brightest in African countries were drawn to the state, like moths to the flame, instead of into private development."

I would agree with you here. Radical movements are going to have to kick out corrupt powers, public and private.

The problem in many of these countries is private development from international corporations that crush local economies, such as what happened to Mexico in the mid-1990's, and has been happening across SE Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa.

[bfp]

Originally posted by Adam D
The problem in many of these countries is private development from international corporations that crush local economies, such as what happened to Mexico in the mid-1990's, and has been happening across SE Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa.

Other foreign corporations consistently come into our country to create jobs as well. Would you say that is helping or hurting our economy?