Transcripts For CSPAN2 Historian Mike Davis On The Coronavir

CSPAN2 Historian Mike Davis On The Coronavirus July 13, 2024

Watch this viral genome mutate as it spreads around the world. It is critically important. Welcome. We have a talk with mike davis it is exciting to see people joining from all over the country and really around the world. And its exciting to have this chance to hear and engage with mike tonights talk with mike is cosponsored by verso and haymarket books. The longtime comrades as independent radical publishers in the United States we are also both publishers of mike davis very proud publishers. And we are teaming up to try to do a series of things during this pandemic also because we are on lockdown. Were trying to find new ways for us to share information and you might have caught the excellent teaching last week. They started to pioneer the online form. Novelist event super informative even inquired some 15,000 of us participated in that. And this is aiming to be a kind of series that haymarket put together. They have already organized a followup to the previous talk and they are going to reconvene these three and discuss the further politics of coronavirus and the next talk will be broadcast on thursday april 9 thats not this thursday but next thursday at 5 00 eastern time the following thursday the series continues with the great dialogue between the scholars and activists. Two of the great experts on the Industrial Complex on the reasons for that. They will talk together on thursday april 16 at 5 00 p. M. These links will be available below you can register for both of these events like on event bright. The talk with mike well also be recorded. You can access it on the haymarket books. And on the verso book. And let me just say a little bit about verso and haymarket as i say to the leading independent radical publishing houses in the United States those that are suffering during this incredible crisis. Like a lot of other organizations across our movements. This is a really big challenge for us. If you are getting something from this event with mike this talk the great talk with naomi and others if you had profited from the knowledge that you are getting from those books. This is a good time something and buy books from us. That would keep us going. And keep this kind of thing going. We also have been mouth a demo for donations. Youre able to donate to this. It is a little bit of an appeal. Tonights talk is can be a little different than last weeks a great talk with naomi. And now were oneonone with mike and gave questions to them. If youre thinking of things you want to address. You can respond to the videos if you are on you too. If youre watching on twitter tweet us and i will collate some of the questions along with my comments. We will put those to mike. More intimate oneonone with mike. And one little thing we learned last week from the first of these online teachings is that if you are having some trouble with the broadcast quality that you are seeing sometimes you can see adjust your image quality reduced in other words. And you will get a little bit better sound. This is all new for us. Please have a little forbearance for our technical difficulties. Those are probably going to be inevitable. Let me do see a couple of words about mike. I imagine a lot of folks tuning and know about his writing but some might be new to mikes work. He is one of the great last historians and political and cultural analyst. He has written and edited some 20 bucks across a wide array of topics. Its probably fair to say that there are couple of main threads in their work. The focus on Southern California. In books like ecology of fear he has analyzed the history of Southern California and los angeles. I bring this up because mike has a new book coming out in just two weeks. Right into the middle of this crisis but hes been working on it for years and years. Its a book called set the night on fire. It is a big history of the radical 1960s black and brown movements that propelled the city forward during those years. Pick company wrote with a long time analyst. A fantastic book. It is available for preorder. Check that out. Another main thread of mikes career as a thinker and activist is the global effects of globalization of our era the capital globalization. Some of the contradictions that had availed evolved because of that. In the relationship in the pandemics and so forth with the spread development of a global capitalist. Theres nobody it seems to me better positioned to analyze our current moment than mike davis. I think what we will do in the upcoming hour mike is going to lead us through some of the ways they see the politics of this pandemic and talk for about 30 minutes or so starting a series of issues. That im in a try to collate a bunch of the questions that you guys send in. And then put them to mike for the second halfhour. I want to be mindful of mikes time and energy. And then will need to wrap up after that 60 minutes. Without that further ado mike davis. I have the coronavirus one that is called the common cold. Maybe we should just start very basically with you describing just a little bit this coronavirus how does it differ from influenza. What is to most folks surprising. Heavy places in a longer history. In the late 20th century up to 2003 they were mainly of interest to generic medicine. They cause devastating epidemics especially with young animals. It is responsible for a lot of economic damage in the pork industry but it also has affected cattle. It was well known that there were two coronavirus including the one i have which caused mild colds. And then the two in 2003 in Southern China and hong kong this was to give us the background and how they operate. In the beginning it seems to spread. In a hotel. With six scientists. It had been 24 hours in five other countries. It looked like it was about to become a pandemic at the time they realized it wasnt an influence they began the search to find out exactly what this was and it was causing this fatigue known as severe acute respiratory syndrome. This is certainly expected. I should back up a little bit here. Viruses are basically genes that had to figure out a way to break into your cell. And then hijack the machinery. With the Proof Reading mechanism they replicate the copies of themselves. Their they are based in the rna. To make proteins. The spellcheck as it were. This means that they are constantly making errors. They are also evolving and mutating a million times faster than about anything else. With any human cell. They would take 7 million years of evolution to produce certain changes. In an rna virus. They can occur in four days. This is a world where ella evolution evolution is set up a million times where the viruses are xeroxes and printing out your written copies. This is a great advantage. With the antibodies that they are producing. Coronavirus is in particular had the largest genome amongst rna viruses. About twice the size to go back to that sars epidemic. This is frightening. It was killing dirty of the people who got it. Eventually about 2000 people got it. It stimulated those across the way. To understand how this thing works. It became so much different than the common cold. But the thing that really saved us in 2003 is the fact that it was only contagious when people were symptomatic. When they were displayed symptoms. With different influenza. It can be spread asymptomatic lay. This gives influenza wings to fly that coronavirus and the stars form didnt. It was easier to suppress. And within a year they stopped thinking about it. The last case we have that corona vaccine. To be the chief enemy. They would have that killing capacity in the universal dissemination. Greatest single mortality event in human history. Then in 2012 with the update of the new disease. It turns out this was really very common. If you go into the tomb you will die. There is some truth in it. It was the origin disease. It also turned out to be a coronavirus. Similar in many respects to sars in the beginning they have an even higher mortality rate. Once again it was contagious only in the stage of them representing symptoms. They went are a tremendous amount of research on the coronavirus is an on the reservoir of coronavirus. In front of hours is not the epidemic to bats it is stunning. A way of subtypes and strains. They shared a should hundred different bat species. Now theyre setting on the species. About the current virus. And the virus. It closely resembles the mideast coronavirus. There is a lot of shared genome is not as deadly by far. But on the other hand the ability to spread. It is incredibly infectious. So the defense trait. The scary aspect. Just briefly still on the scientific level and since you had been studying all of these diseases what is your sense of what our scientific response can be to this. Until a vaccine is developed are there other options. When our president endorsed a malaria medicine to this and how effective it would be. In africa it caused a huge panic. Why not. They were actually riots. Please have to be called in. Making the statement theres probably about a hundred Different Research teams working on the antiviral things that have been developed for tuberculosis hiv. And right now the only things that seem immediately within reach is the convalescent plasma. If somebody gets the disease and then they get well. You separate the blood cells. In the plasma has the antibodies to counter the infection. This can be directly transfused in the people. They had been tested positive. The idea has been around for more than a century. Whether it works or not is confusing but there is a lot of us enthusiasm right now. That might be that most effective treatment for people who are suffering from this critical case. This is very interesting. Lets switch gears a bit. Globally you wrote a recent piece. To the mess in this country. Talk a little bit about your different responses nationally to the crisis. What are the high and low plate points critically. China responded to the new virus is the same as sars. They were spreading this misinformation. And allowed it to become epidemic. But then the government stepped in their mobilization they are highly effective. When everyone was quarantined there was a window of maybe two weeks which allowed the chinese in beijing to bring in doctors and nurses from across china. China because it has manufactured so many of those. With the medical supplies. The combination of being able to trace an army of medical personnel and the fact that they had protected these. It was about 5 . After the mobilization mortality was under 1 . I tried to argue in an article that these authoritarian leaders of western countries have them learning the wrong lessons from this. You need a semi totalitarian advice. I dont think putting a million and camps for surveyed all of the jaywalkers in china and introducing the social credit. With the success of the success in china. An organized sense. You have the glass Roots Organization and it goes anywhere in the world. The medical care in china has always been a problem with a lot of cutbacks. But still, it has a large practicing community. The Critical Research communities almost everything we know about coronavirus is coming out of chinas research. One of the things that beijing did when it took charge of this. And it have done the same thing back in 2003 they have to encourage Chinese Workers to share that. During the time when trump was raging against the chinese disease. He was crazy. This is also the case in each stage of the country. It was able to test anybody who suspected that they have to shut down so much of their economy. It had been leaders. The amazing pandemic stockpile. Which is absolutely lifesaving entire ran. The important thing is if you dont learn about that. The Surveillance Society and allowing it to fight is diseases like diseases like this. We must begin to think about how we develop our own model and agency response. When it is based on grassRoots Organization one that has aids on stockpile. The development of new antivirals. Actually, right now there has been a revolution with the development of pharmaceuticals. It started with aids. When you were in the 1980s and the 1990s. There was the scientific revolution going on. As a laissezfaire. With the public medicine. When they were developing this resolution. In enabling at to save millions and millions of lives. The problem is the private ownership. With the pharmaceutical industries. Basically big pharma that is basically art system that is fundamentally uninterested and is constitutionally uninterested. They would put itself at out of business for example. Imagine that you are gm engineering. It would last a lifetime. It could be made very cheaply and so youre excited and you take it to the board of general motors. Are they can approve the development of the car. That has been example ugly the big vaccines. I think probably the majority of people in the Research Community would agree its entirely possible. With the big pharma line. The thing about big pharma the aging companies 18 companies that control pharmaceuticals is not simply that they hike up races and exploit s to be available. It justifies the monopolies. That is the answer of research. They have totally advocated development with research and development. Through tropical diseases. And antibiotics. In the last few years. They are running wild in the hospitals. In 40 or 50 americans per year are dying because of these infections. It is being pulled back in big pharma. They shall this essential test. They dont do what their potential justification is. At the same time they spend more on advertising than they do in r d. Like the assumption. And men my age. It seems like they actually buy up small firms. In the research. They dont want the competition. Sometimes the buy up to get that new product is that new technology. They take it off the market. The actually suppressing the development. We could go on for a long time talking about this. Its not just drug prices that had to be addressed. When they are talking about the public perfection. And the description of medicines. They could do just that. With american history. It was an absolutely necessary proposal. Now you are moving to this area of how the Progressive Movements can think about the response to organize for this. Can you get a little bit more into that. Your sense of what a program can be what your senses of Different Countries responses at this point. There had been some that are encouraging from the left governments. They have to have a program for us. To think and organize and imagine a response. I have an interview a week ago they made the distinction between two kinds. They were dramatically formed. They were forms that could coexist. With our existing economic systems. Maybe they didnt require the socialism but challenged the logic of capital and private ownership now a new developing demands it is the advanced position of the new deal. It was a second bill of rights. That they made the platform. The final campaign in 1944. Just go to our revolution. And you will find not only excellent immediate demands about the pandemic. But the program that we had been fighting for. For so long. Obviously singlepayer care is essential. I have to go back and look for the 1910. They look at the current crisis. They have to socialize in the production. With the development of medicine. We also need to look at the relationships with of private corporations. To the current crisis. Take amazon for instance. Him is that its not simply that the volume is up and they are making extraordinary progress but that the distinction is a franchise with bigger companies. Consolidate a market position that makes amazon the biggest monopoly in the world history. We could use antitrust on this like Elizabeth Warren is crusading for. You can make it pay higher taxes. Amazon has become the infrastructure for the production of information and distribution of goods. It should become a public utility. They are fighting against the power of combination. To socialize them and make them democratically controlled. I think it should be considered the public utility. We should go back to s access properties. And they began. The profits at 7 . Anything above that had to be repaid to the government. They were fully implement it to be sure. Fdr when they said it further. Further. They put the cap on anthem. 100 income tax. There was a feeling on income. A huge reaction. But it was popular. We need to think about this as something that we should urge democrats to take a stand on. Public development. And make breaking up meet breaking up big pharma. In the meantime during the three democratic president s. With the excess profits. I want to get back to this and the question of demand strategy. Its about 6 40. Halfway through this. We wanted this to be a really big back and forth and we have gotten a lot of questions really smart im going to group a couple of these. It takes us back to some of the earlier points that you are hurting. Some people might have tuned in. About the global rollout of this pandemic. The kinds of responses we had been seen. They asked why and how has it reached africa so late is that bizarre. What do you think of that. Another person ask an interesting question about the pandemics and impact on mexico. They took this not so seriously at first. But how is it rolling out. And why is it rolling out in a different way. Its been a lot of nonsense. And particularly breast africa. When we have the population there. Weve heard a lot of stuff about that. We dont have much impact in africa because the people are so young. And its hotter climate this really is in some ways appalling. We need to keep in mind from the start as far as weather goes the 1918 and 1919 with the 1918. On the idea it is an extension of the disease. They will follow the same pattern. As it has done in the United States or western europe equally foolish. Africa has 24 Million People with aids. 30 of africans simply had no access between water and sanitation. It is impossible. 70 of africans live in the slums with social distancing not possible. Now nutrition, the civil wars. Let me make an analogy in 1918 it became a decisive factor on the western front. That is usually the story that is told. There are many books out there. The greatest mortality wife. Because they were famished. With the exports of grain. They kept the indian army there. The immune systems were suppressed. 20Million People died so what is ignored in this. What happens when you have hiv and you had aids. What happens in the immune system is suppressed by hunger. What happens when you dont have sanitation. From china or the w

© 2025 Vimarsana