This is an hour and 20 minutes. Okay, welcome welcome everyone to this talk with mike davis. It is exciting to see people joining from all over the country, all around the world really. It is exciting to have this chance to hear and engage with mike. And a longtime comrade, we are also both publishers of mike davis, very proud and we are teaming up to do a series of things during this pandemic crisis as part of our political, intellectual, Cultural Mission but also because we are on lockdown, trying to find new ways to share information. It is very exciting for me to be collaborating with my close friend, you might have cut haymarket, with naomi klein, marvelous events, superinformative, inspiring, 15,000 of us participated aiming to be a theory they put together, haymarket in fact has already organized a followup to naomi klein, and they are going to reconvene these three and discuss the politics of coronavirus and that next talk will be broadcast on thursday april 9th, not this thursday but next thursday at 5 00 eastern time, same as the talk with mike davis, the following thursday the series continues with great dialogue between scholars and activists Milton Gilmore and naomi narrow, two of the great experts on the prison industrial conflict on the incarceration boom and the reasons for that and the reasons for that. She will talk to them on thursday april 16th at 5 00 pm so these links will be available below. You can register on event bright. The talk with mike will be recorded. You can access it on the haymarket books, Youtube Channel and the leading independent radical publishing houses in the United States, close comrades and 2 houses that are suffering during this incredible crisis like a lot of other organizations across our movements, this is a big challenge for us. If you are getting something from this event, the great talk with naomi and others. If you enjoyed profiting from the knowledge from haymarket books, it is a good time, something we appreciate. By books from us to keep us going, get this going, we also have if you are in the position of superappreciate it right now. More housekeeping. Mikes talk is a little different in that we are one on one with mike to engage with him and put questions to him. Listen to him talk and thinking of things you want him to address, respond to the videos, if you are watching on twitter, suite us. I will collate with my comrade John Mcdonald and anthony arnold, a chance to have a more intimate one on one with mike. If you are having some trouble with broadcast quality, image quality reduce the image quality and get better sound, this is all new for us, we are stumbling a little bit, have a little forbearance for our technical difficulties which are probably inevitable. Let me say a couple words about mike. A lot of folks who are tuning in, some might be new, one of the great left historians and political and cultural analysts we are lucky to have. He has written and edited 20 books across a wide array of topics but it is fair to say there are a couple main threads in his work, he will join us from san diego, a focus on southern california. Books like ecology of fear, he has analyzed the history of los angeles, san diego and i bring this up partly because mike has a new book coming out in just two weeks in the middle of this crisis, he has been working on it for years called set the night on fire, la in the 60s, a magisterial history of la radical 1960s, black and brown movements that propelled the city, what he cowrote with longtime historian john weiner, fantastic book available for preorder, links to that so check that out. Another main thread of mikes career as a thinker and activists is the global effects of globalization, our era, some of the contradictions and complexities that involved including disease and the relationship of the pandemics and so forth with the development of global capital. So there is nobody in better position to analyze our current moment than mike davis. What we will do in the upcoming hour, mike is going to lead us through ways to see the policies of this pandemic, talk for 30 minutes or so, filling out a series of issues and i will try to collate a bunch of questions you send in and we have more time but i want to be mindful of mikes time after 15 minutes. Without further a do, mike davis. I have to apologize at the beginning, i have the coronavirus, the one that causes the common cold. I may be coughing through this interview. [cough] here we go. Maybe we should just start very basically with you describing just a little bit this coronavirus, how does it differ from influenza . How do you see this new, what is most folks surprising emergent disease, how do you place this in longer history . In the late Twentieth Century coronavirus mainly entered veterinary medicine because a devastating epidemic particularly among young animals, coronavirus is responsible for a lot of economic damage in the pork industry but also attacks cattle. It was known there were two coronavirus is including the one i had which caused mild colds. There is research to understand more than that and suddenly in china and hong kong a new disease emerged against the background of the flu outbreak, attributed to avian flu and it seemed to spread at the speed of light from one person, sometimes in a hotel with six scientists and within 24 hours was in five other countries and looked like it was about to become a pandemic but it probably wasnt influenza so we began a search to find out exactly what this was that was causing this disease known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, sars. It was discovered to be a coronavirus which was unexpected. Coronavirus is, i should back up a little bit. Viruses are basically parasitic genes that figure out a way to hijack your genetic proteinmaking machinery, to figure out a way to get out of it, the cell. There are two kinds of viruses, the ones based on dna and that have proofreading mechanism so replicate accurate copies of themselves but the great majority of viruses, translate instructions from the dna to make proteins but are in a viruses have no spellcheck as it were and they are constantly making errors and evolving, mutating 1 million times faster than anything else. A scientists wrote recently in a human cell it would take 7 million years of evolution to produce, to change it, the rna virus occurs, this sped up 1 million times where viruses are basically xeroxes printing out error written copies. The advantage facing the human immune system because there will always be some slightly changed variety of the virus that can resist the antibodies that the immune system is producing. Coronaviruses in particular have the largest genome among rna viruses, twice the size of the genetic package but to go back to the sars epidemic, sars was frightening, sars was initially coming 30 of the people, 2000 people got it and it stimulated a Crash Program in the United States to find antivirals to develop a vaccine to understand how this thing worked because it was so much different than the common cold, but the thing that really saved us in 2003 is the fact that sars was only contagious when people were symptomatic so you only spread it when you were displaying symptoms. Influenza could spread a symptomatically, people who have it, presymptomatic by people in the incubation stage. This gives influenza a supply that coronavirus didnt and it was easier to suppress. A lot of luck was involved and within a year, more cases, research on a vaccine, sars, the chief enemy of humanity was just in avian blue that would have the killing capacity and universal dissemination of the spanish flu in 19181919. Then in 2012 there was an outbreak in saudi arabia. Middle east respiratory syndrome and this is the curse of 2 common. Dont know if you remember the mummy movies where you go into the tomb, diseases are carried by two deaths. And spread to camels to humans and it also turned out to be a coronavirus similar in many respects to sars. In the beginning it had an even higher mortality rate. Once again it was contagious only in the stage where you were representing the symptoms. In the reservoir of coronavirus and coronavirus is that were not only endemic to bats but stunning array of subtypes and strains. One city goes to 100 different bat species showing 400 circulating to humans. Never said 100 species but 1250 of bat species so potential danger is greater than anyone can imagine. But finally about the current virus numbers, 2, covid19, the disease, the virus. Sars in the mideast, genome, not as deadly by far but on the other end acquired the ability to spread. It is incredibly infectious. The trade, scary aspect in affluenza. Briefly on the scientific level. What is your sense of what our scientific response and be, antiviral and so forth. In africa, in a few days, there are actually riots. Making this statement, probably 100 different research, working on candidate antiviral, looking at drugs that have been developed for tuberculosis, hiv, but right now the only thing immediately within reach we drop the blood cells and plasma and that has the antibodies. Okay. Lets switch gears a bit and move from side to the political response. You wrote a recent piece contrasting the success of chinas containment efforts, for example. Talk a little bit about your sense of different responses nationally, globally to the crisis. What do you see as the high and low points politically in the response . China responded to the new virus in the same way as sars. In both cases local officials, wasnt depressed, tried to tried to cover up the case and spread misinformation and allowed to become an epidemic. Then the government steps in and their mobilization was highly effective. Now, when moveon was quarantine quarantined, the window was maybe two weeks which allowed the chinese, allowed beijing to bring in doctors and nurses and experts from across china, concentrated on wuhan. China because it manufacture so many pharmaceutical and medical supplies the combination of being able to concentrate, in our view, medical personnel and the fact they had protective equipment and test kits with precise it. Mortality and wuhan was 5 . In learning what needs to be done, other small outbreaks in china was 1 . Theres an article that people, particularly theater the authon leaders of western countries, have been learning the wrong lessons. They are learning that you need a semitotalitarian Surveillance Society in order to suppress such a pandemic. I dont think putting 1 million uighurs in camps or surveying all those jaywalkers in china, reducing their social credit scores, [inaudible] some success in china was first of all grassroots organizations. 90 billion members in the communist party. So you had a grassroots organization. The medical care in china has always been a problem within a lot of cutbacks, chinas practices but soon it has a large practice in committee. But its medical research committee. Now, almost everything we know about coronavirus is coming out of chinas research. One of things that beijing said when it took charge of this, and it did the general thing back in 2003, is encourage china to share its research and findings. Even when republican senator the chinese lead out of control. The chinese literature. This is also the case in east asian countries. South korea had caskets and was able to test anybody it suspected if they had it. So they didnt have to shut down so much of the economy. Taiwan stockpiled enormous number of n95. N95. Of ventilators. It did have amazing pandemic stockpile, which has been absolutely lifesaving. But the important thing is, first, that they learn the wrong lesson, that authoritarian surveillance societies are what allow it to fight diseases like this. But we must begin to think about how to develop our own model, emergency. Learn to mobilize its grassroots, one that is based on to reinforcing medical workers, one that has based on stockpile, one of which the development of new vaccines and antivirals is undertaken by the Public Sector. Because actually right now theres been a revolution in immunology and the development of pharmaceuticals that started with aids. Were in an entirely different position scientifically than we were in the 1980s or 1990s. For that matter, even five years ago. Theres a scientific revolution going on. Theres a real possibility of treating universal vaccines. The laissezfaire neoliberal system of public medicine, Public Health has been this revolution and enabling it to save millions and millions of lives. So theres no bottleneck, no problem with research. The problem is the politics. The problem is private ownership of the key pharmaceutical industries. Right. You point out the fact that big pharma which is basically our system of anticipating and responding to these pandemics is fundamentally uninterested actually in universal solutions, universal vaccines. Constitutionally uninterested in the solutions that would put itself out of business. Yeah. I mean, imagine you are an engineer and you develop a blueprint for a car that would never need to be repaired. It lasts a lifetime and it can be made very cheaply. And so youre excited and shoulu take it to the board of general motors. Are they going to prove the development of a car that would put all the of course not and thats been exactly the reaction of big pharma to universal vaccines. The universal flu vaccine, i think probably majority of people in the Research Community would agree, its entirely possible. It just not has had the profit motive of big pharma and it hasnt had public spending behind it. But the thing about big pharma, the 18 companies, only five great ones, but 18 companies that control 90 of development in pharmaceuticals, is not simply that they hike up prices and exploit it, but that what justifies the crisis and the profittaking, justifies their monopoly status has been they are the research that develops new lifeline blood. Its not true. They are totally abdicated to develop research and development with tropical diseases of antivirals, and of antibiotics. Most of you know its extremely dangerous go in the hospital in the last few years because theres staph infections running wild in the hospitals. And 30, 50,000 americans year are dying because of these infections. So the great antibiotic revolution of the 1930s and the 1950s is being rolled back in big pharma, was not address that with antibiotics. They dont do what they claim their social justification is. At the same time, they are spending more on advertising than they do on r d, particularly things that are highly profitable drugs like sexual dysfunction in men my age. It seems a National Bias for research. They dont want the competition of their products to get that new product or new technology, and many times they take it off the market so they are actually suppressing medicine. We could go on for a long time talking about this, but its not just drug prices that have to be addressed. Really you have to talk about breaking up big pharma. We have to talk about public reduction of prescription medicines, particularly likeminded medicines. Elizabeth warren propose a couple of years ago, had a bill that would do just that. She talked about Public Sector production of medicines. Its absolutely necessary. Okay, now youre moving to this area of how we, the Progressive Movements can think about the response and organize for a response to this. When you get a little bit more into that, your sense of what a program can be, what your sense of Different Countries fought at this point because there have been some, you know, encouraging response from governments in the woods across the world. So lay out a kind of program forest of how you think we should be moving, you know, to think and organize and imagine our response. I had an interview a week ago, and there was a distinction between two kinds of demands. Developing commands, which were dramatic reforms, but they could coexist with our economic system. Demands which may be didnt require socialism, but challenge the logic of capital and private ownership. Now, when i say redeveloping, im talking about we try this advance position of a new deal which was the second bill of rights, the social economic bill of rights that fdr made the platform and his final campaign in 1944. Just go to our revolution of bernie. Com or whatever it is, and youll find not only excellent, immediate demands about the pandemic but the program that hes been fighting for for so long. And obviously singlepayer universal healthcare is essential. But would it be against the approach if you put it that way. If you go back and look at the 19 socialist platform, we look at the current crisis, and we say well, we have to socialize with production and development of medicines on a basis of universal healthcare. We also need to look at the relationship with private corporations, banks and corporations to the current crisis. Take amazon, for instance. Thousands of Small Businesses disappear forever. With amazon it sets up with the volume picks up and they are making extraordinary progress, but that being sanctioned, small competitors in bigger companies, consolidate a market position that makes amazon the biggest monopoly probably in the world history. We could use antitrust on this, like Elizabeth Warren said. We could tighten the regulated, make it pay higher taxes. Amazon has become an infrastructure for the production of information and distribution of goods. It should become a public utility. 1910 associates were fighting against the power company, the Water Companies to socialize them and make them democratically controlled and owned public utilities. I think amazon should be considered a public utility. In the near term because the demands im arguing and it are glcm set in the nation that we should go to access profit. In world war i, world war ii and again in the korean war they were putting accents profit caps with caps, profits at 70 , anything above that had to be repaid to the government. It was fully implemented. Fdr in 1942 put a cap on [inaudible] anything over 25,000 a year, 100 income tax. It only lasted about six months because there was a huge reaction but it was popular. So we need to think about this is something we should urge the democrats and progressives need to take a stand on right now these two issues, Public Development of life saving drugs, big pharma. But in the meantime, the three democratic president s access profits tax. Okay. I want to get back to this question of demands strategy, resistance. But its about 6 40, halfway through this, and we wanted this to be a real backandforth with folks or tuning in, and weve go