COVID-19: A Natural Event, But a Human-Made Catastrophe (Talk by epidemiologist Rob Wallace)
Presentation by epidemiologist Rob Wallace given at our online town hall on July 25, 2020.
While viruses do occur naturally, there is very little that is natural about the COVID-19 pandemic. The global animal and agriculture industry has become one large virus producing system, increasing the likelihood of pandemics. Instead of working towards reducing the production of pandemic level viruses, for decades countries have been accelerating the conditions that produce them. This virus may not have been preventable but it did not have to become a pandemic.
We were joined by Rob Wallace, an evolutionary epidemiologist at the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps and author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and co-author of Neoliberal Ebola: Modeling Disease Emergence From Finance to Forest, and other books.
Read some recent articles on this topic by Rob Wallace here:
COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital
Capitalism is a Disease Hotspot
COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital
Capitalism is a Disease Hotspot