The bad takes on COVID wend across the poli­ti­cal conti­nuum into the more reco­gni­zable left. Superficially more groun­ded ana­to­mies of the cri­sis have leapt atop the backs of the dead ani­mals and bro­ken land­scapes that did indeed help pro­duce the pan­de­mic. But in a clas­sic riding trick, the acro­ba­tics sud­den­ly switches mounts mid-ride to cha­rac­te­ris­ti­cal­ly Eurocentric hob­by­horses from which to herald impe­­rium-old edicts on how to live, eat, and die. Should we eat meat, with source live­stock an appa­rent dri­ver in the emer­gence of dead­ly patho­gens ? Documentarian Astra Taylor, envi­ron­men­tal his­to­rian Troy Vettese, and poli­ti­cal scien­tist Jan Dutkiewicz—TVD, for brevity’s…

In 2011, science jour­na­list Laurie Garrett wrote on the “alar­ming regu­la­ri­ty” of acci­dents in bio­sa­fe­ty labs around the world. The acci­dents are as much a mat­ter of num­bers as any one lab’s poor safe­ty record. A 2013 Princeton University stu­dy sho­wed an increa­sing glo­bal popu­la­tion expo­sed to the risk of acci­dents from bio­sa­fe­ty labo­ra­to­ries pur­suing stu­dies of some of the world’s most dan­ge­rous diseases. The stu­dy, conduc­ted by health geo­gra­pher Thomas Van Boeckel and col­leagues, sho­wed the popu­la­tion living within the com­mu­ting field of BSL‑4 labs increa­sed by a fac­tor of four from 1990 to 2012. The fields sum­med toge­ther…

To avoid the worst out­comes here on out, disa­lie­na­tion offers the next great human tran­si­tion : aban­do­ning set­tler ideo­lo­gies, rein­tro­du­cing huma­ni­ty back into Earth’s cycles of rege­ne­ra­tion, and redis­co­ve­ring our sense of indi­vi­dua­tion in mul­ti­tudes beyond capi­tal and the state. However, eco­no­mism, the belief that all causes are eco­no­mic alone, will not be libe­ra­tion enough. Global capi­ta­lism is a many-hea­­ded hydra, appro­pria­ting, inter­na­li­zing, and orde­ring mul­tiple layers of social rela­tion. Capitalism ope­rates across com­plex and inter­lin­ked ter­rains of race, class, and gen­der in the course of actua­li­zing regio­nal value regimes place to place. At the risk of accep­ting the pre­cepts of…

The pro­blem is a more gene­ral one, beyond this par­ti­cu­lar ter­roir. Why are so many figures on the bien pen­sant Anglophone left adop­ting anti-eco­­lo­­gi­­cal poli­tics that advo­cate tech­no­lo­gies that are as inse­pa­rable from their fun­ders as the looms were from the mill owners in the age of the Luddites ? Why are these posi­tions serial­ly plat­for­med by alle­ged­ly cri­ti­cal podia, time and again, even as their logics are sym­me­tri­cal to those under­lying efforts to force meat­pa­ckers back to COVID-infes­­ted pro­ces­sing plants, where all that labor is “saved”? There’s a through line from Trump to what counts in much of the Global…

Even before COVID-19 arri­ved in the United States, it was appa­rent that in deploying the virus as a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic par­ry against China, conser­va­tives and libe­rals alike would make mat­ters worse by impo­sing an oppor­tu­ni­ty cost. By crow­ding the social space with saber-rat­t­ling, the United States would fail to take notes about the out­break and China’s res­ponses pro and con—so as to make ade­quate and inter­na­tio­nal­ly tea­med pre­pa­ra­tions. Certainly it’s a bipar­ti­san mis­cal­cu­la­tion borne more out of struc­tu­ral decay than mere hubris or bad data, but the pro­blem extends across the sweep of res­pec­table poli­tics. These broa­der cultu­ral patho­lo­gies, ent­wi­ned into…

J : There’s been a rumor of a bio­lo­gi­cal trade war bet­ween the United States and China. It has gai­ned momen­tum after dis­pu­ted social media talks on U.S. patents, articles publi­shed in Granma and mutual accu­sa­tions of the Chinese Foreign Minister and CIA agents against each other. How do you see this cir­cus ? RW : Such utter­ly unfoun­ded accu­sa­tions are part and par­cel of what I call pan­de­mic thea­ter. The efforts we just tal­ked of to control popu­la­tions within-coun­­try are riva­led only by attempts to pin blame for the present pan­de­mic and its socioe­co­no­mic rami­fi­ca­tions upon other coun­tries. These are all modern…

Pathogens, howe­ver, are no mere pro­ta­go­nists, bat­te­red to and fro by the tides of human his­to­ry. They also act of their own voli­tion, if you’ll excuse the anthro­po­mor­phism. They dis­play agen­cy. And they have by vir­tue of their evo­lu­tio­na­ry changes for­ced agri­bu­si­ness to the bar­gai­ning table, a place where that ilk, given their suc­cesses, think they excel. The resul­ting agree­ment is writ­ten as no trea­ty or contract nor even in any­thing we would reco­gnize as com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is found ins­tead in a form of xenos­pe­ci­fic conver­gence. The two par­ties have maneu­ve­red into an agri­cul­ture of mutual inter­ests, at times reac­ting…

In a kind of bioe­co­no­mic war­fare, agri­bu­si­ness can pros­per when dead­ly influen­za strains ori­gi­na­ting from their own ope­ra­tions spread out to their smal­ler com­pe­ti­tion. No conspi­ra­cy theo­ry need apply. No virus engi­nee­red in a labo­ra­to­ry. No conscious acts of espio­nage or sabo­tage. Rather we have here an emergent neglect from the moral hazard that arises when the costs of inten­sive hus­ban­dry are exter­na­li­zed. Robert G. Wallace Big farms make big flu Monthly Review Press 2016 115…