- would avoid any risk of the recurrence that is occurring in Melbourne as I write this and
- would not be too slow
I have extreme fear that lockdowns – on and off – will persist in Victoria well into 2021 and possibly into 2022 or 2023, whilst the rest of Australia has fully opened up and contained COVID-19 by the end of this year or earlier.
Revelation today that major quarantine breaches have been the major contributing factor to the explosive growth of COVID-19 in Victoria since 17 June has made me imagine that a “genuine socialist” society – as defined by Socialist Alternative and the WSWS – would avoid the mistakes that my mother has said are inevitable. By eliminating the profit motive more care would be taken to ensure no COVID-19 escapes from quarantine, rather than sacrificing care to reduce costs. Moreover, I have emphasised a major factor in why COVID-19, but not Ebola or swine flu, caused a major pandemic is that there is zero quarantine for travellers exiting tropical and East Asia, but strict quarantine for those exiting Latin America. This despite tropical and East Asia being more nutrient-rich and favourable for microbial development than Africa or eastern South America (although Mesoamerica and Andean South America are more nutrient-rich than tropical Asia).
The remarkable thing is that Trotskyist groups never think of quarantine as a good thing at all. They view it as merely a product of capitalism, which they define as exploitation of workers for profit. Much more importantly, Trotskyists view quarantine as a product of nation-states, which they believe are a weapon of capitalist class rule to divide the workers by nation, thus preventing a rapid international revolution to overthrow global capitalism. The fact is that, even if the majority of political divisions are artificial, there does exist extremely distinct ecological regions of the world, as I have outlined in many older posts on this blog.
Trotskyists’ COVID-19 policy consists of a rigid cessation of all nonessential industries with zero loss of pay until a vaccine is found. The World Socialist Web Site have claimed that a vaccine would be found in one month if every single cent of the wealth and profits of the richest 1 percent – or even of the richest 0.01 percent – was expropriated and diverted to urgent medical research. Trotskyists also believe that if land clearing in the tropics were eliminated, large-scale pandemics would be too, although they lack understanding of why it is only the Tropical World where land-clearing has such disastrous effects.
No actual scientist believes that a vaccine could possibly be found in one month even with the total expropriation advocated by the Trotskyists.The human body does not function in such a manner that testing of vaccines can be done perfectly within such a short time. Side-effects of vaccines and of drugs can take several months to develop. The Trotskyists undoubtedly believe that:
- new electronic medical technology would permit extremely rapid developments of perfectly safe and effective drugs and vaccines
- such would be possible if every last cent of the profits and wealth of the richest 1 percent or 0.01 percent were expropriated and placed in the hands of the majority
However, their claims – as I recall them – seem to be what my brother calls marginally misleadingly (because Trotskyists are insistent that human work and constant struggle against the capitalists is the key to achieving the immense benefits of workers’ rather than bosses’ control) “magic solutions”. By “magic solutions” is meant an idea or action that would solve every single problem in the world in a completely failsafe manner. In the case of COVID-19, the Trotskyist worldview goes ridiculously far, and has definite blind spots in their extreme internationalism failing to recognise natural ecological boundaries, and their belief that workers’ control can eliminate all social and economic problems immediately.
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