'Pandemic strategy' is an oxymoron in a neoliberal world

Rodrick Wallace and Deborah Wallace

Chapter 3 in A Research Agenda for COVID-19 and Society, 2022, pp 23-42 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Pandemic firefighting models - hyperrapid containment, hyperrapid vaccine development - will inevitably fail without constraints on the neoliberal agribusiness and land use practices primarily responsible for pandemic outbreaks. These include, but are not limited to, factory farming, neocolonial land-grabs, and industrialization of traditional medicine. One of the resulting protopandemics, synergistic with climate change, will be highly infectious with a high fatality rate, and spread widely. Realistic pandemic control and prevention requires significant alterations in the power relations within civil society, since the breakdown of what US economist J. K. Galbraith called 'countervailing forces' has led us down a neoliberal road toward neo-serfdom. 'Countervailing forces' prevent quasi-monopolies from reducing society to feudalism. They include labour unions, human rights organizations, environmental groups, public health associations, and such. Without their restoration, the neoliberal World Order stands as did the institution of European serfdom in 1300, on the eve of the Black Plague.

Keywords: Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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