How rich/western countries let a pandemic go endemic

It's over. The pandemic has gone endemic. We're stuck with this shit forever. COVID-19 has mutated around all defenses and is becoming another neglected tropical disease. We simply cannot eliminate it now, it's too far gone. Our children, our grandchildren will forever live with some form of COVID-19.

The tragedy is that we didn't just lose. Rich/western countries sold us all out. This isn't really a tragedy at all. It's a crime.

How It Could Have Been

It didn't have to be this way.

Imagine if every country reacted like China, completely eliminating the disease? In fact, many countries did. Places like Taiwan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka completely crushed their first wave. Many places reduced it. Elimination or at least reduction was possible using basic public health tools and PCR testing, you didn't even have to be rich.

Then imagine that vaccines and vaccine technology were shared, as the WHO recommended. Imagine if 20% of people across the world were vaccinated first, in a strategic way, putting the most vulnerable and first-responders first. This is exactly what places like China, Russia, and India did; shared vaccines and even helped set up factories. Then imagine that cheaper, faster, better and easier mRNA technology was deployed all over the world, with factories on every continent churning out vaccines. Instead of negotiations and pledges, we could have had billions of shots in arms right now.

These two efforts together—basic public health and vaccines—would have A) reduced initial cases B) reduced variants. This would have made it possible to beat the disease. However—as you may have noticed—this did not happen. This is what could have been.

What Was

Instead, the rich/western world fucked us all with their incompetence and greed. First they just let COVID-19 just wash over them, exploding and spreading cases. Then they greedily hoarded vaccines, dooming any shared human strategy against the virus. The main G7 contribution has actually been disinformation and lies. The false choice between health and economy, and attacks on China and anyone trying to help.

Instead of basic public health tools that places like Rwanda mastered, places like the UK spent nearly Rwanda's entire GDP on corrupt test-and-trace systems that didn't even work. Instead of quickly suppressing the disease, these countries endlessly debated basic hygiene like masks while cases ballooned and spread. Most of the world was actually infected through Europe.

Then when vaccines became available, funded with public money, their corrupt leaders defended drug company shares (which they own) instead of shared humanity. They enforced monopoly rights at the WTO, preventing patent-free vaccine production. They created artificial scarcity during a pandemic for money. And so the virus won, because the rich sold everyone else out. Millions of people are now fated to die.

Imagine if aliens attacked and the west just let them win so they could keep sell more weapons. That's what happened with COVID-19. It wasn't just an abdication of responsibility. It was a betrayal.

And So

And so here we are. COVID-19 has completely mutated around our defenses, but it's no longer a shared threat. The rich have their shots, sometimes even booster shots, while billions of people—even millions of first-responders—go without. Even in rich countries, it's primarily affecting their marginalized and poor, so the rich and powerful don't give a fuck.

Drug companies happily crow about the pandemic going endemic because it means they'll be able to sell these drugs for years. They paid their protection money to corrupt politicians, and their patents will be safe for years.

Most horrifically, western governments have also weaponized COVID-19. They're using it as a biological weapon now, blocking Venezuela from getting vaccines, using embargoes to try and topple unfriendly governments in Cuba or Iran. They pressured Brazil to not take vaccines from Russia and continuing their criminal seiges all over the world. It's health crimes on top of their usual war crimes.

They have also used COVID-19 as a propaganda weapon, raising the spectre of 'vaccine diplomacy' as a bad thing, and spreading conspiracy theories that China made the disease. Instead of uniting as humans, they have used disinformation to spread bad policies, vaccine hesitancy, and to outright attack people. Other human beings.

In the face of a shared threat, these rich/western countries thought only about their shares. In the face of something bigger than politics, these countries saw another weapon to attack their enemies. Instead of uniting as human beings to fight a virus, they divided humanity for profit. And so humanity lost. Not because most of us didn't try, but because we were betrayed by the colonial, imperial, global minority.

The End

Forget COVID-19. It's COVID-Infinity now. We're stuck with this shit forever. The virus is in so many bodies and mutating so fast that it will mutate around any public health tool or vaccine.

COVID-19 is on track to be a neglected tropical disease, probably affecting children. We've been saying its safe for children (it's not, it's now the leading cause of infectious death in children) and not vaccinating them. So COVID-19 will just mutate over there, producing god-knows-what long-term effects. It will gestate in the shadows of western callousness and hate, becoming forever endemic across the world.

The WHO said no one is safe until everyone is safe, and so no one is safe. The only thing secure is drug company shares, and the reelection campaigns of their pocket politicians and bureaucrats. So as you can see, this endemic pandemic isn't a tragedy. It's a crime. Rich/western countries have committed health crimes against humanity.

The only inoculation the globe can get right now is this knowledge: the same people that sold us out to COVID-19 will keep selling out the Earth until all humanity is decimated by climate change. We cannot reason with these people or appeal to their consciences. They have none. There's a stock portfolio where their hearts used to be.

In order for humanity to survive, we need this most urgent vaccine, which you can manufacture in your mind right now. We must overthrow western hegemony. Otherwise the world won't have just lost to COVID-19. We will lose the world.