M

arch 27 marked the day 

the United States officially 

surpassed 
every 
other 

country in confirmed cases of COVID-19. 

That day alone, over 3,000 people died 

globally, pushing the total death count past 

27,000. And yet, as thousands lose their 

lives every day, I have seen one phrase 

circulate more than almost any other, 

second only to “wash your hands” — “we 

are the virus, and coronavirus is the cure.”

Beside insinuating that the deaths 

of COVID-19 victims are a good thing 

and equating the deceased to parasites 

being incredibly cruel, the statement 

is untrue. Most of the environmental 

“improvements” cited as proof that 

quarantine is healing the Earth actually 

have far simpler answers. The suddenly 

clear, fish-filled Venice canals, for instance, 

aren’t due to any change in water quality; 

it’s because there are no boats to kick 

sediment into the water when everybody 

is home. In some cases, the lack of human 

activity is detrimental to animal life, like 

the monkeys and deer in Asia who are now 

abruptly without their primary source of 

food — tourists — and are now wandering 

hazardous cities in search of replacements.

There 
have 
been 
some 
real 

environmental benefits to the mass 

quarantines, 
though, 
particularly 
a 

decrease in air pollution. However, 

coronavirus-related changes in emissions 

are temporary and relatively small in 

scope. If anything, the changes brought 

by COVID-19, and the responses of our 

institutions, show us just how little the 

average person is to blame for pollution. 

We are not the virus, industrial capitalism 

is. 

Take for instance the air pollution drop. 

The decrease in emissions in Italy and 

China is because their factories have been 

shut down en masse, not because people 

are driving less. Italy even continued to run 

public transportation, as it was deemed 

an “essential service,” and still saw these 

massive emission decreases. Simply put, 

it makes little difference that individuals 

aren’t getting in their cars when 71 

percent of greenhouse gas emissions come 

from only a hundred companies. These 

corporations and the people who run them 

are the virus, not the commuters and car 

owners. 

Coronavirus will ultimately only make 

pollution worse as economic panic tempts 

governments to be even more permissive of 

corporate pollution. The Prime Minister of 

the Czech Republic has already called for 

Europe to “forget about the Green Deal” for 

the economy’s sake — his country happens 

to depend heavily on nuclear power and 

coal. Similarly, President Donald Trump 

has pledged a bailout for the airline 

industry, saying they’ll be “number one” 

in line, all while airlines are on track to 

emit a quarter of the world’s maximum 

manageable amount of carbon (carbon 

budget) by 2050.

We know for a fact that human beings 

are not fundamentally harmful to the 

planet because we’ve been living here for 

hundreds of thousands of years. Indigenous 

people have been living sustainably for as 

long as people have existed, and they still 

are. Now, with most of the world living 

industrially, indigenous people care for 

80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity and 28 

percent of its land, despite being only 5 

percent of the world population. Not only 

can human beings live without irreparably 

polluting the environment — we can live 

in ways that are beneficial to the planet, 

despite what Western environmentalists 

might say. We just need to adopt these 

beneficial practices on a much larger scale, 

and that means ending the harmful ones 

first. 

To call industrial capitalism a virus 

is apt, because it sickens and kills people 

like a virus. It isn’t happenstance that the 

U.S. ranks first in infant mortality, obesity 

and youth poverty and last in sanitation 

and access to water of all the world’s 

developed nations despite having the 

highest GDP. Poverty and social inequality 

kill Americans as often as heart attacks 

and lung cancer, with 4.5 percent of U.S. 

deaths being traced back to poverty. This 

translates to 874,000 Americans who died 

in 2000, a toll over 32 times larger than the 

total COVID-19 death count by March 27. 

These fatal issues in America have only 

gotten worse in the 20 years since 2000. 

Coronavirus is set to combine with these 

already fatal issues in apocalyptic ways. 

The U.S., as of 2017, has 2.6 doctors per 

1,000 people. Compare that to Italy’s 4.0 

doctors per thousand as Italy’s hospitals 

are overwhelmed with dying COVID-19 

patients. Make no mistake: capitalism will 

be the primary reason coronavirus kills 

Americans. A system built on masses of 

impoverished people selling their labor 

to a few business owners ensures that 

workers will work unless they are given 

another way to survive. Unsurprisingly, the 

Families First Coronavirus Response Act 

neglects paid leave for millions. COVID-

19 belongs to a family of viruses we’ve 

known about for a long time, but a vaccine 

doesn’t exist yet — of course, now it will 

take months before one will be developed. 

Still, our government is already itching to 

lift shutdowns and social distancing rules 

so that businesses can operate (and profit) 

normally. Some officials have even said, 

implicitly and explicitly, that the deaths 

caused by relaxing restrictions would be 

worth it for economic recovery.

As of March 17, COVID-19 is projected 

to kill 2.2 million Americans in total. 

This sort of death toll is neither normal 

nor necessary; in China, only 3,331 have 

reportedly died and the number of cases 

has started to stagnate (although this 

number is disputed). Social distancing 

alone is not enough to save lives when some 

don’t have the option and others have no 

health care to save them once they have it, 

and yet even that bare minimum is falling 

by the wayside for the sake of profits. We 

can only hope that this will be the final case 

study against unfettered capitalism before 

we finally learn to care for each other and 

our planet. We’ve all but passed the point of 

no return already. 

4A — Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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RAY AJEMIAN | COLUMN

We are not the virus

Ray Ajemian can be reached at

rajemian@umich.edu.

J

esus Christ. I think most 

of us can agree we didn’t 

see anything on this scale 

coming. It hasn’t been more 

than a couple weeks since the 

University of Michigan decided 

to suspend in-person classes, and 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently 

decided to join several other 

states and shut down nonessential 

services. More and more people 

in the United States are getting 

infected, and we’ve even passed 

China as the country with the 

most confirmed cases. Each state 

is trying its own methods to limit 

the spread, with the march of 

infections seemingly unstoppable 

at its current rate. Many criticize 

President Donald Trump for his 

refusal to make the hard decisions 

early enough. The bewildering 

thing about this mess is that there’s 

supposedly a presidential race 

running concurrently. If you forgot 

about it, I wouldn’t entirely blame 

you. The news cycle seemingly 

switched from the U.S. presidential 

elections and “Decision 2020” 

to 
exclusively 
covering 
the 

coronavirus, spreading information 

and possibly fear-mongering for 

ratings. Understandably, the focus 

of many citizens is on the ongoing 

pandemic. But where does that 

leave us on the path leading up to 

November?

The 
most 
immediate 

repercussion on the election cycle 

has been the delay in Democratic 

primaries, where former Vice 

President Joe Biden has pulled a 

political upset against the already 

unprecedented early lead of Sen. 

Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Biden is now 

projected to win the nomination, a 

position almost nobody would’ve 

predicted just a month ago. The 

most recent state primaries were 

March 17: Arizona, Illinois and 

Florida. I personally hadn’t heard 

anything about them until the day 

after they happened. The news was 

supplanted by the ongoing crises 

in places like China and Italy, as 

the full brunt of the pandemic had 

yet to hit American shores. Ohio 

was also slated to have a primary 

that day, but delayed over early 

concerns about the virus.

Many of the future primaries 

— 14 states and one U.S. territory 

— have been delayed until a later 

date. The Democratic National 

Committee (DNC) is scheduled 

to meet August 17, but the status 

of the convention has been put 

into question. How long will the 

quarantine last? Nobody really 

knows. Trump extended his social 

distancing guidelines until April 

30, but will that be long enough? 

What happens next? We don’t 

know that, either. Not only is the 

primary put in jeopardy, but the 

general election in November is 

at risk as well. As of now, there 

are no plans to change anything 

involving the general, but there 

are still concerns to be addressed. 

Congress has granted the states 

$400 million to prepare for the 

disease-rampant populace voting 

in the general election, but strictly 

defined precautions are nowhere 

to be found. Many politicians fear a 

delay in the election, which is a step 

many countries — such as Chile 

and the U.K. — have already taken 

in their referendums and elections 

to avoid further infections. Trump, 

however, hasn’t made any moves 

toward delaying the election, and 

actually wants us to believe the 

virus will reach its peak before 

April is over.

If we want to find the solution 

and prevent further fatalities 

quickly, the first instinct is to 

follow the leader in damage 

control — which happens to be 

China. Following an autocracy to 

uphold the sanctity of a democracy 

is a strange thing, but these are 

strange times. New cases of 

infection in mainland China have 

nearly stopped, and the Asian 

powerhouse is taking a leading role 

in assisting fellow nations slow the 

spread of the virus. One benefactor 

of Chinese influence seems to 

be Italy, gladly accepting aid 

after European contemporaries 

seemed too busy with their own 

coronavirus struggles to assist 

their neighbors. But as much as it 

would seem topical, I’m not here 

to prescribe a solution to solve 

the issue, rather to try and have 

some foresight for November. 

As the U.S. is engulfed in its own 

crisis, the growing Chinese clout 

poses immediate and long-term 

implications.

But long-term implications are 

for people who aren’t impulsive. 

The short-term is of course the 

standing of Donald Trump, who 

has long stood at odds with the 

Chinese state on a variety of 

issues. Trump is hard-pressed to 

accept any aid from China and has 

tried his own hand at fixing the 

problem. From calling the panic a 

Democratic hoax to supporting a 

$2 trillion stimulus package, he’s 

quickly shifted his positions and 

tried to adjust to the continuous 

stream of bad news. Trump’s 

focus, however, has remained 

surprisingly consistent. He wants 

the economy to stay afloat. In a 

press conference on March 23, 

Trump went on record saying that 

“We have to save these companies. 

These are companies that weren’t 

in trouble three weeks ago, and 

now they’re in trouble because 

of what happened. These are 

great companies, they’re in some 

cases triple-A companies,” giving 

infallible justification for ignoring 

the general populace. Even before 

this $2 trillion stimulus, he was 

dumping money into the stock 

market to avoid a recession.

Trump is put into a volatile 

position this November, as his 

response to this crisis will most 

definitely affect his chances in 

the coming election. He’s handled 

it with the grace of an elephant 

jumping off a skyscraper into a 

backyard pool, but his position 

in the polls remains uncertain. 

In fact, Trump’s rating is rising 

amid the crisis. Trusting polls 

has made a fool of many before, 

but similar polls pitting Trump 

against frontrunner Biden show 

a closing gap between the two. 

Only time will tell if his chances 

were hindered or helped by his 

contemporary decisions, but they 

will certainly define his campaign. 

A 
return 
to 
normalcy 
is 

something that many people 

wanted to come this November, 

but that fickle and uninformed 

dream 
has 
been 
shattered 

regardless of your candidate. The 

future is uncertain and none of us 

could’ve possibly predicted this. 

I don’t have some sweeping and 

all-encompassing 
prescription 

to solve everything I’ve listed in 

this piece, but I want you to stay 

on top of things. Make sure you 

aren’t caught off guard when the 

status quo changes. Stay informed 

and stay alert, and most of all, stay 

home.

Coronavirus and the machine – what about 2020?

SAM FOGEL | COLUMN

Sam Fogel can be reached at

samfogel@umich.edu.

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