Washington: Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, historian explained why the US failed to contain the spread of coronavirus in the country.
During the interview, he said that the pandemic was not unexpected. Scientists had already predicted the pandemic after the outbreak of SARS in 2003. However, drug companies neglected the prediction as they follow market signals whereas, Govt. also did not pay heed due to neoliberalism.
He said that the situation in the US become worse due to the reduction of funds to the Centre for Disease Control.
Trump ignored warnings issued by health authorities
Talking about the response of US, he said that Trump has ignored the warnings issued by health authorities. By the time, he started acting against the virus, it was too late.
Global warming
Highlighting the adverse effect of global warming, he said that recovery from the current pandemic is possible at a huge cost, however, there will not recovery from melting of polar ice sheets, Himalayan glaciers etc. It will leave a huge part of South Asia uninhabitable.
If the global temperate increases at the present pace, humanity would see the horrible situation in 50 years.
Capitalism responsible for Wildlife ecosystem destruction
When asked about his views over scientists’ belief that capitalism is responsible for destruction of wildlife ecosystem thereby resulting in virus to infect humans due to human-wildlife conflict, he said, “yes, it was warned in 2003 itself when SARS outbreak took place”. He reiterated that big pharma companies neglected the warning as they focus only on profitable activity.
He questioned, what is the need of such pharma company which get heavy subsidy?
Highlighting the selfishness that exists in the world, he said that Germany which handled the outbreak of coronavirus did not provide enough health support to one of the worst affected countries, Italy.