At this point, a small part of me says “fuck it, let’s see how bad it can get”.
We weren’t prepared 4 years ago, let’s see if we’ve learned anything…
We’ve learned so much since then. We can quickly create an effective vaccine and then make sure a few companies get absurdly rich off of it while saving only as many people with it as would maximize their profit because anything else would be unfair to their shareholders.
We can also make sure that the global south only gets enough discounted vaccines to make it look like we’re charitable. Plus, we can definitely convince the WTO that the vaccine rights are more valuable in the hands of a few companies than the lives that might be saved by allowing anyone to produce it.
This is an alarmist headline. The reason COVID was a global pandemic is because it was a perfect balance between not being too harmful, many asymptomatic, and extremely contagious. The irony is that if H5N1 is 100 times worse than COVID then it won’t spread as easily as COVID.
It absolutely is alarmist, you’re right. I honestly hope that this is just another nothing burger.
