1/12 One thing above all else has hampered attempts to stop the spread of COVID-19, and that has been the futile and vain attempt by governments to preserve the economic growth model, over public safety and the public interest. This has led to too little being done, too late.
2/12 However, this whole strategy has been a complete failure. The uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 is going to have a far bigger impact on our economy, than the measures to prevent a global pandemic would have had.
3/12 The apparent success of the Chinese authorities in stopping new infections proves that adequate action could have halted the world wide spread of COVID-19. If governments had taken the action they've been forced to take now, in February, there'd be no global pandemic.
4/12 Let's be very clear about this. There's a massive difference between preserving an organized economy that serves the needs of people and preserving an all out economic growth model that provides rapidly growing and huge wealth for a tiny minority of our population.
5/12 This all out so called economic growth model (really financial growth model) has only been possible by ignoring the "precautionary principle" and constantly ignoring risks by prioritizing financial growth over everything, including public safety and the public interest.
6/12 Our governments failed to take preventative action using the "precautionary principle" by halting international travel and flying etc, when it was clear there was the very real possibility of a global pandemic, purely to preserve all out financial growth.
7/12 Yet even in terms of their very narrow focus and priorities of preserving financial growth, our governments have failed. This global pandemic is going to have far more long term impacts on financial growth, than the preventative action to stop it would have had.
8/12 The fallacy of prioritising financial growth over everything else and ignoring the "precautionary principle" is now there for everyone to see. This whole attitude of ignoring serious risks, always was irrational, because eventually it would come back and bite us.
9/12 Bizarrely, politicians like Trump are trying to claim that none of what is happening was foreseeable, when the @WHO was warning of the danger of a global pandemic as far back as late January. Governments simply ignored this in the hope it wouldn't happen.
10/12 What has happened is that because previous warnings about the "possibilities" of global risks haven't manifested themselves, those pushing for all out financial growth have ridiculously dismissed all warnings of crises as "alarmism".
11/12 The thing about hazards, potential dangers, risks in everyday parlance is that generally they are not deterministic. You can't say they will definitely happen in a given time frame, only that there is a strong possibility of them happening within a given time frame.
12/12 Just because previous warnings about these hazards ahead of us never manifested themselves, never meant that these warnings were not well founded, only that we were lucky to get away with it that time. However, it was always fairly certain that eventually it would happen.
12a/12 To conclude. This global pandemic need never have happened if warnings by the @WHO and other experts had not been ignored 2 months ago, in the vain hope it wouldn't happen, and we could carry on with business as usual i.e. unfettered financial growth.
