Tuberculosis and Covid19: Plagues of Capitalism?
By: Marc Barham
Tags: Capitalism, History, Covid 19, Art, Disease

John Keats on his deathbed ca 1821

“It is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color — that drop of blood is my death warrant — I must die!”

— John Keats

In every family there was either a death from tuberculosis (consumption) or someone was known to have died from that terrible illness. I remember my grandmother telling me of her younger sibling then 14 who lay in her bed and continually coughed blood, until she eventually and mercifully died in my grandmothers arms. It was a prolonged and terrible death. Medical science at the time could do little. TB was a disease of poverty that was prevalent in medically underprivileged and resource-poor communities and high-risk ethnic minorities (my grandmother was Italian and was brought to Britain when she was 2 years-old).

The Sick Child, Edvard Munch (1885)

However, through the discovery of antibiotics in 1944 and widespread vaccination in our modern era, most deaths from TB now only occur in developing countries. TB itself has mutated from a virulent disease of the rapidly industrialising Nation-State into a 21st century neoliberal plague causing death in developing countries. Industrial growth goes hand-in-hand with disease spread and viral contagion. A causal relationship? Very likely. High density urban populations needed for industrial manufacture and production.

However, TB in its modern iteration as Capitalist plague was deflected and transferred, one could say fetishized, into ‘‘the romantic disease’’. There was a widespread belief that tuberculosis whether suffered by the artist or suffered by someone close to the artist, was responsible in facilitating that artist in his output. There are many who have been put into such a category: John Keats, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Shelley, Poe, Mansfield, Bronte, Siddal, Munch, Modigliani, Chekov, Kafka and Orwell. George Orwell wrote ‘1984’ whilst dying of TB. These artists were undoubtedly affected by the illness but the illness itself was only the result of a society rapidly industrialising and exponentially growing in the 19th and early 20th century.

Death in the Sick-Room, Edvard Munch (1893)

By the 19th century tuberculosis had become an epidemic in Europe. Between the years 1851 and 1910 in England and Wales alone a staggering 4 million had died from the disease. One third of the dead were aged between 15 and 34 and half were aged between 20 and 24. No wonder the disease was also known as ‘‘the robber of youth’’. Yet more deflection. An almost sanguine fait accompli became attached to the disease. The harsh reality of the cause was obfuscated as it is being done with Covid today. The years 1851 to 1910 are the very period in which the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism as the economic mode of production and its coeval political system, became established and reached its nadir in Britain.

It was only in 1948 that the NHS began to provide a healthcare service that encapsulated a socialist methodology, of shared services and provision for anyone in need. Vaccination programmes would follow in due course. Yet today we have a new enemy that is not the result of an individual nations industrial development and economic mode of production but is the result of the globalisation of the world through the unfettered spread of Capitalism and the profit motive. It is in itself a virus that is unconstrained by borders or walls and spreads everywhere but with the most detrimental outcomes to life on our planet. Unrestrained economic growth is the threat to life and it is being visited upon the poorest and most vulnerable all over the world.

On April 19, 2020, UK Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Gove used the phrase “a j’accuse narrative” in response to media reporting of prime minister’s absence from COBRA meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Boris Johnson had been missing from many of these meetings (particularly in the beginning of the crisis)so Gove’s odd reference to the open letter written by Emile Zola in 1898 to the President of France and published in a newspaper is another example of this governments utter disrespect for the truth.

As of today there have been 67,616 deaths from Covid 19 in Britain. This is a truly shocking number. And still there is no accountability for what has taken place in Britain in 2020. Yet a new strain is now rapidly unfolding within the human population. The vaccination for Covid 19 is just beginning to be rolled out and will in time reduce the stress upon the NHS which is once again being pushed to its limits with the second wave but it will need time to prevent a buffer that will protect more and more. With the relaxation of lockdown the inevitable bounce occurred, as scientists had modelled, way back in February. Yet the relaxation in lockdown rules and schools opening up meant the virus could once again find its targets. I am of the opinion that schools should not have opened. It has become an incubator for the virus and may well have been the catalyst for the mutated strain to develop.

And now the lockdown over Xmas and the increase to Tier 4 for much of Britain. Just 5 days ago Boris Johnson was promising that Xmas would not be curtailed by restricting the movement and meeting up of family units and members. Yet the mathematical modelling showed the effects of the bounces once restrictions were eased. The surge was predicted. To say that Xmas would be as usual or ‘‘as normal as possible’’ was at best disingenuous and at worst, a lie. The attitude of the political elite has been predictable. They have at each stage of this crisis attempted to be disingenuous and absolve themselves of all responsibility through the mantra: We are following the science. What absolute balderdash and nonsense.

The British government has NOT been following the science but they have been following the virus, by only reacting to the bounce after bounce after bounce in Covid infections and death toll. It has been utterly shambolic and dangerously so. People have died because of their inability to act decisively. The British government in attempting to conduct business as usual have brought back the ghosts of the past that surround the normalisation of death from tuberculosis.

Fading Away, Henry Peach Robinson (1858)

The notion of a planned, calm, and peaceful death is epitomized in Robinson’s “Fading Away”. This photo montage illustrates a peaceful, almost romantic vision of death by tuberculosis. Interestingly, the execution of this artwork was calculated and staged to depict a “dying” girl who is being comforted by a grieving mother, sister and fiancé. Much like Dante Gabriel Rosetti, (see ‘‘Beata Beatrix’’ (1871) which depicts his wife Elizabeth Siddal who was dying from TB) the artist succeeds in aestheticizing the disease by portraying it as peacefully afflicting the young and beautiful, whilst close friends and family attend to the practical and emotional duties of preparing for her death.

The delay in taking the pandemic seriously at the very start in February is where it all begins to fall apart. Then compounded by lack of PPE, highly lucrative public contracts for track and trace given to cronies with no experience of such large scale operations, apps that do not work, close associates and family breaking lockdown rules without accountability, incompetent people put in charge of critical services , the list just goes on and on. And then the much needed scrutiny by Parliament is elided through Emergency Legislation. It has shown that the political elite are unfit to deal with such a crisis.

Not only that but Covid 19 and Covid 20 have catastrophically revealed how deep and large has grown the social inequality in Britain in the last 10 years under Tory rule. It achieved this in a few weeks as we saw how poorer places and areas had higher infection rates and deaths. It revealed how BAME healthcare workers were more at risk from dying of Covid 19 than their white counterparts. We already knew that poorer people were disproportionately more likely to suffer ill health and reduced opportunity to access vital services BUT the Pandemic meant that death from Covid 19 was more likely for them because of where and how they resided. They are poor because of the economic inequality of our Capitalist society and they are more vulnerable to illness and death.

Covid 19 can be added to the diseases of poverty for it is undoubtedly a Capitalist plague. The wealthy and the elite do not live in unsuitable accommodation. They do not live in cramped, overcrowded dwellings. They are not malnourished. The 10 years of Tory-induced Austerity had already pushed the poorest in our society further into poverty and had a detrimental effect upon millions whether in-work or not. It had weakened the very health of the body-politic. It was already malnourished and weak. A perfect combination for a new deadly virus to take hold and kill. It is reminiscent of the scourge of tuberculosis that once ravaged every Nation in the modern industrialised world.

Camille on Her Deathbed, Claude Monet (1879)

For Capitalism is indeed a plague. A plague upon our planet. It is no wonder that artists in the 21st century have not been able to fetishize such an experience as a romantic disease. For we know what it is that is killing us and why. We know too much for it to be turned into poetry or a work of art or a novel. Paintings by Monet, Munch and Modigliani (who died of tubercular meningitis at 28) show us sick-beds and the inevitable death of loved ones. These paintings are a memento mori of the ones that they had loved and a way to deal with that unbearable loss. There was very little that could be done. TB was a death sentence. But why in the 21st century is Covid still a death sentence particularly if you are poor?

We have modern medicine to make us acutely aware of how infections and viral agents can develop and mutate. But we still have rising levels of poverty, inadequate housing and lack of regular nutrition that facilitate these diseases. That is where the real cure is needed. The vaccinations being rolled out in Britain and now in America are not a cure. The virus that manifested itself this year in Guangdong — the worlds manufacturing hub — is not our real enemy. The enemy is the system that creates the environment for such viral pathogens to arise, stabilise and flourish. That system is global capitalism. It is known by another name which is far more accurate, Catastrophe Capitalism. This is the worlds most deadly virus.