Poor would suffer most, but rich worry, too

Poor people die sooner than the rich. In the United States today, race and class are almost always among the top predictors of who gets sick and who dies of infectious diseases—like flu, tuberculosis and AIDS—or chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

People of color and people with low incomes live in environments with the unhealthiest conditions and work in the most difficult and dangerous jobs, when they can get work at all. Poor diet and unhealthy conditions over a lifetime lead to weaker immune systems. In addition, those who have the least economic resources are the most challenged in trying to cope with the physical and emotional crises of everyday life or the social crises of emergencies and disasters.

Workers and the oppressed have the least access to health information, preventive care, medical services and medications.

Racism and discrimination compound the differences between rich and poor in the United States and in many countries where national oppression goes hand in hand with economic exploitation. With few exceptions, differences in income and wealth have allowed the rich to live longer than the poor wherever class divisions determine access to the necessities of life. Some have noted that inequality itself, in addition to the lack of resources, adds to the anxiety and stress that in turn take a toll on health.

The rich, however, are not immune to infectious disease.

During the plagues in Europe, the rich would flee from the cities where the outbreaks occurred. But if the plague was widespread enough, there was nowhere to hide.

Even before the germ theory of disease was widely accepted, a public-health movement known as the “sanitarians” campaigned against the open sewage and lack of clean water that were particularly intense in workers’ neighborhoods.

The progressive public health movement finally got support from the rich and powerful, who realized that they too were vulnerable to disease. Government action finally made improvements in water supply, waste disposal and general sanitation.

To some extent, the current concern about pandemic flu in the big-business media reflects similar anxiety that even the rich might not escape a very widespread outbreak.

The emphasis on developing vaccine and antiviral medication as the main line of defense against pandemic flu also reflects the bias toward measures that will be available to the wealthier residents of the wealthier countries. But there is another fear that haunts the capitalist class: loss of profits.

Public-health specialists have been expressing concern about pandemic flu for decades and about the most recent avian flu for years. But the big-business media began only paying attention when economists started to point out a pandemic’s potential economic fallout.

If workers fall sick by the millions around the world, who will run the factories, the transport, the offices and the shops? No matter how hard they try to hide it, the bosses know that their profits depend on exploiting workers. If the workers are at home sick, or are afraid to go to work, profits will go down.

A few years ago, there was an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome—SARS—primarily in Asian countries. Relatively few people actually got sick or died. But the fear of SARS, even more than the deaths and illness, cut travel and commerce and really hurt the Asian economies. A worldwide outbreak of a serious influenza would be much worse, because flu is passed along much more easily than SARS.

Some establishment economists have noted that the global economy, so highly praised by apologists for capitalism, may be particularly vulnerable to a pandemic. An outbreak in any corner of the world will rapidly spread elsewhere.

Even if severe outbreaks are localized, almost every aspect of production in every part of the world depends on imports and exports of raw materials and intermediate components that are “outsourced” all over the globe.

Further, the “just-in-time” method of production has sharply reduced inventories of parts and products. Computerized inventory control and modern communication and transportation have made production and distribution more “flexible” with regard to the fluctuations of supply and demand. But they have also made them all much more vulnerable to even short disruptions.

If any link of the complex globalized chain of production is even temporarily broken by a flu pandemic, the whole inter-related system could break down with it.

Currently, the avian flu epidemic is confined to birds and poultry. Nevertheless, it is having a serious effect on food production in several Asian countries. The giant agribusiness companies in the industrialized countries are very, very worried that they too could be affected.

The world capitalist class is also afraid that the intense hardships and suffering from natural disasters can threaten their rule. Severe earthquakes have literally shaken workers and oppressed people out of the routine of submitting to exploitation. Desperate circumstances can on occasion lead to an anger that fuels revolt.

Although it is much more common for the terrible death and destruction of tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes and disease epidemics to lead to despair and demoralization, the outcome can be more positive when these disasters happen in areas where there is a revolutionary leadership.