Neoliberal disease: COVID-19, co-pathogenesis and global health insecurities

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has at once exposed, exploited and exacerbated the health-damaging transformations in world order tied to neoliberal globalization. Our central argument is that the same neoliberal plans, policies and practices advanced globally in the name of promoting wealth have proved disastrous in terms of protecting health in the context of the pandemic. To explain why, we point to a combinatory cascade of socio-viral co-pathogenesis that we call neoliberal disease. From the vectors of vulnerability created by unequal and unstable market societies, to the reduced response capacities of market states and health systems, to the constrained ability of official global health security agencies and regulations to offer effective global health governance, we show how the virus has found weaknesses in a market-transformed global body politic that it has used to viral advantage. By thereby turning the inequalities and inadequacies of neoliberal societies and states into global health insecurities the pandemic also raises questions about whether we now face an inflection point when political dis-ease with neoliberal norms will lead to new kinds of post-neoliberal policy-making. We conclude, nevertheless, that the prospects for such political-economic transformation on a global scale remain quite limited despite all the extraordinary damage of neoliberal disease described in the article.

The public health playbook: ideas for challenging the corporate playbook

“…Moreover, COVID-19 has revealed the risks of privatising sectors of the economy (ie, health care and aged care), so calls to build back better must ensure that this approach is not exclusively business-led. 15 , 16 Some governments are using remunicipalisation to reclaim state ownership of privatised services such as water, energy, and telecommunications. This process has led to reduced costs and improved service quality, working conditions, and accountability.…”

Between the colossal and the catastrophic: Planetary urbanization and the political ecologies of emergent infectious disease

“…These investigations have illuminated not only the strategic role of cities and metropolitan regions as major “hot spots” of disease transmission, but the essential role of municipal, provincial, and regional governance systems, as well as community organizations, in animating public health responses to the pandemic. Among the key insights that have emerged from this outpouring of research, the following are particularly salient: The neoliberalization of local public health infrastructures through decades of privatization and austerity has severely undermined the capacity of many municipal governments to manage the coronavirus pandemic and to confront its disastrous economic and public health consequences, especially for poor, racialized, marginalized, and/or vulnerable populations (Navarro, 2020; see also, more generally, Sparke and Williams, 2022). There has, nonetheless, been a broad range of local responses to the pandemic, leading to a profound variegation of public health conditions—manifested, for instance, in differential rates of transmission, morbidity and mortality, and widely varying degrees of containment and recovery pathways, around the world.…”

“…The neoliberalization of local public health infrastructures through decades of privatization and austerity has severely undermined the capacity of many municipal governments to manage the coronavirus pandemic and to confront its disastrous economic and public health consequences, especially for poor, racialized, marginalized, and/or vulnerable populations (Navarro, 2020; see also, more generally, Sparke and Williams, 2022).…”

From hope to disappointment? Following the ‘Taking Place’ and ‘Organisation’ of hope in ‘Building Back Better’ from COVID-19

“…Cheek & Chmutina, 2021). More insidiously, the framing masks the close relationship between neoliberalism, inequality and vulnerability, such as how COVID-19 “exposed, exploited and exacerbated global health insecurities co-produced by neoliberal policies and practices” ( Sparke and Williams, 2022: 26 ).…”

“…The shovel ready case study also brings us to reflect on the relationship between hope and disappointment, and in particular how co-pathogenic neoliberal logics and depoliticisation stifled more transformative futures ( Sparke and Williams, 2022 , Davidson, 2021 ). As Davidson (2021: 423) describes, disappointment is tied to hope, yet it is not the absence of hope, “one cannot be disappointed without a prior hope.” It emphasises too that each disappointment holds a radical potential, a “sense of ‘accumulated rage,’ or a feeling of unfinished business” ( Davidson 2021: 426 ).…”