My Take | Neoliberal ideology undermines US biodefence
- The Trump administration axed key personnel in the US government best suited to fight a pandemic such as Covid-19, and emasculated the agency that, until recently, was the most advanced and equipped in the world to deal with such health crises
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” – Ronald Reagan
With these words, the late American president summarised an ideology that has directly contributed to the global financial crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage market collapse in the United States more than a decade ago and now, the terrifying spread of the Covid-19 pandemic across the country.
For the neo-liberal Republican agenda, decades in the making, is not just about free enterprise, competition and equality of opportunity, it’s also about deregulation and, where that’s not politically saleable, emasculation of essential government agencies and regulators that underpin public safety and social stability.
There are things you do need the government for, such as keeping greedy bankers on a leash, and fighting a pandemic. Among key US agencies that have suffered funding and personnel cuts is the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The White House and other government officials have repeatedly criticised Beijing for censoring information about the epidemic and keeping US experts away. However, it eliminated last July a key decade-old CDC position embedded within China’s disease control agency headquartered in Beijing.
Dr Linda Quick, a respected CDC-employed epidemiologist, personally trained some of the Chinese specialists dispatched to Wuhan, the epicentre of the Chinese outbreak. Tasked to monitor and report any outbreak and emerging diseases across China, Dr Quick had developed deep professional connections within the Chinese medical establishment. She would have been ideally positioned to report back to her bosses in Washington the unfolding outbreak in real time.
