seemed wrong. to me to be to shape out just because to educate and engage with equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. choose to look for common ground. we're going on the ground as a u.k. in the u.s. 2 countries seemingly sparing no expense to fight the pandemic despite having some of the highest recorded coronavirus death rates in the world and her 2nd round of trade talks while the u.k.'s deadline to form a trade deal with the e.u. edges ever closer coming up on the show is near liberalism and capitalist economics

responsible for spawning deadly pandemics we'll ask the author of big farms maybe flu world wallace and in a country ravaged by cholera meningitis and yellow fever i was appalled that he capital of the world nigeria so far managed to keep its coronavirus death count so much lower than in the usa or u.k. we speak to nigeria's top coronavirus man the director general of nigeria's center for disease control but the trick when it was are told is a more coming up in today's going underground but 1st u.s. president donald trump may have placed the blame for the current pandemic on communist china by coining it the chinese virus but evolutionary epidemiologist and author of big farms make big suggests that it's actually capitalist greed that catalyzes deadly viruses he joins me now via skype from st paul in minnesota welcome to going underground just tell me starting off about how not just big farms make big flu but your previous work near liberal eveleigh suggests that capitalism

fostered coronavirus one of the things that we get so programmed and is on the specifics of each of these viruses in terms of their clinical ors and thereby reality and that's all very important but what we've done is we've lost the context in which a series of new pathogens have heard the 20 percent and each one of those is tied into use changes or. station that's being driven by global capital and now you don't biased because you had coronavirus you wrote these books before you go to but you contract a drone a virus what is the health care in the united states being like remembering of course of the united states has plenty of money when it wants to spend money well its health care united states is just another form of making profit so if you don't have the money then you don't get the health care even though not under obamacare

you have 28000000 people who are are on harvard 24000000 more are under insured it's not the basis for responding to a global pandemic the viruses certainly didn't get the business memo that they were supposed to cooperate with a profit system well they may have killed it may have killed a 100000 or more americans but you're alive. i am gratefully but not by dint of the american medical system in essence was frozen out of my doctor's office and had to be diagnosed online by a nurse practitioner who neither saw either error me and so to be sure that this is not a background effect of neo liberal politics only response to coronavirus you're saying we need radical invasive change that's not. the log downs that we experience in nato nations you're talking about it's something else. absolutely i think one of

the things we do is we get so focused on the emergency responses where which are absolutely necessary including the lockdowns including whatever vaccines were able to develop though i'm not too hopeful about that but the problem is our focus on the emergency aspect of it moves us from a understanding or exploring the more structural issues that are driving the emergence of one deadly pathogen after another some point we're going to have to come face to face and understand that our very mode of civilization is now driving the emergence of these deadly pathogens and we have to do foundationally break with that mode and develop a much more integrated relationship with earth and ologies and i want to explore some of those has it's in a moment but you're claiming that political power shapes both the infectious diseases and the sciences that study the diseases. that's right

one of the things that scientists it's an amazing thing i'm a scientist myself an evolutionary biologist but one unfortunately history of science is very much into grated with the emergence and history of capitalism in such a way that. science has been used as a means of de coding nature but only in the context of whether or not to help somebody a profit at some point when we're confronted with problems that don't bend in that direction science has difficulty grasping unpacking those phenomena and so we find ourselves in i think the pandemic the exact thing sample of this we find ourselves when confronted with problems that don't bend easily to modification then we are in essence unable to respond in

a way that deals with the problem so what are we supposed to take from say the british prime minister martha jones when he repeated the end his ministers repeatedly say we have full oohing the science has actually following a politicized neo liberal version of suns which is not the evidence based scientific method it'll oh that's right well science and capitalism have a way of pointing to each other for rationalizing their takes on things and so we have a situation where many scientists hired by the state or by companies are in essence putting models out that in essence support the system that brought about the pathogen in the 1st place. so obviously we see donald trump often flanked by multinational pharmaceutical company and c.e.o.'s of big companies but you in your book big farms make big flu you ironically do support donald trump in saying it's

the chinese flu or the woman flu because at the beginning of the book you say the w.h.o. was wrong not to talk about the origin of influence and other pandemics. well certainly the chinese do bear some responsibility for the emergence of multiple strains of influenza. these occur in a virus is but china isn't the only epicenter for diseases we have for instance h 5 n 2 the influenza even influenza they emerge here in the united states we have swine flu h one n one that actually did go pandemic in 2009 that emerged from outside mexico city we have ebola emerged out of west africa primarily out of and out of the neoliberal interventions that are all over the forestation and the spillover of. the strains so certainly the china and. china does bear some responsibility but

this is a global problem is see if i put on a have a c.e.o. of a big agribusiness company ok i might blame the mining companies for deforestation which as you show in the book is so intimately related with the spread of epidemics but i'd say. a big flume is that this corona virus is supposed to come from a small from maybe a wildlife market is completely different to agribusiness. well i would say mining does have something to do with this. as well as logging in. and in addition to your business but as far as coronavirus goes it's a little bit more complex but as. a culture large agriculture intensive operations push their way deeper into the for its. forces smallholders to relocate and that also plunges into the forests increasing the interfaces between

small holders and wild animals that are o.o.s. for many of the new pathogen the other thing to understand is that the why. everyone's pointing fingers that it's not this kind of totally differentiated operation from big ag increasingly capital is flooding into the wild sector it's becoming more intensive. and such a way that more traditional large agriculture beginning to be modeled by the more wild food sector and so as both those types of arming into the forests you have an increasing interface with wild animals and increasing spillover of these new pathogens so how are these interconnections exacerbated by something unprecedented in human civilization the ability to travel

the us distances quickly we're only just putting a quarantine here it britain's amp what's what would you said to morris jones and about the fact he that our immediate response here in britain was not to shut down the airports i think in the us you had airports open to. that's right well. the global travel network is. the most integrated network at what we've seen and human history someone can go from one side of the world to the other in and a half day or so so it's. any pathogen they might be caried can move that way and that's the thing that's so shocking it's the speed at which new pathogens might spill over from the deepest forest and make a way to a regional capital and then onto a plane and to the other side of the world in short time and we're you know we despite the fact that we've left airports open we should have known that that was probably going to be the speed at which corona virus was going to make its way in

the other direction from asia to the united states and give direction to europe. because of the kind of insidious nature of the. pathogen and its clinical course we just chose not to act and and here in the united states some of the studies have shown that the cove in 1000 was circulating in washington state for 6 weeks before it was ultimately did detected as to be circulating among among people here well the numbers of dead are truly breathtaking in your country oversee more than 100000 as to the origin you theorize that the pathogen may have existed already and is deforestation that exposed it and allowed to escape. well there's been a lot of work since sarah's one that showed that there are multiple strains of coronaviruses in bat species across central and southern china and they have been spilling over into local populations both human and animal. for since

then if you keep rolling the dice at some point one of them makes its way across into some combinations of animals both wild animals and livestock and ultimately into the humans typically the labor that taking care of the livestock and then subsequently on its way to a local city most of those stars don't make it to human to human but if you want so while we do have one and in all likelihood sars one and starts to will be followed by a sars 3 and you really think that the logic of neo liberalism is that companies involved in deforestation and so forth a 1000000000 dead is fine with them so focused on their own process to profits. well i mean it's really easy you just blame the virus or you blame the chinese or

you blame smallholders for cutting into the forest. there is this point it's they've got these rapid response teams crisis management packages and go out and all these outbreaks and make sure you continue to externalize the costs of intensive production so that everyone carries the costs and everyone carries the blame if you were to fold and the cost back on to the company balance sheets for business would be and as we know it. stop you there more for mobile us all the big farms make big flu after this break plus we asked the director general of nigeria center for disease control them to check with heck with why a country ravaged by previous epidemics let alone i.m.f. structural adjustment programs appears to have dealt with coronavirus so much better than britain or the usa political coming over but to going on the ground. the world is driven by.

the dangers thinks. we dare to ask. president vladimir putin in his own words tells us how he understands history and the current international system also why everybody we hates john bolton as he loves us all the way to the bank.

we go to work. straight home. welcome back i'm still with rome wallace author of big farms make big flu the w.h.o. arguably has never been more in the headlines you give a very nuanced account in your latest book china has just given 2000000000 dollars donald trump appears to be with you in cooperation with do you think make him off the w.h.o. well you know historically speaking these kinds of crises do have a way of killing off international organizations we think of the league of nations where war won so many of these organizations are very particular and very

conscious of the possibility that their fates are in the hands of not only outbreak but the nation states on which they depend for their finances and legitimacy in my view of there should be a w.h.o. but we think they're in the middle of being caught in something of a crossfire we find in the united states my view the united states says some of the world systems there is support it is on the far end of the end of that cycle of accumulation of capital being joined into money in other words. american based capitalists are in essence cashing out and so what was previously post world war 2 an exercise of political power making sure the capitalist system worked including cleaning up pandemics of capitalist own making around the world that's why c.d.c. here was such an important. responding to outbreaks worldwide well that's been

rolled back in essence in a matter of months which is quite extraordinary the united states is basically in essence washed its hands of its responsibilities to run the overall system of capitalism including beating up at them it's so i know on the other hand sees it seizing the opportunity it's on its front and that cycle of accumulation it's turning money into capital and it's interested in building empire and building infrastructure including public health infrastructure which will allow it to accumulate capital as the as the new imperial power on the block as it were whether or not successful on that however it's up in the air we are in deep environmental crisis and we're arriving at a stage where earth cannot support these kinds of cycles of accumulation is the lungs and host of the global alliance of vaccines and immunization boris johnson gave a speech there bill gates gave a speech there we had the boss of it and goes. on the program and then she

said that it's no problem that these weston responses are the big from being to foundations like the gates foundation and that actually far from what you're saying these as we would call it as many would call it new liberal capitalism philanthropists are doing their best to save millions of lives far from ignoring the risks of pandemics because of what they do for any individual. philanthropists they might be indeed encouraged by good feelings and good intentions to actually use their money to help save people at the structural level however once we are in a position to ask those from who they develop or they got their money by virtue. in essence engaging in some of the practices that.

are promoting the emergence of these pathogens in the 1st place i mean if you're depending on those people to intervene in a way to keep those package and from merging then we're in some trouble because there's an interest in there on the one hand they are in favor of the of the practices that lead to the emergence of these diseases even on the other hand they're trying to use some of that money to intervening i don't think philanthropy apple isn't is a means by which we're going to fundamentally change the. way of living and life in our relationship with the earth and an ecology that that we can stop these pathogens from emerging in the 1st place before in the business of just cleaning up after pandemic after another then. indeed i think we are in some trouble it's highly unlikely that additional pathogens will be emerging we're not going to have the 100 year delay that we have from 1901. and less

we make some foundational shifts in the very mode of civilization that the we're operating under we're going to be exposed to new pathogens in the future finally just to one irony arguably some of those companies obviously helping in the contract thing of one of your biggest taxpayer funded industries the military what do you make of the fact that after edward snowden who sought refuge in moscow after revealing mass surveillance how that massive valence the telephone calls not being able to be used for track and trace for a pandemic threatening us all well i would not sure if i agree with that i think many countries that been using that in. the news for better and for worse but not the n.s.a. cia program that was a real way snowden is that being used to save american lives i don't think it. i mean certainly not in terms of being deployed to help with endemic stuff i mean i

don't i don't think there we would even consider the american response as anything organized at the national national level there isn't a national program for response to coronavirus here it's all been to fall down to the local and state levels in fact the federal government set off a. black market competition between states for better waiters i would say i wouldn't quite classify the u.s. responses being. even at the level of basic. you know that there is no tech tracing other and some a little bit at the local level so if the n.s.a. is involved in doing anything about coronaviruses we certainly don't know it or wallace thank you. nigeria has been called upon any capital of the

world ravaged by i.m.f. restructuring programs and epidemics 40 percent of its population of nearly 200000000 people live below the breadline and yet coronavirus deaths are exponentially worse in britain and the usa than in the u.k. so former west african colony joining me is the man leading the fight against coven 1000 there the director general of nigeria's center for disease control to chick with he joins me via skype from nigeria's capital abuja thank you so much for coming on the show so we may have had about 60000 excess deaths here in britain with a population of 67000000 how come nigeria apparently has recorded less than fewer than 4500 deaths or so with 200000000 people i think 2 things i think it is very early to reach any conclusion. that burden both of. disease and death because you know the. the time aspect influences the transmission and also

influences but it's what out across the code across the world but there are also many thinks the know whenever you virus is introduced into a population does that interaction between the virus the population of environment and you know that the depths of said need to do it that count 3 kids go unique to nigeria the proportion of that he didn't know up in south africa 4 india do i got so that definite is something happening on the continent i don't know if so far that has limited the budget no bets that we will see you say it's too early why didn't you stop all contact tracing systems in nigeria like we did here on the 12th of march. have you no contact tracing is very much out of our response it's part of the d.n.a. of any public health response to out infectious disease outbreaks well that you know we did hear though that's not a whole lot go up i could really speak about the response of the u.k.

i could only speak about that if nigeria had you know we were struggling to weed out resource constraints it's a big complex country large population and doctors really why would lock down spend it not to to enable their response but there's no other tool that we have now or that you know contact tracing it really that out work that we do in response to infection these outbreaks that is not so you'll see but. fortunately without it by the governor of that so we've really got out so street into this capacity to carry out this type of work across the country you see here in britain the media routinely says that the low death counts from the global south merely show that they may be lying about the statistics the chinese communist party invited you to woo and what do you find there because china is always being accused of falsifying

coronavirus statistics i understand you never went to the actual woo han lab or wildlife market that i did good to get a lot back what my impression was that china is really under tight we went very bad by the time we went. through a very much already do d. flight is out that you know to implement shutdown successfully you have to have as much determination not resources to convery out you know truly a deployment of food resources but since everything else it takes to keep the population alive at active despite being shut out and you were doing got this is that i mean you ready immediately you know we were going to struggle with something like this you know probably across the rest of the words. that was immediately not the policy for me and i would have led to results of the 1st bishop but the police had to prepare for our response our baby bits i'm with you get the impact of this what you know the reality to be honest this is

a top iris the toughest i've ever seen in my lifetime i think the stories of the most successful countries will go up at all of this side of the end of the year where you stand by your contact tracing which as i say the british government said had to be destroyed that system in much they've now reintroduced to quarantine which is only just begun in the past few days or so months after the pandemic was detected here in britain why did you decide to quarantine the u.k. registered aircraft britain would never quarantine a nigerian aircraft you know i think we're used to a world where most of that narrative has been effected to gird from the global south to the global nodes but the reality is that most of the infections in nigeria keep it from europe mostly from the u.k. i'm not the only buy you get sick of the baby nigerians coming back kind of trouble because it is too location but ultimately so it was you know done as

a public health measure all to basically you know the measures that we have so many contradictions west struggling with decision because egypt up has a big economic impact i've got to put a big impact especially docket that also cost lives i got the end of the day if you remember the ebola outbreak in west africa more people died from the consequences of the outbreak that struck the barras itself so we have to be very careful in judging that the big picture the concentration you mention the economic impact money is seemingly no object here where we are paying 80 percent of wages maybe a greater proportion of this population here in britain it's state funded the same there in nigeria because. i understand the i.m.f. ok 3 and a half $1000000000.00 for corona virus some suspicions about where all that money is going some labs have not opened $1.00 what is that the role of the i.m.f. in this and i got to ask why don't does it going on strike then i understand p.-p.

was better in nigeria than he has some reports suggest yeah i think it is it's impossible to really compare the economic realities and therefore the ackermann economic might to respond to an outbreak like this but to the u.k. idea we're really out there for this level it's an opportunity to do all of that so yes government has really tried to reprivatize its financial resources for the response that sometimes they're out to burrow it's not an easy decision for any company def that. depth of the opera great use of the resources especially not with which is in my control not just the public health piece to wait brought up in front of but every committee responsible for sharing appropriate the expected judge will be part of that very carefully the challenges that we're stuck there are probably very dopey terms about the public health infrastructure we don't have to build back

better for the future one thing is for sure there will be more debits in the future but one thing you for sure all the countries i think that each other much of ever because of trouble because of trade and we must work together to find solutions is not could bring us together because i would do a little long tab exists that it's probably more dependent about what he did to collaborate with that we cannot prove that sufficient director general thank you thank you very much that's in the show will be back on wednesday 3 has the day the world health organization claimed yemen had a bombing by british mainland planes and weapons had over 200000 cases of cholera still that which has joined the underground and your sound bite it's a time to turn face.

join me every. time i'm sure i'll be speaking to the world of sport i'm sure i'll see you there. the u.n. adults and the racism resolution which is slammed by both the u.s. secretary of state. and by activist groups for failing to mention the u.s. told also to come from 3 items many schools after president announced a mandatory 2 week return to class in a move that house shocked teachers and parents and moscow ease its lockdown but asked for people to wear masks and maintain social distancing to the city center to see how the release of being followed. its people can take place to test just how much social does.