and in a country ravaged by color i'm in a judges in yellow fever i was a poverty 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 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 rob welcome to going underground just tell me starting off about how not just big films make big flu but your previous work near liberal suggests that capitalism fostered coronavirus one of the things that we get so programmed and it's on the specifics of each of these viruses in terms of their clinical ors and thereby rolla g.

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 urged the 20 percent in each one of those is tied into use changes or station that's being driven by capital and now you're not biased because you had career virus you wrote the book before you got it but you contract a drone a virus what is the health care in the united states being like remembering of course that the united states has plenty of money when it wants to spend money. well it's 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 the 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 the my doctor's office and had to be diagnosed online by a nurse practitioner who neither saw eye to or hear of me and so to be sure that this is new won't a back ground effect of new liberal bullet takes only response to coronavirus you're saying we need radical invasive change that's not. the lock 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 we moved 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 developing 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 powers shapes both the infectious diseases and the science is the study of 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 graded with the merchants 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 difficulties with grasping and unpacking those phenomena and so we find ourselves in i think the pandemic the exact sample of this we find ourselves when confronted with problems that don't bend easily to a 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 morris jones when he repeated the end his ministers repeatedly say we have full looing the science is actually following

a politicized new liberal version of sons which is not the evidence mazed 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 firms make big flu you ironically do support donald trump in saying it's the chinese flu of the womb flu because at the beginning in the book you say the w.h.o. was wrong not to talk about the origin of influence in other pandemics or certainly

in the chinese do you bear some responsibility for the emergence of multiple strains of influenza of these a current a virus is but china isn't the only epicenter for diseases we have for instance it's $5.00 and $2.00 the influenza avian flu and so 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 of the neoliberal interventions that are all over the forestation and the spillover of the polar strains so certainly the china. 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 your book talks about big flume is this coronavirus 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 and sense of operations push their way deeper into the for its it forces small holders to relocate and that also plunges into the local forests increasing the interfaces between small holders and wild animals that are almost for many of the new pathogen the other thing to understand is that the wild food trade where everyone's pointing

fingers that it's not this kind of totally differentiated operation from big ag increasingly capital is flooding into the wild food sector and becoming more intense of it in 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 farming into the forests you have an it 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 thus 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 ample it's 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 in 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 oversea more than 100000 that's in 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 sars 2 will be followed by a sars 3 and you really think of the logik 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 at this point it's they've got these rapid response teams crisis management packages and go out to

handle these outbreaks and make sure you continue to externalize the costs of intensive production so that everyone carries a cost and everyone carries the blame if you were to fold and the cost back onto the company balance sheets of business would be and as we know it. stop you there more from us all the big farms make big flu after this break plus we have the director general of nigeria center for disease control going to check with quizzes why a country ravaged by previous epidemics never learned 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. president vladimir putin in his own words tells us how he understands history and the current international system also why everybody parrot we hates john bolton as he laughs all the way to the bank.

he said to a question can he so he can each other than the human one. but on the better side going to that the balkans and so that means. instead of. the emotional learning to want to screw up you'll still be stuck when the subtle some question. misses to a function used to slow play or forgot to tell the future. we think he minds be something soldier he's off the boots he's wearing. which so so looks like to move the opposing opinion with you then you i'm going to show us to some of the russian police force to this whole.

welcome back i'm still with rob 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 withdrawing cooperation with the w.h.o. do you think may kill off the w h o well you know historically speaking these times of crises do have a way of killing off international organizations we think of the league of nations world war one 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 there should be a w.h.o. but we i think they're in the middle of being caught in some. of a cross-fire between time in the united states and 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 the cumulation capital being turned into money in other words. american base 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 part of 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 democrats sign 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 so we're arriving at that stage where earth cannot support these kinds of cycles of accumulation is. host of the global alliance of vaccines and immunization their strengths and gave a speech there bill gates gave a speech there we had the most of it and goes. on the program and then she said that it's no problem that these weston responses are linked

to big from being to foundations like the gates foundation and that actually far from what you're saying the. it is 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 whom they develop 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 packages 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 led 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 if we're in the business of just cleaning up after one pandemic after another then. indeed i think we're 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 in 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 plainly

just to one irony arguably some of. companies obviously helping in the contract ing 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 is 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 it the u.s. responses being. even at the level of basic. you know there is no 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. you case form a west african colony joining me is the man leading the fight against coven 1000 there the director general of nigeria center for disease control to check with hack was who 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 conclusions around the burden both of infection disease and death because you know there's a time aspect influences the transmission and also influences but it's you know what out across the globe across the world but there are also many thinks you know whether ever hurt you borrows is introduced into

a population does that interaction with you not the virus the population of environment you know the depths of sadly to do it that our 3 kids go unique to nigeria. proportion of that he didn't know about south africa 4 even though i got so ago definite is something happening on the continent i don't know if so far that it's limited to the broader bets that we would 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 think 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 knock down spending it ought to to enable the response but there's no other tool that we have now or that you know contact tracing out really the hot work that we do in response to infection these outbreaks that is not so you don't see but monkeypox at all fortunately without it but that number 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 hand 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

bout the time we went. through a very but you're ready to declare it is out that you know to implement shutdown successfully you have to have as much determination on resources to carry out you know truly a deployment of food resources bedsteads and 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 at 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 a mitigate 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 this side of the end of the year where

you stand by your contact tracing which as i say the british government has 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 nigeria it's coming back to have kind of trouble because it is to location but ultimately so it was you know done as a public health measure all to basically you know the better that we have so many contradictions west struggling with decision because egypt up has

a big economic impact that's a good a big impact especially docket that also cost lives i got the end of the day if you remember that you bought outbreaks of 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 taking the big picture it's a concentration you mention the economic impact money has seemingly no object here where we are paying 80 percent of wages of maybe 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 coronavirus some suspicions about where all that money is going some labs have not opened $1.00 what is that the rule of the i.m.f. in this and i'm going to ask why don't does it going on strike that understand p.-p. was better in nigeria than he has some reports suggest yeah 6 i think it would if it's impossible to really compare the economic realities i'm definitely ackermann

economic might to respond to an outbreak like this but to the ukip idea we're really out there fred's 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 the borough it's not an easy decision for any company difficulty dems are a bit opera great use of their resources especially not with which it's in my control the national public health used to wait right up in front of the not rhetoric committee responsible for showing up are a great they're expected judge will be put into very carefully the challenges that we're stuck there 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 is that there will be a lot of debits in the future 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 should bring us together because i would do a little long tab exists that it's probably more dependent i'm not predicted to collaborate that area that we never can operate that sufficient director general thank you thank you very much that's in the show we're back on wednesday 3 is the day you will tell the united nations claimed yemen ahead of bombing by british made warplanes and weapons had over 200000 cases of cholera still that which has joined the underground the huge sound bite it's a time to turn face. what's needed national well that's not a matter when you've been eating less and that's only sit here to prevent you. from the regular morgue you're more your partner going to be moving from right.

oh. ya bush or psych you all but us lucifer mistletoe is just that in the gutter and i'm just. it is not my achievement mr davies our 5 beautiful lands were conceived and carried out by the people themselves if the power would produce or even flirted with the idea of making a film like this they'd probably be branded as crazy. now was the sentiment during the war the soviets were brave heroes resisting the nazis that's going to change of course after the war but once the cold war begins. little people think that hollywood is a free place but only what is strictly defined by. the business and the other side is. how would i define hollywood is they call it the dream

manufacturer which i think's true but i think equally it's a problem in the fact. the you in the dumps and pantene racism resolution which is slums by both the u.s. secretary of state for chrissy and by activist groups for failing to mention the u.s. the top. guns reopens most schools have to present my craw now some on the cheap too weak return to class in a move that shocked teachers and parents. we head into the city center to see how the rules are being followed. in the past take place to tell just how much social distancing is going on in the summer it's absolutely packed with people eating and drinking.