In America we're taking the bluntest strategy possible, just throwing human lives in front of the problem and refusing to use innovation and technology - testing, better masks, all the sorts of precautionary measures other governments took. In a sense, we're going backwards, we're the least innovative country when it comes to dealing with this virus, precisely because of the short-term perspective of the political and business classes.

Historian Andrew Liu traces the Covid-19 pandemic along the routes and faultlines of the global market - from the political uses of Sinophobia in the US (and Asia), to the conspicuous nature of pangolin consumption, and the deep social consequences of capitalism unleashed on a system with nothing to provide but profit for the rich.

Andrew wrote the article “Chinese Virus,” World Market for n+1.