Coronavirus and capitalism

The local newspaper Patriot on Sunday quoted the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) on April 5, 2020 informing Botswana unions that local insurance companies are rejecting requests to insure frontline workers against the risk of COVID-19 by arguing that the disease ‘is an act of God’. This is a lame and immoral excuse by insurance companies meant to justify maintenance of their profits. 

In reality, the emergence of the virus has little to do with God. Novel viruses, such as the coronavirus, developed mainly through two pathways both driven by capitalist accumulation of profits. Firstly, the industrialisation of agriculture, more specifically, the mass production of animals in limited space, promoted selection and spread of viruses and their host-to-host transmission to humans.