Tuberculosis and Covid19: Plagues of Capitalism?

John Keats on his deathbed ca 1821

“It is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color — that drop of blood is my death warrant — I must die!”

— John Keats

In every family there was either a death from tuberculosis (consumption) or someone was known to have died from that terrible illness. I remember my grandmother telling me of her younger sibling then 14 who lay in her bed and continually coughed blood, until she eventually and mercifully died in my grandmothers arms. It was a prolonged and terrible death. Medical science at the time could do little. TB was a disease of poverty that was prevalent in medically underprivileged and resource-poor communities and high-risk ethnic minorities (my grandmother was Italian and was brought to Britain when she was 2 years-old).

The Sick Child, Edvard Munch (1885)

However, through the discovery of antibiotics in 1944 and widespread vaccination in our modern era, most deaths from TB now only occur in developing countries. TB itself has mutated from a virulent disease of the rapidly industrialising Nation-State into a 21st century neoliberal plague causing death in developing countries. Industrial growth goes hand-in-hand with disease spread and viral contagion. A…