One epidemic after another, at increasing frequency, is not a purely "natural" phenomenon. Our age of pandemics is driven by widespread environmental destruction, big agriculture, and insatiable pursuit of profit. Our monthly socialist environmental reading group will be looking at the origins and driving forces behind pandemics. This page lists various readings, and will be updated as more are added. More info about the reading group session here.
The main reading is Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science by Rob Wallace, an evolutionary epidemiologist (buy here, or epub, or pdf). It is a collection of different essays, pitched at different audiences and levels of understanding of the field. If you don't follow a particular essay, don't worry and move on!
Further reading suggestions (will be added to):
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On global capital not abiding limits and a history of pandemics — article by Camila Bassi
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Coronavirus and climate change — article by Angela Driver
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On epidemics in plants — Why banned pesticide is being used and Insect armageddon
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Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19 (buy here, or epub) — another book by Rob Wallace
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Planet Farm — An article by Rob Wallace in New Internationalist, in a sense summarising his thesis
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See many more articles on COVID-19, its impacts, political responses, our campaigning, and more
