INSIDE LABOUR | The true cost of Covid-19 is incalculable

Poverty, especially over the long term, is not only physically, socially and economically damaging, it also kills, perhaps slowly, but just as surely as any virus. The political will must be found to set right the damage, says Terry Bell. 

The newest coronavirus, in whatever variation, has underscored one outstanding fact: that there is a single human race on this planet that was unequally prepared, but quite equally threatened, by a pandemic. It seems to give added resonance to that fundamental call of the labour movement for workers of all countries to unite.

For it is the vast majority of the world’s population, who have only their labour to sell in order to survive, who are the major sufferers. But mostly not from Covid-19, rather from the effects of poorly planned and ill thought out official responses to the pandemic within an economic and social system that prioritises profits over the welfare of people.