February 5, 2021 – Should someone be blamed and punished for 2.2 million COVID deaths in the world?
An editorial in an influential UK medical journal said that politicians who did not react aggressively enough to control the coronavirus pandemic should be held responsible for the deaths that the editorial said could be classified as “social murder”.
“Politicians must be held accountable by legal and electoral means, including all necessary national and international constitutional means,” wrote Dr. Kamran Abbasi, editor-in-chief of the BMJ.
Abbasi writes that the term “social murder” was coined by the philosopher Friedrich Engels to describe the conditions created by privileged classes in 19th century England that “inevitably lead to premature and“ unnatural ”death among the poorest classes have led”.
Today the phrase “could describe the lack of political attention to the social determinants and inequalities that exacerbate the pandemic,” he writes.
“When politicians and experts say they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, isn’t it deliberate and reckless indifference to human life?”
Two million deaths, but where is political responsibility for pandemic mistreatment? Is it social murder, manslaughter, misconduct in public office? In a new editorial I examine these problems and how accountability is possible @bmj_latest https://t.co/P1jVZkaMMx
– Kamran Abbasi (@KamranAbbasi) February 4, 2021
Politicians mentioned in the editorial include former US President Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – all leaders of nations with high death rates.
According to Johns Hopkins University, nearly 2.3 million people have died from COVID reasons, many of them in developed countries. More than 445,000 people have died in the United States and 110,000 in the UK.
One approach, the editorial says, is for world courts such as the International Criminal Court to expand their definitions of murder to “cover government failures in pandemics.”
In a linked editorial titled “What went wrong with covid-19’s global governance?” Clare Wenham, PhD of the London School of Economics, said politics had driven governments’ response to the pandemic, calling for certain individuals to be blamed.
“We need a focused review that names and shames governments instead of obscuring them with generalizations,” she said.
Comments are closed.