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The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism
A new edition of a classic book on viral catastrophes—the Spanish flu, the Avian flu, and now, Covid-19
In his book, The Monster at Our Door, the renowned activist and author Mike Davis warned of a coming global threat of viral catastrophes. Now in this expanded edition of that 2005 book, Davis explains how the problems he warned of remain, and he sets the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of previous disastrous outbreaks, notably the 1918 influenza disaster that killed at least forty million people in three months and the Avian flu of a decade and a half ago.
In language both accessible and authoritative, The Monster Enters surveys the scientific and political roots of today's viral apocalypse. In doing so it exposes the key roles of agribusiness and the fast-food industries, abetted by corrupt governments and a capitalist global system careening out of control, in creating the ecological pre-conditions for a plague that has brought much of human existence to a juddering halt.
In his book, The Monster at Our Door, the renowned activist and author Mike Davis warned of a coming global threat of viral catastrophes. Now in this expanded edition of that 2005 book, Davis explains how the problems he warned of remain, and he sets the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of previous disastrous outbreaks, notably the 1918 influenza disaster that killed at least forty million people in three months and the Avian flu of a decade and a half ago.
In language both accessible and authoritative, The Monster Enters surveys the scientific and political roots of today's viral apocalypse. In doing so it exposes the key roles of agribusiness and the fast-food industries, abetted by corrupt governments and a capitalist global system careening out of control, in creating the ecological pre-conditions for a plague that has brought much of human existence to a juddering halt.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
26 people are currently reading
704 people want to read
About the author
Mike Davis
232 books676 followersMike Davis was a social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He was best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lived in San Diego.
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August 7, 2020Obviously, Mike Davis (and many others) called the pandemic. He just got the zoonotic wrong. All that means to me is that this won’t be the only pandemic of my lifetime and the next one will likely be worse.
The picture Davis paints of neoliberal governance and contemporary agribusiness is truly fucked.
The picture Davis paints of neoliberal governance and contemporary agribusiness is truly fucked.
August 18, 2020
Who could’ve seen COVID coming? Apparently a lot of fucking people did.
December 5, 2020
It's truly horrific to know this pandemic has been a long time coming, what's worse is that doctors and scientists sounded the alarm years ago, but the United States chose not to listen.
May 10, 2023
Spiked population density of people and livestock. Policy capture by agribusiness. Underfunded and poorly managed public health infrastructure. Opacity and the undue shifting of blame onto smallholders. The inevitable clash between a public need for system change and privately-benefitting ideologues (tempering projections on climate and pandemics in order to be 'taken seriously' by unserious demagogues). Mike Davis brings all of these puzzle pieces together in this political epidemiological account of an earlier pandemic (H5N1) portending ill-preparedness for another (SARS-COV-2). Davis does an excellent job of simplifying the science without being simplistic---that is to say, you won't need a virology background to follow the science, which is boiled down as much to the political as the genetic factors for its spread. There's just enough of the science to highlight the mismatch between health officials' dire warnings and the political inconvenience for agribusiness and their paid-for politicians (and also between those warnings and states' willingness to support transparency or effective localized containment).
As with his others works such as Late Victorian Holocausts, or City of Quartz, Davis is truly a master of explaining the lateral connections and shining lights into the backrooms that manifest disasters in development. As against conspiracy thinking, his narrative does not deny unaccountable and opaque class power (in outright lies to international agencies for 'national economic interest', choices not to publicize local outbreaks, etc.) but makes it material, corporeal.
Davis boils down "influenza ecology" several multi-scale factors:
1. The "Livestock Revolution" of factory farming/agribusiness.
2. The industrial revolution in South China as a commercial nexus.
3. Emergence of third-worl "supercities" and their slums.
4. "the absence of an international public-health system corresponding to the scale and impact of economic globalization."
Choice Excerpts:
"multinational capital has been the driver of disease evolution through the burning or logging out of tropical forests, the proliferation of factory farming, the explosive growth of slums and concomitantly of “informal employment,” and the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find profit in mass producing lifeline antivirals, new-generation antibiotics, and universal vaccines....Permanent bio-protection against new plagues, accordingly, would require more than vaccines. It would need the suppression of these “structures of disease emergence” through revolutionary reforms in agriculture and urban living that no large capitalist or state-capitalist country would ever willingly undertake."
"Today’s “landscape of disaster” is eerily similar to 1665 and 1918: urban populations locked inside their apartments, the flight of rich to their country homes, the cancelation of public events and schools, desperate trips to the markets that often end with infection; society’s reliance upon hero nurses, the lack of beds in hospitals and pest-houses, the mad search for masks, and the widespread suspicion that alien powers are at work (Jews, a passing comet, German saboteurs, the Chinese). But this time around there was little mystery about the identity of the microbe—SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced almost overnight in January—or the steps necessary to fight it."
The management of the epidemic in Hong Kong and Toronto:
"...published in 2004 by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). As the panel chairs emphasize: “Both areas were hampered by underinvestment in public health infrastructure, diminution of public-health leadership, and weak links between health care and public health.” In both cities, moreover, the health systems were overwhelmed by the epidemic. No one had expected a disease that targeted hospitals or took such a heavy toll on primary health-care personnel... The Ontario government had to import, more or less clandestinely, several hundred U.S. doctors to make up the shortfall caused by ill or frightened physicians. In Hong Kong the hospital system almost broke down because of the lack of infection control in emergency rooms and the shortage of isolation units (single, negative-pressure rooms). ...“neither jurisdiction had enough infection control practitioners and infectious disease specialists.” The distressing spread of SARS among medical personnel, however, was not due to the virus’s super-infectivity, but, rather, to surprisingly widespread failure of hospital staff to adhere to proper protective clothing and standard hygiene (such as simple hand-washing). In both cities, lines of authority were blurred or contradictory, and general practitioners were often left totally in the dark about diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In the end, the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first, defeated SARS: “containment of SARS relied heavily on application of public health and clinical infection-control measures rooted in nineteenth-century science.”
H5 pandemic:
"there was broad agreement among researchers [in the late fall of 2004] that an H5 pandemic was not simply imminent, it was 'late.' Getting this urgent message across...was the urgent task entrusted to the WHO...It was an uneven and divided effort compromised by undue deference to the interests of powerful states, including China and the United States, which generated some lurid headlines and rhetorical promises but none of the truly decisive action urged by experts on the ground."
"Under Democrats, as well as Republicans, Washington has looked the other way as local health departments have lost funding and crucial hospital surge capacity has been eroded in the wake of the HMO revolution. (A sobering 2004 Government Accounting Office [GAO] report confirmed the 'no state is fully prepared to respond to a major public-health threat.') The federal government also has refused to address the growing lack of new vaccines an antibiotics caused by the pharmaceutical industry's withdrawal from sectors judged to be insufficiently profitable; moreover, revolutionary breakthroughs in vaccine design and manufacturing technology have languished due to lack of sponsorship by either the government or the drug industry."
As with his others works such as Late Victorian Holocausts, or City of Quartz, Davis is truly a master of explaining the lateral connections and shining lights into the backrooms that manifest disasters in development. As against conspiracy thinking, his narrative does not deny unaccountable and opaque class power (in outright lies to international agencies for 'national economic interest', choices not to publicize local outbreaks, etc.) but makes it material, corporeal.
Davis boils down "influenza ecology" several multi-scale factors:
1. The "Livestock Revolution" of factory farming/agribusiness.
2. The industrial revolution in South China as a commercial nexus.
3. Emergence of third-worl "supercities" and their slums.
4. "the absence of an international public-health system corresponding to the scale and impact of economic globalization."
Choice Excerpts:
"multinational capital has been the driver of disease evolution through the burning or logging out of tropical forests, the proliferation of factory farming, the explosive growth of slums and concomitantly of “informal employment,” and the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find profit in mass producing lifeline antivirals, new-generation antibiotics, and universal vaccines....Permanent bio-protection against new plagues, accordingly, would require more than vaccines. It would need the suppression of these “structures of disease emergence” through revolutionary reforms in agriculture and urban living that no large capitalist or state-capitalist country would ever willingly undertake."
"Today’s “landscape of disaster” is eerily similar to 1665 and 1918: urban populations locked inside their apartments, the flight of rich to their country homes, the cancelation of public events and schools, desperate trips to the markets that often end with infection; society’s reliance upon hero nurses, the lack of beds in hospitals and pest-houses, the mad search for masks, and the widespread suspicion that alien powers are at work (Jews, a passing comet, German saboteurs, the Chinese). But this time around there was little mystery about the identity of the microbe—SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced almost overnight in January—or the steps necessary to fight it."
The management of the epidemic in Hong Kong and Toronto:
"...published in 2004 by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). As the panel chairs emphasize: “Both areas were hampered by underinvestment in public health infrastructure, diminution of public-health leadership, and weak links between health care and public health.” In both cities, moreover, the health systems were overwhelmed by the epidemic. No one had expected a disease that targeted hospitals or took such a heavy toll on primary health-care personnel... The Ontario government had to import, more or less clandestinely, several hundred U.S. doctors to make up the shortfall caused by ill or frightened physicians. In Hong Kong the hospital system almost broke down because of the lack of infection control in emergency rooms and the shortage of isolation units (single, negative-pressure rooms). ...“neither jurisdiction had enough infection control practitioners and infectious disease specialists.” The distressing spread of SARS among medical personnel, however, was not due to the virus’s super-infectivity, but, rather, to surprisingly widespread failure of hospital staff to adhere to proper protective clothing and standard hygiene (such as simple hand-washing). In both cities, lines of authority were blurred or contradictory, and general practitioners were often left totally in the dark about diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In the end, the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first, defeated SARS: “containment of SARS relied heavily on application of public health and clinical infection-control measures rooted in nineteenth-century science.”
H5 pandemic:
"there was broad agreement among researchers [in the late fall of 2004] that an H5 pandemic was not simply imminent, it was 'late.' Getting this urgent message across...was the urgent task entrusted to the WHO...It was an uneven and divided effort compromised by undue deference to the interests of powerful states, including China and the United States, which generated some lurid headlines and rhetorical promises but none of the truly decisive action urged by experts on the ground."
"Under Democrats, as well as Republicans, Washington has looked the other way as local health departments have lost funding and crucial hospital surge capacity has been eroded in the wake of the HMO revolution. (A sobering 2004 Government Accounting Office [GAO] report confirmed the 'no state is fully prepared to respond to a major public-health threat.') The federal government also has refused to address the growing lack of new vaccines an antibiotics caused by the pharmaceutical industry's withdrawal from sectors judged to be insufficiently profitable; moreover, revolutionary breakthroughs in vaccine design and manufacturing technology have languished due to lack of sponsorship by either the government or the drug industry."
May 29, 2022
Mike Davis more than deserves his status not just as a solid writer but as a sociological and ecological prophet: while the fears and anxieties in The Monster at Our Door remain directed at the next avian flu pandemic - which is still an alarming concern despite the current pandemic - the additional material around COVID-19 packs a reiterative and validating punch. Yes, corporate-government synergy engendered utter neglect of public safety, especially the safety of the poor and of POC. Much like Bush did away with the assault weapons ban, Trump did away with Obama's pandemic response plan, which, while faulty in and of itself, boasted far more detail than Trump's "we got nothing" approach.
Davis' material here also integrates nicely with another startling treatise of his, Planet of Slums. The environments created in the increasingly populated and increasingly undersanitized slums of the developed and developing world are not just rife with filth and suffering, but are rife with viral transmission. Ditto when these spaces are where most vertically integrated agri-businesses - similarly overcrowded and undersanitized - are located, allowing for the juxtaposition of two hotbeds of viral transmissibility. The blame is shared widely across players but comes down to the corporate greed and moral irresponsibility of giant agribusiness corporations like Tyson and CP; the "emergency secrets" strategy that arose out of China's egregious mistakes; and the infrastructure of capitalism that disincentivizes any investments in vaccine technology whatsoever. The "plagues of capitalism" subtitle here turns out to be impeccably argued and 100% correct.
This is a short, highly recommended book as to how we got here and how it is not going to change anytime soon. Davis balances honest pessimism with caustic wit, and his writing style achieves momentum and erudition in a reader-friendly way (at least in this case; Prisoners of the American Dream was the least friendly of the four I've read thus far). Davis is consistently good at telling us what to make of the overwhelming chaos around us, and this now-updated book is no exception.
Davis' material here also integrates nicely with another startling treatise of his, Planet of Slums. The environments created in the increasingly populated and increasingly undersanitized slums of the developed and developing world are not just rife with filth and suffering, but are rife with viral transmission. Ditto when these spaces are where most vertically integrated agri-businesses - similarly overcrowded and undersanitized - are located, allowing for the juxtaposition of two hotbeds of viral transmissibility. The blame is shared widely across players but comes down to the corporate greed and moral irresponsibility of giant agribusiness corporations like Tyson and CP; the "emergency secrets" strategy that arose out of China's egregious mistakes; and the infrastructure of capitalism that disincentivizes any investments in vaccine technology whatsoever. The "plagues of capitalism" subtitle here turns out to be impeccably argued and 100% correct.
This is a short, highly recommended book as to how we got here and how it is not going to change anytime soon. Davis balances honest pessimism with caustic wit, and his writing style achieves momentum and erudition in a reader-friendly way (at least in this case; Prisoners of the American Dream was the least friendly of the four I've read thus far). Davis is consistently good at telling us what to make of the overwhelming chaos around us, and this now-updated book is no exception.
December 27, 2023
I’ve been dying to read Mike Davis. I got a copy of this for Christmas. Probably not the best entry point into his work but it’s a good book. An interesting choice from Verso here to essentially republish a book with a new 50 page preface. It makes sense given what you get in the back of the book.
Bottom line our world is a sick place due to our economic system and those structural problems only make our health concerns even more dire.
Bottom line our world is a sick place due to our economic system and those structural problems only make our health concerns even more dire.
August 11, 2020
Rereading this after having read the first edition in 2004 I was near to tears about how accurate Mike Davis' predictions were. OK, it wasnt avian flu but the failings of government and corporations are exactly the same and few lessons have been learnt. The excellent new opening chapter proves exactly this. Read it.
December 10, 2023
I read this one twice as I found it so informative. It is though a re-write of his book The Monster At The Door.
The warnings came to pass but in an unexpected format.
Mike Davis is one of my favourite writers of all time. Thanks for all the good books!
The warnings came to pass but in an unexpected format.
Mike Davis is one of my favourite writers of all time. Thanks for all the good books!
January 18, 2024
The Monster Enters;
An interesting delve into how global capitalism has led to the increasing risk of pandemics: mainly through increased contact of humans with previously forest dwelling animals through deforestation, the industrialization of the animal farming industry and private companies corruption of governments in order to protect their profits.
Davis’s writing provides for easy reading. Originally published in 2005, Davis mainly examines the pandemics of the early 2000s and later 1900s, such as SARS and particularly the Avian influenza. This release includes an interesting introduction by himself explaining the recent COVID-19 pandemic, something he predicts later in the book.
It would have been intriguing to read the book as if it was published today, I imagine additional chapters based on the experience of COVID-19 on topics including vaccine inequality would have been included.
I do wish that, while Davis’s writing has been descriptive, that it was a bit more prescriptive. He offers good Marxist analysis of the pharmaceutical industry and industrial farming, but fails to analyze how these industries would look like under a socialist system e.g. the pharmaceutical industry continuously producing vaccines throughout the year instead of just in flu season and a medication stockpile suitable for the population.
3.5/5
An interesting delve into how global capitalism has led to the increasing risk of pandemics: mainly through increased contact of humans with previously forest dwelling animals through deforestation, the industrialization of the animal farming industry and private companies corruption of governments in order to protect their profits.
Davis’s writing provides for easy reading. Originally published in 2005, Davis mainly examines the pandemics of the early 2000s and later 1900s, such as SARS and particularly the Avian influenza. This release includes an interesting introduction by himself explaining the recent COVID-19 pandemic, something he predicts later in the book.
It would have been intriguing to read the book as if it was published today, I imagine additional chapters based on the experience of COVID-19 on topics including vaccine inequality would have been included.
I do wish that, while Davis’s writing has been descriptive, that it was a bit more prescriptive. He offers good Marxist analysis of the pharmaceutical industry and industrial farming, but fails to analyze how these industries would look like under a socialist system e.g. the pharmaceutical industry continuously producing vaccines throughout the year instead of just in flu season and a medication stockpile suitable for the population.
3.5/5
February 19, 2023
A timely update with an introductory chapter on COVID-19 on the front of a book about the (very much still present and growing) threat of an avian flu pandemic and the social and economic developments that make it both more likely and more terrifying.
July 8, 2023
Whether it be climate change, covid-19, or the avian flu, the world cannot afford to continue to allow capitalism to wreak havoc on humanity and the planet. Crisis after crisis proves this, and of course, Mike Davis knew this when he wrote the book. RIP Mike Davis, I hope the world you left recently starts to listen to you.
December 15, 2024
Mike Davis is very good and now I'm scared of the avian flu.
October 3, 2025
Reading this book 5 years after the COVID pandemic started brings a new perspective of how relative little power scientists and farmers have in the spread of viral epidemics/pandemics. Ultimately, it’s the politicians that determine the fate of a deadly virus. A sad but insightful read.
August 8, 2022
This is one of the few doomsday books offered an updated reprint in which the author gets to say, “I pretty-nearly told you so.” Mike Davis originally published The Monster at the Door in 2005; and while most of his discussion leans towards the prediction of a worldwide avian influenza pandemic—not a coronavirus—there are some exceedingly prescient passages (particularly in relation to Big Pharma and global public health systems) that really change your perceptions of just how ‘out-of-the-blue’ a COVID-like disaster actually was.
“… the drug industry mines gold from outrageous prescription prices for drugs that manage chronic illnesses… Products that actually cure or prevent disease, like vaccines and antibiotics, are less profitable, so infectious disease has become largely an orphan market.”
“…the crazy quilt work of the US vaccine distribution system—with literally thousands of independent government and private agents involved—gave a disturbing foretaste of the chaos that a pandemic would create.”
This book made me realise that COVID-19 was not really the beginning or the end of anything. Pretty much all of what Davis is discussing in relation to avian flus—the horrifying potential of these cross-species transmutable and highly virulent diseases—remains pertinent today, on top of the fact that we are still dealing with COVID-19. Hopefully, if we have learned anything from the past few years, pharmaceutical companies and government health systems will be in a more informed and willing position to fight emerging influenza outbreaks as they come. Big agribusiness, on the other hand, in the form of industrial chicken and pig farms, are more than likely to continue facilitating the cyclone of viral evolutions that will keep these defence forces working overtime.
Mike Davis is not a raving apocalyptoid, so he doesn’t spend much time rubbing anyone’s faces in anything. This revised edition is an informative read that offers great context for anyone interested in learning more about the history of pandemics and virology. It doesn’t exactly walk the layperson by the hand through some of its more advanced concepts (there was a decent amount of assumed knowledge which I simply did not have) but it maintains an inviting tone throughout. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is looking to feel 10% smarter than those around them over the next few months of COVID conversations.
“… the drug industry mines gold from outrageous prescription prices for drugs that manage chronic illnesses… Products that actually cure or prevent disease, like vaccines and antibiotics, are less profitable, so infectious disease has become largely an orphan market.”
“…the crazy quilt work of the US vaccine distribution system—with literally thousands of independent government and private agents involved—gave a disturbing foretaste of the chaos that a pandemic would create.”
This book made me realise that COVID-19 was not really the beginning or the end of anything. Pretty much all of what Davis is discussing in relation to avian flus—the horrifying potential of these cross-species transmutable and highly virulent diseases—remains pertinent today, on top of the fact that we are still dealing with COVID-19. Hopefully, if we have learned anything from the past few years, pharmaceutical companies and government health systems will be in a more informed and willing position to fight emerging influenza outbreaks as they come. Big agribusiness, on the other hand, in the form of industrial chicken and pig farms, are more than likely to continue facilitating the cyclone of viral evolutions that will keep these defence forces working overtime.
Mike Davis is not a raving apocalyptoid, so he doesn’t spend much time rubbing anyone’s faces in anything. This revised edition is an informative read that offers great context for anyone interested in learning more about the history of pandemics and virology. It doesn’t exactly walk the layperson by the hand through some of its more advanced concepts (there was a decent amount of assumed knowledge which I simply did not have) but it maintains an inviting tone throughout. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is looking to feel 10% smarter than those around them over the next few months of COVID conversations.
September 28, 2020
This is the book we all should have paid attention to when it was first published in 2010 as The Monster at Our Door.
The take-home messages for us in the COVID pandemic of 2020:
1) Lack of preparedness by Governments is criminal. Alarm bells have been sounding on the threat of pandemics for 20+ years, and clear actions to mitigate risk and prepare were identified. Govts mostly ignored these or acted half-heartedly on these, the United States among the worst.
2) Govts have been so reluctant to take any action that would disrupt global agribusiness markets. The increased risk of pandemics is associated with some intractable aspects of our current stage of global capitalism: global factory farm production and the supply chain of poultry and pork throughout the sprawling slums of megacities of the developing world.
3) Death rates and virality of COVID-19 is relatively mild compared to other potential avian flu pandemics. This is more a wake-up call than "the big one."
A grim but important book.
The take-home messages for us in the COVID pandemic of 2020:
1) Lack of preparedness by Governments is criminal. Alarm bells have been sounding on the threat of pandemics for 20+ years, and clear actions to mitigate risk and prepare were identified. Govts mostly ignored these or acted half-heartedly on these, the United States among the worst.
2) Govts have been so reluctant to take any action that would disrupt global agribusiness markets. The increased risk of pandemics is associated with some intractable aspects of our current stage of global capitalism: global factory farm production and the supply chain of poultry and pork throughout the sprawling slums of megacities of the developing world.
3) Death rates and virality of COVID-19 is relatively mild compared to other potential avian flu pandemics. This is more a wake-up call than "the big one."
A grim but important book.
August 13, 2022
Mike Davis' book 'The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism' is an incredible and terrifying look (mostly) at the avian flu and how the world was failing and has failed to prepare for other outbreaks due to the great plague known as capitalism. This edition is an updated edition of Davis' 'The Monster at Our Door' published in 2005. Davis' commentary on the history of the avain flu and the totally bungled response to it really creates a framework for understanding why nearly every country failed catastrophically to respond to covid 19. In this way, Davis' book was ahead of its time in 2005 and provides insight into how we got here--in 2022--however, if you are looking for insight into covid 19 response, this book has little to offer except for a frame of reference. Covid 19 is only covered in the introduction and only talks about what was emerging in 2020 given it was written in that year.
July 19, 2020
So pleased Davis agreed to republish this as it has such a wealth of information. Perhaps at times more than I could accommodate in my pea brain. I especially liked the new introduction with its background on our current COVID crisis.
It's a book to make one think and make decisions on how to personally deal with these ongoing viruses jumping from one species to another and to ours. It's time, people, to do away with factory farming, time to get back to small, organic farms.
From now on I will eat only wild, sustainably-harvested fish and organic, grass-fed beef even though the added expense means I will eat less of it. I'm learning to be a good cook of healthy soups.
It's a book to make one think and make decisions on how to personally deal with these ongoing viruses jumping from one species to another and to ours. It's time, people, to do away with factory farming, time to get back to small, organic farms.
From now on I will eat only wild, sustainably-harvested fish and organic, grass-fed beef even though the added expense means I will eat less of it. I'm learning to be a good cook of healthy soups.
March 18, 2021
Great explanation on the subject. We should have, and actually/apparently did, see it coming.
Too bad our leadership fell apart.
Hopefully US will recreate and expand our pandemic office and reserves.
Too bad our leadership fell apart.
Hopefully US will recreate and expand our pandemic office and reserves.
August 3, 2020
Stop big Pharma, stop capitalism, stop the plague!
January 20, 2022
Traduction en français sous le titre Le monstre est parmi nous que je viens de lire. Mike Davis est historien de l'urbanisme. J'ai eu l'occasion de citer sur ce blog un de ses textes (en fin de billet) sur le bidonville global ; son oeuvre décrit des villes mortes (Dead Cities), des villes de quartz (City of quartz / Los Angeles) et "le stade Dubaï de capitalisme" dans un style inimitable, maniant la métaphore avec intelligence et érudition. Ses ouvrages se lisent comme des romans. Mike Davis est marxiste. Le marxisme propose encore une critique acceptable du stade global du capitalisme que nous vivons actuellement. Dans Le monstre est parmi nous, Mike Davis annonce que la prochaine pandémie de grippe, le monstre c'est l'influenza -flu- du même type que celle de 1918-1920 dont le nombre de victimes, toujours non parfaitement dénombrées, a été évalué entre 14 millions à 100 millions de morts. En cas de "monstre" comparable (le SARS-COV2 est une promenade de santé à côté de la grippe HxNy) présentant la même virulence, vu que la population mondiale a sextuplé (X 6) en un siècle, on obtiendrait un nombre de morts entre 325 millions à 1 milliard pour les projections les plus pessimistes. Sachant que les taudis du début du XXème siècle, comme le manque d'hygiène dans les tranchées de la Grande Guerre, sont avantageusement remplacés et surmultipliés par les bidonvilles où s'entassent actuellement pratiquement 2 milliards d'humains. Humains déracinés, paysans sans terres, ruinés par l'agro-industrie intensive intégrée, paysans éleveurs extensifs, par exemple thaïlandais, clochardisés, dont "les filles peuplent désormais les bordels de Bangkok". Tandis que la grippe aviaire court dans les élevages d'Asie et dans le Sud-Ouest de la France, que nos désespérées "nuits des longs couteaux" (abattages massifs d'animaux) n'éradiquent plus, qu'elle flambe de plus belle ailleurs, sachant que la grippe porcine est dans les élevages des Côtes d'Armor, inspirée par l'ouvrage, voici la recette de la prochaine grippe, comme il y a un siècle.
MANUEL D'APOCALYPSE EN 11 ETAPES => https://hypathie.blogspot.com/2022/01...
MANUEL D'APOCALYPSE EN 11 ETAPES => https://hypathie.blogspot.com/2022/01...
August 13, 2020
Written in 2005, but updated with a new chapter dealing with the pandemic this year.
A US-centric book, nonetheless says enough about the rest of the world.
Focussing on the science of viruses and potential pandemics, it describes the role played by agro-capitalism, Big Pharma and factory farming of pigs and chicken in the US, South-East Asia, China and the Netherlands.
It describes how corruption in Thailand and Indonesia, state control and fear amongst officials in China and lobby work and financing elected representatives in the US impacts on the public debate regarding pandemics and the steps needed to check them.
The book proposes how continual cuts in the finance in public health systems, a managerial approach to running public health institutions (lean and just in time) and big pharma's preference for the provision of drugs and treatments for chronic ailments in the west, such as obesity, heart desease, cancer etc over preventative treatments such as vaccines, especially pandemics such as flu en SARS that may never happen has shaped government's lack of preparedness for pandemics such as COVID-19.
It is an indictment of the decisions made in the late 70s and onwards enabling private businesses take control of so many facets of public life, causing the degradation and neglect of all public areas of life, including the health services.
Good read, not overly long and says something sensible about the pandemic affecting us now.
A US-centric book, nonetheless says enough about the rest of the world.
Focussing on the science of viruses and potential pandemics, it describes the role played by agro-capitalism, Big Pharma and factory farming of pigs and chicken in the US, South-East Asia, China and the Netherlands.
It describes how corruption in Thailand and Indonesia, state control and fear amongst officials in China and lobby work and financing elected representatives in the US impacts on the public debate regarding pandemics and the steps needed to check them.
The book proposes how continual cuts in the finance in public health systems, a managerial approach to running public health institutions (lean and just in time) and big pharma's preference for the provision of drugs and treatments for chronic ailments in the west, such as obesity, heart desease, cancer etc over preventative treatments such as vaccines, especially pandemics such as flu en SARS that may never happen has shaped government's lack of preparedness for pandemics such as COVID-19.
It is an indictment of the decisions made in the late 70s and onwards enabling private businesses take control of so many facets of public life, causing the degradation and neglect of all public areas of life, including the health services.
Good read, not overly long and says something sensible about the pandemic affecting us now.
Read
March 18, 2023I am not sure what it is about this book that like I just could not process. Funny enough, of my list, I decided to read this one bc it’s shorter than the rest but I think my brain wanted more. Like I needed more time for the points to settle in my brain but they couldn’t because he was on to the next. So I got the cohesive general idea and the little ideas but it also somehow didn’t link together. But I don’t think it’s the fault of the book. I think this is just a book I needed to read the physical book instead of audio. Also, it’s pretty dated. So every time a fact was given I was like ok but how is it now? I’m sure not much better but also I’m sure different. Like our healthcare system still fucking sucks but like it’s way different than it was in 2003. I think the covid portion of the book should have been at the end and even that is also dated. But I know that’s the issue sometimes with books written on current events of the time. But it was written in early covid and I def am wondering what that would look like written now, years into covid. Outside of that, it is very informative! I’m a big fan of This Podcast Will Kill You and hate capitalism and our government so it was a nice meshing of the two. Like here is stuff about the avian flu and here is all the ways our government is screwing us related to that. I think the book could have used some more background to a lot of things presented. But I’d still recommend it generally!
January 25, 2021
“But this time around there was little mystery about the identity of the microbe—SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced almost overnight in January—or the steps necessary to fight it. Since the discovery of the HIV virus in 1983 and the recognition that it had jumped from apes to humans, science has been on high alert against the appearance of deadly new diseases with pandemic potential that have crossed over from wild fauna. This new age of plagues, like previous pandemic epochs, is directly the result of economic globalization. The Black Death, for instance, was the inadvertent consequence of the Mongol conquest of inner Eurasia, which allowed Chinese rodents to hitchhike along the trade routes from northern China to Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Today, as was the case when I wrote Monster fifteen years ago, multinational capital has been the driver of disease evolution through the burning or logging out of tropical forests, the proliferation of factory farming, the explosive growth of slums and concomitantly of “informal employment,” and the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find profit in mass producing lifeline antivirals, new-generation antibiotics, and universal vaccines.”
December 31, 2023
Wow, just 25 pages into this piece of and I'm reading likely the most worthless book on Covid-19 Plandemic. This book starts by dissing Capitalism and POTUS Trump and promoting Socialism Federal Control of Health through NIH CDC and FDA... and while spewing all the Bullsh1t of the FedGov pseudo scientists in bed with all the Evil Bastards in our Food Medical and Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex... Thankfully this Bullsh1t book is short and I'll read it cover to cover in order to explain how crappy a read (uninformative and Biased) it truly is. Don't even try to argue with me!
November 10, 2022
Paints a viscerally clear picture of how far in advance Covid-19 could have been seen and prevented. Mike Davis lays out that agribusiness, industrialism, and big-pharma have worked together to create a situation where millions of poor people die from treatable diseases so that capitalists can profit. One of the few books I read, really enjoy, and will trade back to the used book store so that hopefully someone else will read it soon too.
April 10, 2023
Pretty amazing. Davis is the political/non-fiction writer I find able to write with the most clarity. Especially when outlining the interconnectedness of the world and it’s systems. This is best when exploring those connections, particularly between the failings/limitations of capitalism in relation to public health. A little less immediate when looking at the science of flu or spread of outbreaks.
January 24, 2024
He called it and that's important no doubt, but at the same time I can't help but walk away from this book feeling somewhat unsatisfied. I've grown bored with indictments - whether against corrupt governments or 'big chicken' etc - and I now desire for something constructive. Didn't walk away from this feeling as though I've learned something new. My beliefs have only been reinforced and that's kinda boring.
August 1, 2024
Still damning. Still relevant.
The risk of zoonotic disease spread couldn't be higher and we remain on borrowed time. Covid-19 was just a taste of what's at the door. The factors remain: ghastly livestock revolution that mirrors our own population boom. Paired with precarious housing, slums and outright poverty. Pharmaceutical companies chasing profits over people leave vaccine development and production sorely lacking.
Mike Davis has delivered an uncomprisming authoritative piece.
The risk of zoonotic disease spread couldn't be higher and we remain on borrowed time. Covid-19 was just a taste of what's at the door. The factors remain: ghastly livestock revolution that mirrors our own population boom. Paired with precarious housing, slums and outright poverty. Pharmaceutical companies chasing profits over people leave vaccine development and production sorely lacking.
Mike Davis has delivered an uncomprisming authoritative piece.
April 26, 2021
Excellent book. Readable and well-researched. I wish this edition edited for COVID ended with a conclusion that included COVID-related info instead of ONLY beginning with COVID. And I wish there had been some answers. The book ended on a question and there aren't really concrete action items in the book but rather a critique of what's not working. All said, very much worth reading.
March 10, 2021
a really I formative read that makes me further upset at the united states administration. my main issue is that the author tended to write more dramatically and it made for the information to be lost.
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