Rob Wallace—evolutionary epidemiologist, agroecologist, and author of Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19—joins me to discuss the complex interplay between the increase in infectious pathogens globally, the role of epidemiology within the neoliberal capitalist project, agribusiness and ecological destruction, and Empire at the end of the "cycle of accumulation" in late-stage capitalism. We reference his large body of work, but in particular two of his most recent Patreon pieces, A Spray of Split Seconds and Vic Berger's American Public Health.

Zoonotic pathogen spillover into human populations is on the upward trend. The high-speed evisceration of the last remaining intact biodiverse regions on the planet, in conjunction with agribusiness’s rapacious exploitation of biological life, meets the conditions for highly contagious viruses to evolve and leap from animal to human hosts more successfully and frequently. Regarding this epidemiological reality, Rob Wallace is an archetypal Cassandra, having predicted a pandemic emerging under current conditions as only a matter of time. As we know all know, he was right. SARS-CoV-2 emerged at the very end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, and over the course of almost two years, has killed millions of human beings as it continues to mutate and burn its way through the global population, disrupting practically every governing system of human life in the process. We have entered into an age of pandemics. Unless a massive shift occurs in the global economic order (be it systemic collapse or revolution, you pick), the idea of a global pandemic only occurring every 100 years or so, and not every one to two decades (or less), would be delusional.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rob-wallace

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