Investigates why, when all the tools to avert a catastrophe were available, the world failed to prevent the Covid-19 disaster. Examining the business opportunities and pressures that helped shape the world's failed response, Stephen Gowans concludes that the novel coronavirus had a helper in bringing about the calamity: capitalism.

"The pandemic will end "when the world chooses to end it," said the WHO in summer 2021. But it didn't end, even though all necessary public health measures were available. China, New Zealand, Vietnam and a few other countries used them, but most others ignored them. The virus ran riot. Half measures were used only when hospitals were staggering under the strain. The vaccine turned out to be more mirage than oasis. Poor and middle-income countries experienced global vaccine apartheid. The United States under Trump and Biden did everything not to "spook the markets," while registering upwards of 2500 deaths per million. China, on the other hand, minimized economic disruption and had only 3.2 deaths per million due to Covid-19. Gowans investigates why, with the exception of China, the world failed to prevent the Covid-19 disaster. He concludes that the novel coronavirus had a henchman - capitalism. He shows how capitalism's multiple incentives and the way capitalists dominate the political process, crippled public health and caused masses of unnecessary deaths."-Cover.