COVID-19 Pandemic and the misleading notion of “We are in this together”

Introduction

The world had been thrown into chaos by the pandemic on March 11, 2020, as COVID-19 has been classified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). It brought enormous suffering to individuals all over the world, both directly and indirectly, and its impact on communities and economies had proven to be disastrous. Global economic stagnation, cessation of international travel, and the "lockdowns" imposed by governments in most parts of the world (Cucinotta and Vanelli, 2020). Many nations suffered serious recessions, and many global value chains have been massively disrupted by demand and, in some cases, supply shocks. The government's policy reactions to the pandemic resulted in a series of economic shocks that will have far-reaching social and economic consequences for years to come(OECD, 2020). Despite the narrative that COVID-19 was characterized as something intrinsically novel, capable of spreading beyond racial, ethnic, gendered, and religious boundaries that divide communities around the globe and eradicating them in the process. The billions of lives that were adversely affected and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people revealed serious flaws in the architecture of the world order. The response to the pandemic was neither novel nor equitably distributed, but rather fed by and contributed to pre-existing issues on a worldwide scale(Stiglitz, 2020).

Regardless of this, the allocation throughout the various geographical areas hasn't been uniform. On October 1, 2021, the highest-income nations had a vaccination rate of 125.3 vaccines per 100 people, which was approximately three times the national average in lower-middle-income nations (45.3 per 100) and thirty times higher than the rate in lower-income nations (4.2 per 100). These persistent worldwide inequalities in COVID-19 immunization rates exist despite the fact that COVID-19 has had a significant demographic, social, and economic effect in each and every geographical location(Vasquez Reyes, 2020; Rydland et al., 2022).

Amidst the fact that these inequalities are shocking, they are not unexpected. Furthermore, the disparities in vaccination rates across these sets of nations are a reflection of a wide variety of other indicators, such as wealth distribution around the world or standard life expectancy. The fact that disparities exist across a wide range of metrics suggests that they could all be representations of common underlying issues in the world today(Ali et al., 2022). Both COVID-19 and its consequences are unevenly distributed, with the environmental historian Jason W. Moore noting that 'women, people of color, and (neo)colonial populations' are disproportionately impacted. For example, statistics published from the United States and the UK demonstrate how coronavirus deaths are skewed toward certain races in the Countries Of the north, whilst also research findings in developmental geography highlight that the virus's indirect impacts are predominant in countries that were once colonized(Moore, 2019). Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic is consistent with the trend Paul Farmer (Farmer, 2004) outlines as running across pre-existing global health problems, and the impact of the pandemic highlight how what he calls structural violence is embedded through the socio-economic interactions that constitute our present world framework. In this view, the pandemic contributes to the argument that capitalism is a complex structure of "inequitable and interconnected development," where the progress and stability of some regions are based on the deprivation and instability of others. Over the five centuries where neoliberalism has controlled international relations, this process has been powered by colonization and hegemonic control, thus the persistent disparities run across dimensions of racialized and patriarchal dominance(Kennedy, 1998). This means the people who have previously been disadvantaged by societal structure would bear the most in terms of infections and mortalities and subsequent financial hardship as a result of COVID-19 and previous health problems. therefore, despite the extensive and deep effects, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic looks less novel in the worldwide context and more reminiscent of the status quo within the conventions of globalized capitalism(Murshed, 2020). Moreover, the pandemic's development thus far has been very comparable to that of any other global crisis, conforming to the norms dictated by the white, capitalist, gendered world order. It appears that the only thing that distinguishes the COVID-19 pandemic from the previous pandemics is its substantial magnitude, and the systemic oppression it incites(Devakumar et al., 2020).

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic shares significant similarities with previously outlined (health) catastrophes, it is also markedly distinct from them in crucial ways. COVID-19, along with the other problems emerging in the world, should be seen as proof that the exploitative and destructive mechanisms through which capitalism functions are increasingly imploding, and contrary to previous instances of capitalist crisis – there seems to be no hope of bouncing back sustainably. In light of the argument put forth by Moore and others that the global climate crisis is capitalogenic (instead of just anthropogenic)(Moore, 2019), Fernando views the COVID-19 pandemic as compelling evidence of how the  world has shifted into the Virocene, "a distinctive period that requires completely redefining the connection between human beings and earth." As an inducer of this period, COVID-19 isn't just a tragic illustration of ubiquitous, unequal, and embedded systemic violence, but as well as a catastrophe caused by exploitative capitalism at a moment in civilization when the world is nearing extinction(Fernando, 2020).

Given this context, this essay explains how the historical “material culture” that has viewed not just humans, but land and all multispecies life as a plunderable resource is tied to the structural violence that characterizes global society, especially during moments of crisis. We consequently can identify that racial and gendered ideologies are intrinsically linked to ideologies that devalue extra-human nature, along with how these characterizations are hegemonized and deployed within geopolitical structures of authority which allow the categorization of certain beings and settings as easy to exploit or disposable, hence leading to the production of material states of socio-ecological degradation and instability.  We examine COVID-19 from the perspective of these socio-ecological disparities, reflecting on theories of planetary emergency that use the 'Capitalocene' as the framework for analysis. In doing so, we engage with contemporary discussions in a variety of fields, notably postcolonial studies, and political ecology, among others. (Moore, 2016, 2019; Witcher, 2021; Farmer, 2004)

It is impossible to find a solution to either the COVID-19 dilemma or the other crises that are linked to it if one ignores the interwoven material histories of colonial, patriarchal, and environmental exploitation that are the root cause of the pandemic. To this end, we contend that the only way to eradicate the pandemic and the intertwined crises it has hastened but not produced is to address the racialized and gendered socio-ecological linkages that underlay both economic precarity and the climatic catastrophe. Such an endeavour is known as decolonization in postcolonial and decolonial terminology. This requires not only removing Eurocentric control over physical space but also Eurocentric knowledge and understanding of the world(Staff, 2021).

Initial response to COVID-19 from the lens of Anthropocene

Hari Bapuji and his co-authors said in a 2020 Business & Society article that our vulnerability to the virus shows how similar we are regardless of our age, education, income, and other variations. Nobody is immune to the virus's effects. All individuals appear to be equally susceptible, despite the possibility that the virus's consequences would differ(Bapuji et al., 2020). This interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic not only overlooked the crisis it ignited but also misrepresented the virus' true impact on varying societal structures. As the pandemic progressed and societal and economic systems collapsed, it became abundantly evident that although the virus may infect all humans, susceptibility to infections and the severity of its effects were determined by structural disparities. Additionally, various strategies for controlling the virus had a different impact on distinct populations throughout the world. Individuals with little resources across the world's many nations attempted to try and put together to tackle the pandemic's negative effects on their health and, more importantly, on their economic situation. Whereas people who lived in prosperous countries in the Global North had access to the most advanced medical treatments right from the start of the pandemic, and governments in these regions immediately began providing financial assistance to struggling businesses and industries(Duncan and Höglund, 2021). The UN World Food Programme estimated that the percentage of individuals at significant risk of starving will more than double through 2020, while Oxfam issued a warning in early 2020 that the pandemic could force 500 million people into poverty(The hunger virus: how COVID-19 is fuelling hunger in a hungry world, 2022). This stark inequality has a troubling and indisputable gendered and racialized component. Recent pandemic studies indicate that women and children, who could be relatively immune to the virus, are significantly more susceptible to related economic and environmental catastrophes than males. Women are hit harder than males by the prolonged economic crisis because they have less influence over their financial circumstances and a poorer foothold in the workforce and the housing sector. Additionally, women are much more likely to be the targets of domestic and physical abuse during the periods of lockdown, and women and children are also more likely to be subjects of psychosocial and occupational distress at home. Though there are sizable poor white populations in the United States and Europe, the vast majority of those who live in poverty and are at risk of food shortage are members of historically oppressed groups(Vasquez Reyes, 2020). The economic and health divide between these populations hadn't been addressed, and instead, this racial imbalance has reignited prejudice all across the world. According to research, there has been a troubling spike in xenophobia, which has been dubbed a "tsunami of hatred" by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the aftermath of the pandemic. Campaigns for racial justice, like those of the campaign of BlackLivesMatter(Ho, 2021), provide significant criticisms and corrections to widely publicized, but grossly oversimplified, interpretations of COVID-19 and fit into the nature of discrimination and prejudice in the pandemic(Duncan and Höglund, 2021).

It is crucial to highlight the inherent differences in how the pandemic is experienced in different countries and cultures around the globe by individuals of differing races, ages, and genders. These disparities are vital to keeping in mind because they put the assumption of "we" are in this together in a drastically different perspective. The notion of a universal 'we,' which is propagated by the governments, the popular media, as well as some forms of the scientific community in the Global North, employs rhetorical devices to first deny the reality of what Farmer has termed as structural violence' (Farmer, 2004) in healthcare provision, and then to invalidate the millions of individuals who are exposed to this structural violence on a regular basis. What this means is that in times of crisis when healthcare resources are limited, people's accessibility to healthcare services is governed by the same economic inequalities that shape societies on an international and regional scale, as well as the same institutionalized racism and sexism that define the quality of people's social life(Laurencin and Walker, 2020).

The first step in trying to make sense of the COVID-19 epidemic is to notice that its effects are distributed and inconsistent. In order to effectively handle this worldwide catastrophe, it is vital to recognize the economical, geopolitical, social, and cultural elements that have contributed to the dramatic and unequal distribution that has resulted from it, and to comprehend the role that these elements play in establishing structural violence all over the world. Nevertheless, it is also critical to emphasize that perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic is not merely an unavoidable natural phenomenon that affects the poor more brutally than other socioeconomic groups; it represents the worldwide, terrible result of a structurally unsustainable and exploitative interaction with the environment and the diverse organisms that live in it(Moore, 2019).

It is essential to comprehend the pandemic as a distinguishing characteristic of the Capitalocene. There is a major reason for the significance of Capitalocene, it allows for a more contextualized and effective notion of connectedness and social solidarity than the illusion of equal vulnerability to the virus(Malm and Hornborg, 2014).  With the help of the Capitalocene, one can see how many types of injustice in the world today are interconnected(Moore, 2016). As the prominent political theorist Emma Dabiri has lately argued, Capitalocene facilitates "the process of coalition-building"(Why Coalition, Not Allyship, Is the Necessary Next Step in the Racial Justice Movement, 2021). In contrast to the prevalent rhetoric surrounding the notion of "allyship," coalition-building is a method for achieving social and environmental equity, "by bringing our fights together," develops "a perspective whereby numerous communities may see their concerns recognized and work together to achieve a shared purpose". According to Dabiri's study, this line of investigation is particularly pertinent in the present day since conversations regarding socioeconomic practices, particularly those that take place over the internet, typically favor the selection of words that subconsciously reinforce and consolidate the types of ideology that were created to serve the needs of wealth concentration(Dabiri, 2021). To understand the COVID-19 pandemic in its entirety and to work toward its eradication. It has to be seen in the context of a long, capitalist history in which poor nations, people, as well as other forms of life, have been regarded and treated as resources to be extracted and looted(Duncan and Höglund, 2021).

COVID-19 from the lens of Capitalocene

Researchers from a range of fields, including environmental studies and the social sciences, have drawn attention to the fact that the pandemic and the approaching environmental crisis cannot be separated. The emergence of COVID-19 may be viewed as a part of the greater change in the earth's atmosphere, together with factors such as global warming and rising sea level along with their repercussions(Haraway, 2013; Myers et al., 2013; Moore, 2017; O’Callaghan-Gordo and Antó, 2020a).

This change isn't incidental but resulted from human interference. According to(Selby and Kagawa, 2020), "unrelenting urbanization, quarrying, logging, expansion of infrastructural development, and "slash and burn" farming practices" push wildlife further into close vicinity to human settlements, that "helps facilitate the transmission of wildlife-borne infections." The novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 is an example of a 'zoonotic spill over'(Rodriguez-Morales et al., 2020). The bat-born virus spread to humans through another species (possibly pangolins). (Malm, 2020)highlights that international firms are deforesting South-East Asia on a massive scale. As a result, diseases are directed straight toward humans due to the depletion of biodiversity, which counterbalances the 'diffusion' of pathogens within the wild species.

Since COVID-19 is a product of capitalist progress, this may offer a justification for the larger claim that we are living and working in the Capitalocene, a period when capitalism is playing a major role in determining the global order. This perspective challenges the widely held belief that environmental changes signify the onset of the Anthropocene; wherein human activity has a geological impact(O’Callaghan-Gordo and Antó, 2020b). The issue with this second point of view is that it prioritizes the dynamics of current environmental changes over a comprehensive understanding of the factors that led to these changes(Moore, 2016). The oversimplified, standard Anthropos category is a loose conceptual approach to understanding the emerging crisis. It gives the impression that we are all in this together and that we are all on the same level, similar to the early response to the pandemic. However, this ignores the reality that the crisis is unfolding in a way that leaves certain peoples, species, and regions more at risk than others(Moore, 2019).

The idea that all humans are equally to blame for society's problems opens the door to discussions about overpopulation and the peculiar concern with population management that often accompanies them. (Satgar, 2018)observes that these approaches always blame "the most populated [developing] countries" for the environmental crisis, while ignoring the staggeringly high impact this has on, especially the poorest in those nations. Moreover, (Wallace et al., 2020)have identified a similar rationale functioning in the initial, ungoverned response to the coronavirus that advocated for "herd immunity". When it was entirely dropped from the government pandemic strategy, the racial inequality in mortality became visible, hence confirming who could be sacrificed to achieve the strategy's intended demographic goal(Satgar, 2018). Thus, herd immunity is a prime example of how the belief of "we're all in this together" can hide the fact that racialized societal disparities determine the outcomes of a pandemic within a specific population. The adoption of this narrative about herd immunity during the early stages of the pandemic also demonstrates how the notion of even vulnerability to the virus effectively entails the creation of uneven vulnerability to the extent that herd immunity can be viewed as an attempt to promote "status quo” and to avoid making improvements to health services(Duncan and Höglund, 2021)

The Capitalocene perspective begins with an acknowledgment of the racial, socioeconomic, gender, and (global) geographic inequalities in the allocation of socio-ecological risk. The relationship between the system of income accumulation, which has connected global regions through production and consumption, and the Eurocentric epistemic legacy of the Age of Enlightenment is the cause of these injustices(Moore, 2015). This theory contends that racism, heteropatriarchy, and the objectification of the natural world are all embedded in the logic of capitalism. Such intellectual constructions have improved the world's comprehension over time rather than as supplemental effects, and are thus necessary for it to function properly(Moore, 2016).

It is helpful to frame the concept of capitalism as a "global ecology" in relation to Immanuel Wallerstein's seminal study of the capitalist world system (Wallerstein, 1974) and the "coloniality of power". Wallerstein stated that the current global economy evolved during the European colonization of the Americas. The New World's resources and the labor of its colonized and enslaved peoples aided Western Europe's growth, expansion, and ultimate dominance. This international cooperation laid the groundwork for the current capitalist global order. The reason it has always been considered a "worldwide" system isn't that it encompasses the entirety of the earth, but rather because it is more detailed than any politically organized body that is controlled by the jurisdiction. Also, it is worldwide in scope because of the monetary nature of the links that exist within this system(Wallerstein, 2011).

The earliest interaction between Europe and the New World serves as an example of an economic relationship that is reinforced throughout the evolution of the world system, which is still centered on "the division of labor that is established inside it"(Wallerstein, 2004). But that initial interaction depicts the vicious disparity that has been embedded into the fabric of globalization: the wealth brought to the European continent from the early American territories is a clear indication of indigenous killing, destruction, forced migration, and forced labor, as well as the inhumane treatment of countless of Africans. Moore emphasizes that this situation exemplifies how wealth functions by keeping the majority of the spending 'off the records,' in reference to Marx's idea of primitive accumulation(Moore, 2016) Addressing the uneven exchange that existed in the earlier world order (Quijano, 2000) states that the colonial robbery of indigenous lands, as well as the dehumanization and genocide of indigenous and captive African people, is justified by the construction of racial categorizations. Historically held, heteropatriarchal notions of gender served as the conceptual foundation for the establishment of the race, which was then used to label assumed biological inferiority.  According to Quijano “race was a technique of conferring validity to the interplay of authority dictated by invasion," and "the notion of race, in its modern view, doesn't have a verifiable existence before the colonization of America"(Quijano, 2000)

It is clear that international relationships of capitalist development are fundamental to the emergence and maintenance of racializing ideologies. The presence of an easy-to-exploit or expendable population is an inherent part of the capitalist world order, therefore racial and gender discrimination is so intrinsic to its functioning. This can be conceptualized through the "coloniality of power", which refers to the racial belief embedded in the rationale of capital and also has contributed to classifying beings that may be leveraged for very little to no expense, or in accordance with Foucault's biopolitical definition, lives may be subjected to death for the profitability(Foucault, Davidson and Burchell, 2008)

Capitalocene theory asserts that the entire planetary system—from specific people's labor to the resources of the other beings in the ecological system exists inside a domain of exploitation and disposability. Therefore, capital is more accurately described as "a means of controlling human activity and not merely a way of creating a global asymmetrical socioeconomic condition. The categorization of gender and race which have been enforced to justify the exploitation of specific individuals share an epistemological origin with the notion of nature as a commodity. There is a fundamental linkage between Eurocentric knowledge and the functioning of capital. Thus, the capitalist world is based on a functional separation of nature and human civilization, in which the vast majority of people are "either disenfranchised from Civilization" (like indigenous Americans) or "identified as only partially Humans," nearly all women(Moore, 2016). (Wynter, 2003) goes into detail about a similar idea. She claims that the advent of race in the American continent is the basis for the subject-object approach that is employed in natural science. Moore argues that if racial differences serve to frame specific people as lesser humans, then these ideologies likewise propose a sphere outside of 'Humanity' Like enforced racial and gendered identities, he believes that placing this sector outside of the realm of society tends to legitimize their acquisition by capital. When viewed through the lens of capitalism, nature is always deemed "Cheap Nature." As with any other (human) resource, it exists solely to be exploited for financial gain. It follows that "the dichotomy nature/society is intrinsically related to the enormous violence, inequity, and tyranny of the contemporary world; and the perception of Nature as the exterior is a crucial requirement of capital accumulation"(Moore, 2019).

Capitalocene examines the unequal allocation of biospheric (including pathogenic) alteration at this time of growing planetary crises by tracing the rationale of coloniality which is embedded throughout international socio-ecological connections. As previously mentioned, mainstream portrayals of the COVID-19 pandemic as the great equalizer distract from the unequal realities of the virus's impacts by asserting a universal human subject as being equally susceptible worldwide(Subedi, 2020). It's worth pausing to reflect on the fact that these kinds of narratives originate in places of political and economic power and are broadcast around the world. Narratives of universal vulnerability, rely on a curiously monolithic and displaced view of humanity, it may serve a similar purpose to the dichotomy of human and nature in enabling oppressive capitalist interactions by hiding the truth that race, gender, and nature are socially constructed. Once again, the "we're all in this together" mentality conceals the racial and gendered transmission of risk during a pandemic, which aids in keeping the economic and ecological system that causes these inequalities in the first place(Moore, 2019).

Strategies of containment from the lens of colonialism

The interactions between colonial domination and pandemic can be traced all the way to the beginning of the contemporary world's environment, around the time of the 'Columbian Exchange. The expression corresponds to the time when European colonizers first entered the American continent and carried along with them a variety of infections to which native populations lacked an immune response(Nunn and Qian, 2010). Diseases such as smallpox, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria were among the multitude of migrated from the colonizers to the American continent. Within the first century of colonization, approximately 80–95% of Native Americans in the region perished from the infectious diseases that had spread throughout the entire region(Koch et al., 2019). The consequential catastrophic decline in population shows how classifying both human and non-human existence as a commodity to be used for (colonial) wealth can lead to the kind of uncontrollable changes in pathogens in accordance with the existing coronavirus(Malm, 2020). 

Modern narratives of pandemics are no more blatantly racist or patriarchal, but they are still recognizable as comparable attempts to maintain the status quo of socio-ecological systems. The author of The Political Unconscious, Fredric Jameson’s(Jameson, 2015) seminal work on narratives and capitalist economy provides an interpretation of ideologies as "measures to control". This concept is particularly relevant in the scenario of a pandemic, it indicates a reductive approach that skilfully "resolve" situations of crisis by ignoring underlying capitalist underpinnings. This line of thinking highlights the ways in which global health organizations deal with outbreaks of contagious disease by symbolically "containing" them in discourses that purposefully leave out the ways in which historical violence impacts the consequences of the pandemic in a formerly colonized nation(Jameson, 2015). Thus the idea of 'containment' directly undermines infection control, and the same conflict is present in widely shared rhetoric of COVID-19, including the concept of equal vulnerability even though the pandemic has had varied impacts on different geographical regions. In an assessment by (Carmody, McCann and Cannon, 2020) of the covid pandemic in the supposedly "developing" countries, point out that pandemic containment policy measures are having particularly devastating consequences. Because of the high levels of reliance on the unorganized sector for livelihood as well as the lack of universal health, welfare benefits, and governmental support initiatives, the authors describe that "lockdowns were implemented quickly, with usually severe socioeconomic repercussions" in the Global South. According to, (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020) government interventions for coronavirus in Africa were defined by a troubling inclination to turn northward. This resulted in tactics that, while apparently globally relevant, are created on the premise that particular facilities and infrastructure are already present. They mentioned that Lockdowns have damaged "the economic systems of daily life," which could not endure even a single day of interruption(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020). The terrible repercussions of these kinds of measures for most individuals throughout the country demonstrate the government's implementation of a policy based on the notion of universal vulnerability: a narrative of the pandemic that hides how historical circumstances shape the coronavirus pandemic in different manners that adversely affect particular demographics. The argument is that stopping economic operation in regions of the world without a welfare state needs to address fundamental instability. This concept of equal susceptibility seems to be incorporated into lockdown as the Northern paradigm of pandemic management, whereas even in the world's biggest economies, such measures have revealed the socio-economic insecurity of significant portions of society(Duncan and Höglund, 2021).

In the investigation of systematic racism during COVID-19 in the United States,(Egede and Walker, 2020). Walker highlight how the racial inequality underlying poverty, which had origins in the slave economy, directly underlies the racial inequality of death rates during the pandemic. According to the research, "Black Americans' heightened vulnerability to COVID-19 is associated with a higher proportion in blue-collar jobs and a higher probability of staying in highly populated inner cities". The authors note that the history of inner cities has left Afro-Americans with lower socioeconomic and academic prospects, exposing them to hazards linked with relatively significant coronavirus repercussions. An absence of healthcare coverage discourages them from visiting a doctor, as well as an experience of abuse in the healthcare delivery service. Regarding how this race-based gross inequality is (mis)represented in popular pandemic rhetoric in the Country, has a tendency for "color-blind racism," that "explain[s] race-based inequalities as the results of non-racist mechanisms."(Egede and Walker, 2020). Bonilla-Silva points out that calling essential staff "heroes" conceals the reality that the majority of these jobs are held by racial minorities; that focusing on charitable donations to deal with soaring food insecurity hides the racial inequality of lack of food in "normal" periods; as well as that focusing on the high rate of co-morbidities in minority ethnic communities biologizes racial bias, ignoring the fact that these co-morbidities are more likely to impact individuals of color(Bonilla-Silva, 2022).  These discourses work to support the notion that "we are all in this together." 'Colour-blind racial interpretation of such concerns restricts recognizing systemic flaws in the Covid19 crisis'. The myth of equal vulnerability in North America operates as a containment technique, disconnecting coronavirus results from their foundations in systemic unevenness fostered via a lengthy, violent history based on race, gender, and ecological degradation.  Instead of allowing successful practical approaches to infection management, these agendas contribute to maintaining the socio-ecological linkages from which 'zoonotic spill-over’ occurs(Bailey and Moon, 2020; Devakumar et al., 2020; Elias et al., 2021; Wang and Santos, 2022).

 

Conclusion:

The appearance of the novel coronavirus has been proven to be part of the larger alteration of the earth's ecosystem, which corresponds to the impending global crisis. This transition as well as this emergency need to be viewed as an outcome of colonial and capitalist practices of exploiting humans and non-humans alike, which have long been at the core of postcolonialism. Since the beginning of the global economic and ecological system, these procedures have been predicated on the idea that "Nature" is something to be exploited or discarded because it is outside the purview of "Humanity." The coloniality of authority that continues to function across different levels in the present is made strikingly obvious by the disproportionate spread of the pandemic's repercussions. The level to which the pandemic has halted world economy interactions demonstrates how capitalist manipulations create disorderly socio-ecological transformations.  

The prevalence of pandemics, and the danger they pose to the "ongoing operations" of capitalism, would rise if efforts to rapidly exploit resources persist. For these reasons, (Fernando, 2020) emphasizes humanity would be approaching the 'Virocene,' a geohistorical period that, in (Moore, 2019) language, marks the Capitalocene's 'final collapse' This deterioration of capitalist relationships shouldn't be misinterpreted as the cessation of capitalist aggression. In the earlier days, the world-ideological ecology's framework has been extremely flexible in situations of crisis. For example, during the Columbian Exchange(Nunn and Qian, 2010), when there weren't enough people who could work in the United States, colonizers brought people as Slaves to fill the gap. Containment discourses serve to maintain current socio-ecological systems, hiding how ancient practices of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism shape the pandemic. It's worth noting, though, that the extraordinary time in which we live has also seen a tremendous upswing of community activism surrounding civil rights for African Americans in particular, which can be partially attributable to the heightened awareness of disparity in the pandemic setting(Bailey and Moon, 2020; Gay, Hammer and Ruel, 2020; Laurencin and Walker, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2022).  (Dabiri, 2021) warns that much of the contemporary "anti-racist" rhetoric is overly simplistic and... largely ignorant of colonialism. The outcome is governance that 'obstructs... the recognition of connections and common interests that persist beyond categorizations created to segregate people.  on the other hand, there is also a requirement for evaluations that identify how race, gender, and nature were manipulated in the interest of capital.

At this stage, it's vital to consider these and other perspectives from the once colonized countries. Recognizing that the pandemic is still present, particularly in the Developing Nations, is a prerequisite for any effort to decolonize it or effectively handle it. While wealthy countries are vaccinating individual populations multiple times in order to handle altered strains of the virus, the vaccination effort in the Global South is still struggling. We are seeing the  'vaccine apartheid' (Bajaj, Maki and Stanford, 2022)- another permutation of pandemic neo-colonialism. Much more people in the Global South than those in the Countries Of the north will lose their lives, jobs, homes, education, and prospects owing to the economic, sociopolitical, racial, and gendered problems that the pandemic is intensifying(Ali et al., 2022). Clearly, 'we' are not in this together. But this doesn't mean that people can't work together to solve the problems that COVID-19 has brought to light and made worse(Dabiri, 2021).

If understood in the context of Capitalocene, linkages between social and ecological exploitation and injustice become evident. In this approach, the Capitalocene provides a lens for identifying shared interests and forming coalitions that cut past established and false rhetorical divisions. Instead of denying the foundations of impending crisis, this kind of unity could recognize how colonialism promotes socio-ecological imbalances, laying the framework for constructive opposition and rectification.