Covid-19 under capitalism will continue to spread. The world is now approaching the mark of two full years  of the Covid-19 pandemic. The thirst for profit and the competition between different capitalist factions and countries has left large segments of the world population susceptible to the coronavirus infection. Many hundreds of millions of unvaccinated people, and now with the Omicron variant millions of vaccinated people, too, are getting Covid-19.
This unchecked spread of the virus is deadly for our class-the working class. As long as it can continue to infect people, variants will arise. We have to look out for our class by keeping each other safe. The bosses of the ruling class are preaching individualism and encouraging us to engage in activities they know will spread the virus and likely lead to more variants. As workers, we can socialize and meet and march in ways that still guard against the spread of the coronavirus and its variants. We can fight for the safest conditions possible where we work or go to school and we can build a movement led by the working-class to fight to get rid of this system once and for all with communist revolution.
Capitalism spreads the virus
These variants are a result of multiplication of billions of viruses with subsequent mutations in RNA as these viruses replicate. Every time the virus infects a new person it makes billions of copies of itself. We should not be surprised to see wave after wave of variants as long as the SARS-CoV-2 virus has room to multiply. This happens because as a virus multiplies, changes in the viral RNA occur spontaneously. If some of these variants become more contagious, they become dominant and may be able to evade the immunity induced by vaccines.
“Mutations occur when viruses are in an immunocompromised host and when they can infect many people. In the first case, the immunocompromised person’s immune system is unable to rid the body of the virus, or to do so quickly. That gives the virus more time to infect more cells and produce more copies of itself, potentially producing more mutations. It is similar when many people in a population are infected. The virus may have less time in a single host before the immune system reacts but has more opportunities to mutate in more bodies….Mutations could also bestow the ability to become more transmissible, making it easier for the virus to infect others, or more severe, meaning it’s more likely those infected will require hospital care or die” (Global News, 4/28/21).
The current situation is a textbook case of a variant generator, “the chance a vaccine-resistant strain will emerge is highest in a scenario that combines three conditions: First, a large portion of a population is vaccinated, but not everyone. Second, there's a lot of virus circulating. And third, no measures are in place to curb potential viral transmission from vaccinated people” (Business Insider, 8/1/21).
The bosses know; they don’t care
The ruling-class knows the dangers of the activities they continue to promote. “The threat of Covid-19 means you should avoid eating and drinking in public if you can. More interactions between potentially infected people will give the virus more pathways to spread and potentially mutate” (WSJ, 1/17).
As long as the ruling-class is in power they will put their needs for profit and desire to keep themselves in power over the needs of the working-class and the suffering will continue. As workers,  we have to look out for each other and fight to make the needs of our class primary.