Cheering the Militarization of Everything
Cheering the Militarization of Everything Reflections on the 6th anniversary of when Covid was declared a “national security threat” Debbie Lerman Illustration by: Anthony Freda On February 4, 2020, word went out from the biodefense military leadership to pharmaceutical companies that the “novel coronavirus” circulating in China was a “national security threat” – a designation that opened the floodgates for development, manufacture and distribution of “military countermeasures.” On that day there were zero deaths and fewer than a dozen cases reported in the United States, and fewer than 500 deaths worldwide. On the same day, Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and the PREP Act – laws intended for rushing countermeasures to the scenes of bioweapons attacks – were activated, giving the global biodefense public-private partnership the ability to develop, manufacture, distribute and administer such countermeasures without any legal or reg...